🌱 My Origin Story: Gardens for Peace

My story begins with my grandfather, Bu. He lived through World War II, when food rationing shaped every meal and survival depended on ingenuity. Sugar was almost impossible to find, and even something as simple as a carrot was a treasure. For him, food was never just food — it was comfort, resilience, and community.

As a child, I learned to garden by his side. To me, planting beans and pulling weeds was play. To him, it was resilience — every potato unearthed, every sprout nurtured was a victory over uncertainty. He showed me how the act of tending the soil could restore dignity and hope in the hardest of times.

During the war, Britain launched the “Dig for Victory” campaign, a call for citizens to transform every spare patch of land into food production. Front gardens, public parks, and even London’s bombed-out ruins were turned into allotments. What had been spaces of destruction became sites of nourishment and hope. Families dug side by side, proving that even in times of violence and scarcity, life could push through the rubble.

Years later, when I began working on my first business idea — delivering seasonal local food from allotments and farmers’ markets — I discovered this history in more depth. I learned how ordinary people reshaped the urban landscape, and how wartime gardening became both a necessity and a quiet act of resistance.

It was through the work of Dr Twigs Way, the garden historian, that I came to fully appreciate this legacy. Her research on allotments and wartime gardening reveals not only how people grew food, but how gardens became cultural symbols — of resilience, community, and the determination to endure. Through her writing, I realized that what my grandfather had passed on to me was part of a much larger story: a story of gardens as lifelines in times of upheaval.

Now, as I look at the world around me, I see unsettling echoes of Bu’s time. Escalating conflicts dominate the news. Communities fracture. Economies falter. Once again, scarcity and fear seem to shape the horizon.

And yet, when I think of Bu and the generations who “dug for victory,” I remember what’s possible. Gardens are more than vegetables. They are peace. They are comfort. They are community. They are proof that life and love can take root even in the harshest conditions.

That is why I founded Gardens for Peace. My mission is to carry forward this legacy — to create gardens that serve not only as sanctuaries of food security, but also as spaces of healing, education, and connection. To help young people grow up as stewards of the earth, embodying values of sustainability and cooperation. To show that every seed planted is an act of peace, every garden a living classroom and sanctuary.

Just as Bu’s garden carried his family through rationing, and London’s allotments carried a nation through war, I believe our gardens today can carry us through conflict, climate crisis, and collapse.

Every seed planted is a refusal to give up hope.
Every garden is a testament that peace can grow, even in rubble.
And that is the legacy I want to continue.