We always ask those who come to the Gardening Project if there’s anything they’d like us to grow – maybe a vegetable that they’d really enjoy eating.  Last spring one of our lads wanted to grow broccoli.  We didn’t have any broccoli seeds so managed to find a couple of spare broccoli plants from a supporter who was growing them on their allotment.  They were small, uninspiring, slightly weedy plants but we planted them out anyway. 

Instead of growing upwards like a normal healthy plant they grew sideways.  Then after meandering about for a bit they tried growing upwards but as they hadn’t developed a strong trunk they easily came off-balance and ended up on their sides.  We tried to stake them but it wasn’t very obvious which way up they should go. 

Next we had to build a cage around them and cover it with nets them to keep cabbage white caterpillars at bay.  Throughout the very dry summer we kept them well watered, often barrowing in water from a standpipe 5 minutes away.  We kept them weeded, mulched and as happy as we could but they still looked dubious about life in general. 

Finally when the weather started to get cold we took the netting off, thinking we’d escaped from the caterpillars, only to have the top leaves and flower buds pecked off by pigeons.  We pruned the massacred broccoli heads off and waited to see if they would try to fruit again.

And voila!  It may not win any prizes but we’re very proud of our broccoli harvest.

In reflecting on this, it occurred to us that this is a good picture of what a lot of our work at Just Caring is like.  Digging over a patch of weed infested ground is hard work but you can stand back and see the result of your work almost immediately.  Working with vulnerable people is much more like growing broccoli – it takes time to see the impact of what you are doing.  It can feel like you’re making no progress at all and when you do see signs of fruit they are often snatched away by a new difficulty to face.  But the fruit is there.  It may be small, but the positive changes are happening.  Someone might be able to manage their money a bit more carefully, or go to the shops when before they would have been scared to go out.  They might feel more confident in groups or be eating more healthily.  

These changes are hard to measure – they are made up of very small, hesitant steps.  They don’t happen overnight or dramatically but that doesn’t make them any less significant.  If anything it makes them all the more precious.