A green-fingered Good Samaritan in Ealing is leading the fight in helping Londoners by getting them involved in the outdoors. Ross Walker, 38, from Lewisham, is the CEO of Letting Grow, an environmental charity working on educational reform by getting kids out of the classroom and into the outdoors. The charity has plans to plant 250,000 trees in London over the next five years.
Charity's Mission and Impact
Letting Grow’s work includes - but is not limited to - getting kids to grow their own fruit and veg, and also planting trees. Ross said there are three groups Letting Grow helps: “vulnerable people, vulnerable students, and low-wealth demographic families.”
They started their mission in 2018 at a ‘completely misused’ community allotment in Acton, turning it from a ‘dumping ground’ into a functioning allotment. “It was a real success,” Ross added. Eight years hence, Letting Grow is ‘now a fully functioning charity, funded by the National Lottery and is involved in one of Sadiq Khan's most positive schemes. We've worked with thousands of students now.’
Projects and Workshops
The charity works with people across five sites: three tree planting sites, one school, and a community garden. The latest project is at Greenford Library, which will receive a cash injection from the National Lottery and run later this year.
When working with pupils, Ross helps the students start by planting a seed and nurturing the vegetable until it’s ready to be cooked. He said: “We run workshops onsite with students that take them from growing a piece of fruit or vegetable all the way up to cooking it on a fire in their school. If they don't have a kitchen garden or a fire-cooking site, we help build one for the school. We create a functioning grow space and a functioning cooking site for them.”
Ross fondly recalls working with primary school kids growing kale and when it came to eating it ‘they were all bickering over who could get more kale, and that's unheard of. You don't expect that.’
Memorable Experiences
The dad-of-one was also filled with joy when he took some pupils to the countryside in Hampshire, who were ‘in awe’ of the ‘rolling’ hills around them. Ross said: “We took them to a hill that my wife and I walked past plenty of times and never really thought about it. But when the students walked up it and saw the valley they paused and they were in awe. It was wonderful to see, it blew their minds. They were saying things like ‘I can see for so far’.”
Ross said he was also left with a tremendous sense of accomplishment when he saw his students ‘dancing in the woods to music that they'd helped produce in our outdoor music studio.’
Life-Changing Stories
A short while ago, an ex-pupil of Ross’ told him how the charity helped turn his life around. The ex-pupil’s life wasn’t entirely working out when he started with Letting Grow, but in the years since, he has now become a fully qualified tree surgeon, owns a car, and is engaged. Ross said how lovely it was to see the turnaround.
Personal Fulfillment
The nature-junkie can’t get enough of spending time outdoors with his students and watching them grow into ‘future stewards of the planet’. He does this by nurturing them from being at times ‘squeamish’ of soil to having a well-developed ‘relationship with nature.’
Ross said: “It's all about educating people to connect with nature, and by doing so, you connect with nature. So it's not just the students that are impacted, but we always have feedback from our staff who, when they spend a lot of time outside, they say it's like therapy for them.”
Ross’ life has changed massively over the years. He traded the lifestyle of an advertising tycoon for the ‘much more wholesome’ world of an outdoorsman. The dad said: “My general day-to-day is the outdoors, using my hands, working with people who need help. It's a lot, but I feel there's a far greater sense of fulfilment [than in advertising], and I feel like a much better person since working in the outdoors.”
