Mental Health Sustainability

Tucked behind Broadwalk Shopping Centre in Knowle, Redcatch Community Garden is a little oasis overflowing with colourful flower beds, seasonal vegetables, living walls, sheltered picnic spots, a buzzing café and a play area. Open seven days a week, it runs health and wellbeing sessions, education programmes, plant and compost sales, pop-up chef events, beer festivals – and a cup of tea for passing dog walkers.

Bowling green to community connection

It’s hard to imagine that only eight years ago, this space was a disused bowling green. A group of passionate residents had ambitions to turn it into something special – somewhere that could cater for everyone. Roll on to 2025, and the Garden is buzzing.

Kate Swain, the Garden’s CEO, explains what that means in practice: “The Garden brings people together to learn, socialise, share skills, and improve their health and wellbeing. Much of this work is targeted at people experiencing social isolation, mental ill-health, SEND children or those not in education, training or employment and people who have suffered trauma.”

She brings the space to life: “The Garden is a community hub that purposefully brings people together. When you are here, you can see a group of older people talking to their friends enjoying a piece of cake, dog walkers coming in for a chat, a 60 year old lady painting the play area fence, somebody in a wheelchair planting a garden box up, or a child with neurodiversity taking part in a cooking session. That’s really important, that we all see each other, because only then do we begin to understand what challenges other people face, how kind people are, how incredible people are, how similar we all are.”

What the Garden delivers, day to day

Kate gives a glimpse of what a single day at the Garden looks like: “Today we have 60 children from the local school coming for a gardening session, seeing what is in season, harvesting anything that is ready and emotionally grounding them as they start back at school. We’ve got Art in the Garden, which is a free drop-in session for people experiencing mental ill health. We’ve got a group of young people not in education, training or employment taking part in cooking, woodworking and helping in the café. There’s also a Wellbeing in the Garden group who will be planting, weeding, making up planters and other things to sell on our market stall. And of course, there will be people popping in to enjoy a cup of tea and a biscuit outside amongst nature.”

The Garden is a Community Benefit Society, which – like a charity – means all profits are ploughed back into activities that benefit the whole community. It receives no direct funding from the local council, so every pound to keep the site and services running has to be earned or fundraised.

How Bristol Beer Factory has supported the Garden

Since 2023, Bristol Beer Factory has supported the Garden with donated beer, equipment and £1,000 in cash, helping to raise in excess of £17,500 to support its work year-round. A key part of that support is the Garden’s Friday and Sunday pop-up events, where BBF brings the beer and doesn’t charge a penny. That means 100% of every BBF beer sold at Redcatch goes towards the Garden’s work – buy a beer, and the Garden keeps the cash to allocate wherever it’s needed most.

There are 1,000s of charities and CIC’s like Redcatch Community Garden delivering transformational work across the city day in and day out. That’s why other Bristol-focused businesses are invited to join We Back Bristol and pledge 1% to strengthen our city and transform lives.