The Garden

Radical Plant Folk at School Farm, Dartington

We are tending to a half acre plot at School Farm CSA. The site has a long and interesting history of use. Our founder Mariam Mohamed originally took over the site from medicinal herb grower and CSA director Melissa Harvey in 2021 who had already established several herb beds. At the time Mariam took over the site with the vision of turning it into a community herb garden….

It is a beautiful site that we have been slowly getting to know and add and make changes to over the last few years. Many of the perennial herbs, trees and wildflowers that were originally planted by Mel continue to thrive in the garden. 

You can read more about the interesting history of the School Farm site here.

We are lucky enough to have some wonderful and interesting neighbours at the farm. You can read more about the farm and our neighbours here. 

The garden is home to perennial and annual herb beds, bushes, medicinal and edible trees. We also manage a wildflower meadow and have recently planted a new hedge with native trees. This year, 2025 we are developing a new kitchen garden with raised beds and several crop beds where we will be growing food and culinary herbs. We are slowly establishing different areas of the garden for growing but also for wildlife and to increase biodiversity. We hope to re-establish the pond and polytunnel in the near future, plant a woodland edge and add a medicinal mushroom garden (so many dreams!). If you’d like to join us on this journey head to our volunteer page to find out more about how you can get involved.

How we grow

We practice organic, regenerative and ecological principles. We do not apply any kind of herbicides or pesticides or chemical fertiliser. We aim to prioritise and increase biodiversity and soil biology. We also try to save as much seeds as we can and if we haven’t saved seed or propagated the plants ourselves we buy from local organic seed suppliers or from our neighbour Wyse worts.

The garden is home to much wildlife, including common lizards, slow worms, mice, many insects and pollinators, rabbits and we are always spotting a diversity of birds, witnessed deer and more

In 2024 through generous funding we added an outdoor kitchen/workshop space to the garden that we co-designed and built with the talented Treewise Tom. It is a beautiful learning space where our community can come together, make, cook, share and eat.