This workshop is part of the Garden Museum's Branch Out programme, a series of free events and activities exploring gardening, art, floristry, plant science, history, design, and more!
Creating Your Gardening Club is a new hands-on, participatory workshop that draws on artist Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck’s experience of founding The Gardening Drawing Club and serving on a local allotment committee in rural Oxfordshire. The session offers practical guidance alongside creative tools for those wishing to start and establish a gardening club or growing community in a variety of settings, including neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces, allotments, nomadic and cultural organisations.
The workshop responds to the many conversations Johanna had with individuals seeking advice on how to initiate and sustain collective growing practices. It explores both the organisational and social aspects of starting a club — from shaping a shared ethos and working collaboratively, to navigating practical considerations such as access to space, materials, and ongoing participation.
Participants will take part in a simple bookbinding activity to create a small, handmade booklet. This publication will function as a working tool throughout the session: a space for notes, drawings, reflections, and plans, as well as a resource participants can continue to use as they develop their own gardening clubs. The act of making the booklet reinforces the idea of slow, collective processes and knowledge-sharing at the heart of community growing.
The workshop will also include small materials for participants to take away, including seeds, offering a tangible starting point for forthcoming projects and an invitation to put ideas into action after the session.
This workshop is suitable for adults only and is particularly aimed at artists, educators, organisers, and anyone interested in cultivating communal, creative approaches to gardening and care.
Free
Free
