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Nestled in the heart of Clapham, Ace of Clubs is a charity offering a range of essential services to those who are homeless or vulnerable. The centre serves over 180 hot meals a day (more than 40,000 a year) while also providing shower and laundry facilities, healthcare, and vital housing and employment support. But as important as these services are, Ace of Clubs is more than just a service-provider. It's a space where our service users can feel seen, welcomed, and part of a close-knit community.
I've been a volunteer in the AoC community for almost three years now, and one of the most meaningful parts of the charity has been the garden tucked away behind the centre. This previously award-winning space grows a wide variety of organic fruits and vegetables that supplement the generous donations that we use to prepare our daily meals, but the garden also acts as a crucial safety net. If donations don't arrive on a given day, we can turn to the garden for an emergency food supply to keep the kitchen running.
The garden has been a wonderful project to be a part of, but keeping it going hasn't always been easy.
Before, watering the garden was a constant, hands-on job. With only a handful of garden volunteers, we had to visit the garden every day, sometimes multiple times a day trying to keep the fruits and vegetables alive, especially during long dry spells in the summer. With a million other tasks that needed attention in the centre, the garden often became difficult to manage, and what should have been a peaceful, fun project often times became a source of stress and worry.
That's why receiving the irrigation system from Waterwell has made such a profound difference to us. It hasn't just improved our efficiency and made us more sustainable, it's transformed what feels possible in the space. Now that we're no longer constantly firefighting to keep things alive, we can shift our focus from simply maintaining the garden to building our vision for it.
In the coming year, we're planning to open the garden up to our service users in a more meaningful way. We want service users to see where their food comes from and to understand all the ins and outs of what goes into growing it. If they want to, we'd also like to have them be part of the garden themselves, creating new gardeners for the future to help us keep the initiative going for as long as possible in the future.
At the same time, we recognise that not everyone will be drawn to the practical side of gardening, and that's perfectly okay. We'd also like the space to be a place of calm and quiet, where our service users can step away from the noise and pressures in their life and reconnect with nature in a small but meaningful way. In a bustling city like London, even a few minutes in a green space can make a world of a difference.
Looking ahead, we're also excited to expand the ways the garden can support our fundraising efforts. We currently harvest raspberries for jam, and collect honey from our beehives and these are sold to raise money for the center. While these are small initiatives, we're hopeful we can build on these ideas and explore even more opportunities in the future to financially sustain the services that AoC offers, especially as the cost of living crisis grows the number of service-users at our doors.
While the possibilities for this space feel endless, this progress wouldn't be possible without support. The contribution from Waterwell has not only helped us sustain the garden, but has given us the confidence and capacity to grow the space into something even more meaningful. Thank you so much for giving us this helping hand, and for playing such an important role in helping us nurture not just plants, but the people in our wonderful community.
Written by Rebecca Taddeo, Head volunteer for the Ace of Clubs garden
