A unique £330,000 project to help people in Eden with their mental health is set to open at Tebay Services.
Charity and organic farm Growing Well, based in Kendal, will expand to a second site, thanks to National Lottery funding and backing from the Westmorland Family, which owns the service station. It will also create four full-time jobs.
The firm has committed £150,000 to the project, which will help create an on-site market garden to supply vegetables direct to its kitchens, while a two-year £180,000 grant from the National Lottery Community Fund, announced today, will support the running costs of the charity’s therapeutic horticulture service.
Growing Well at Tebay Services aims to help 100 people a year in Eden and North Cumbria recover from mental health difficulties by volunteering there one day a week for up to a year.
Under the supervision of experienced therapeutic growers and mental health support staff, volunteers, who can be referred by GPs, other health services, or themselves, can rebuild confidence, learn new skills, benefit from peer support and be helped to achieve their goals, such as returning to employment or education.
Volunteers will work in Growing Well’s new market garden enterprise at Tebay Services, which will supply salads and other leafy vegetables fresh every day to the Tebay Services Farmshop & Kitchen, where they will be cooked and served to customers.
Growing Well chief executive Mary Smith said: “We are thrilled to be partnering with Westmorland Family to bring our unique model to a second site in Cumbria, which will open up our service not only to the people of rural Eden and Penrith, but up the M6 as far as Carlisle. There are big gaps in mental health services, an ever-growing need post-COVID, and rural isolation is a particular problem.
“We are a real-world food enterprise as well as a mental health charity so when Westmorland Family approached us with this opportunity for a second Growing Well it looked like a perfect fit.
“They are providing a superb accessible site, a supply chain on the doorstep for our quality produce, most of the start-up funding, the chance to tell our story together to millions of their customers, and a national profile which can only help Growing Well’s further development.”
Westmorland Family chair Sarah Dunning said: “We are delighted to be to working in partnership with Growing Well on a project that will help to address one of the great needs in our community, which is mental health.
“We are a business that has locally sourced food at its heart, so we are excited about being able to source freshly harvested, pesticide-free salads and vegetables on our own doorstep.”
The project, at Tebay Services Northbound, on the southern side of the Tebay Services Caravan Park. It will fully open to its first horticulture volunteers in January 2023, but it is hoped there will be some opportunities to work on the site build and first planting of crops from October.
Westmorland Family is providing the rent-free site, support in kind to carry out the initial groundwork, and £150,000 capital funding to provide polytunnels, raised beds, horticultural equipment and a building to house a site office and meeting space for staff and volunteers, and to purchase a minibus to transport volunteers from different communities each day to and from Tebay.
The family-owned business has committed to buy up to £40,000 of fresh produce from Growing Well’s raised beds and polytunnels, giving the charity vital guaranteed income.
Growing Well has successfully operated from its six-acre site at Low Sizergh farm outside Kendal for 18 years. It became a fully registered mental health charity in 2019.
The final go-ahead for the project was dependent on the success of a bid submitted by the charity.
Mary added: “We responded to the challenges of COVID with a growth strategy that responds to the growth in need for more services like ours and we are so excited that our plan to replicate Growing Well’s work in new Cumbrian communities has begun.”
Mary added that Growing Well was already actively exploring opportunities for three further sites in West Cumbria, Barrow and Carlisle over the next four years.
Duncan Nicholson, head of funding for the North East and Cumbria region at the National Lottery Community Fund, said: “We are thrilled to be supporting the expansion of Growing Well’s mental health services in Cumbria.”
Michael Boaden, of Carlisle Eden Mind, welcomed the news. He said: “We are delighted that Growing Well are developing services in the Eden area.
“We have long been admirers of the innovative work they have been doing in the south of the county.”
Neil Hudson, Penrith and The Border MP, said: “I am so excited about welcoming a new Growing Well site at Tebay Services.
“It’s a great partnership between a well-known local business and a truly inspiring charity and just goes to show what we can achieve by working together.
“Rural mental health is one of my absolute priorities. Recently I triggered an EFRA Select Committee Inquiry into the issues facing people throughout the more remote parts of the UK, and I’ve spoken on the subject in Parliament a number of times.
“That is why it is so heartening to see such important work being done right on our doorstep. It’s really positive news for our area and I cannot wait to visit soon!”
