Eating staff lunch together

The Paper Garden has been growing in its new home over the past year which has come with challenges and rewards. One of the most important factors in keeping the garden growing and the community classroom walls rising has been the fact that every day the whole team sits together and shares lunch. 

This is something that I was introduced to as a practice at work when I started working as an intern at the Skip Garden in 2015. The beautiful food was served from the busy Skip Garden Cafe, we always stopped, chatted, and ate. When I began to work in Canada Water in the early days of the Paper Garden we continued to make sure we ate lunch together. This wasn't an easy feat; the Printworks was cold, and the kitchen was very makeshift, but we did it. 

Some of my favourite memories from working at Global Generation are the community and staff lunches we have enjoyed together. Being able to have that space at work for staff, I feel, has been vital to the growth of the Paper Garden team. 

On the new site it still isn't always easy to cook lunch for 15 people… The electrics blow, the hobs stop working, the water is switched off, but we keep cooking! Food is something that we all need, and enjoying it is a privilege. Now, as we look at how much the Paper Garden team has grown and the challenges we have faced with the growth of the new site over the last year, I have become very aware of how the lunches have sustained us and brought us together as a collective with each other and the team at Yes Make who share our site. 

However busy we were over the summer months, continuing to share food together has been a core part of our work and we all recognise its importance in helping us to pause and be in the spaces we help create together. Over the colder winter months the future lunches in the polytunnel will keep our hearts warm.

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Notes from the Garden