Community food growing initiative to be launched in Coventry
Coventry Grows will open up underused council land for community growing sites, with plans for fruit, vegetables and wildflowers
Communities in Coventry are being invited to turn underused council land into growing sites for fruit, vegetables and wildflowers.
A new initiative called Coventry Grows is being launched in October. It was proposed in December 2025 and then approved in March.
A pilot scheme set up in 2024/2025 to test the idea has so far set up sites in Foleshil, Tile Hill, and Stoke Heath, with another being developed in Hillfields.
When fully launched, the aim is for residents to apply to the council for agreement to develop underused pieces of municipal land into growing sites.
In future, other landowners could be brought on board, with potential partners including social housing provider Citizen and the Canal & River Trust.
The council has hired a community growing programme co-ordinator to implement the policy and manage the various sites that are set up. The authority will offer advice and support to help people get their plots established.
It says £100,000 a year has been committed for three years to fund the project, which includes staffing along with the costs to other service areas for legal agreements, land ownership checks and site surveys.
The council says successful applicants will pay a small fee to support some of these costs, in line with other local authorities who are already running similar initiatives. Fees for members of the local GoCV+ discount scheme could be waived.
While the pilot scheme has funded some elements of setting up community gardens – including tools, seeds, training and storage – the council says its city-wide initiative won’t have enough of a budget to do that across Coventry as a whole.
But it is looking at securing sponsorship from the private sector, grants from the public sector, and entering into collaborations with other organisations such as hardware stores to create a tool library people can access. Garden centres and nurseries would also be asked to get involved.
Rhian Palmer, the city council’s head of sustainability, told the Business, Economy and Enterprise Scrutiny Board that the benefits of community growing include improved health and wellbeing from more time spent outdoors doing physical activity and getting access to locally-grown produce.
Bringing people together, improving biodiversity, increasing the availability of local fresh food, and boosting education and skills in sustainable growing, horticulture, composting and caring for wildlife are other advantages.
It will also help address inequalities across Coventry, where some areas – notably Foleshill, Radford and Stoke, followed by Holbrooks and the St Michael’s ward of the city centre – have low levels of green space for their populations.
Ms Palmer said the policy would support residents and community groups to cultivate food, fruit trees, wildflowers and native plants. Sites could include underused council land, as well as grass verges, council-owned planters, available spaces in parks, and sites where other landowners decide to join the initiative.
Neighbours of proposed sites will be consulted and successful applicants will be issued with a licence on a rolling annual basis, she said. Raised beds, paths, benches, trees and shrubs could be among the features added, and wildlife could be encouraged through bug hotels, bird and bat boxes, and hedgehog houses.
Councillors are being asked to promote the initiative and identify any potential sites in their wards. Ms Palmer says a minimum of five sites would be set up in the first year, with at least 50 residents involved.
The council said in a report to the scrutiny board: “Coventry’s Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan set out an ambitious vision for the city which will help to improve the lives of people that live and work here, alongside supporting nature’s recovery.
“One of the initiatives within the strategy is focused on the development of a network of community growing sites across the city for residents to help create and enjoy.
“Nationally, there is a campaign for the government to adopt the principle of a Right to Grow across the UK due to the benefits for people and wildlife.
“In Coventry we have already started doing this through piloting Coventry Grows, a project which started in 2024 through the city’s Climate Change Board to develop a number of pilot community growing sites in some of the city’s most green-deprived areas, backed by funding from E.ON through the city’s Strategic Energy Partnership.
“Coventry Grows’ has seen sites developed in Stoke Heath, Foleshill and Tile Hill, and we are working with a group in Hillfields to develop a further site.
“The projects have been led by the Council, with support from Grapevine to bring new community growing groups together and Garden Organic to provide training to residents – with gardening novices very much encouraged to get involved. The pilot projects have benefited from funding to support site set up, tools, equipment and seeds.
“The council is now extending this opportunity to people and communities across the city who are interested in setting up community growing areas in their neighbourhood, through offering council-owned underused land which will be done through the launch of the Community Growing sites policy and guidance.
“Proposed planting could be food, wildflowers, native plants or fruit trees. This could include planting areas of mown grass on streets, taking on plots of land for food growing and nature gardens, using council-owned planters, as well as potentially planting orchards and hedgerows in some of our parks and open spaces, subject to restrictions and covenants.”