Lincoln Greeners Wins Environmental Achievement of the Year at the Leeds Compassionate City Awards

We’re delighted to share that the Lincoln Greeners, our free community gardening group based in the Roxby Community Garden in Lincoln Green, has won the Environmental Achievement of the Year at the Leeds Compassionate City Awards 2025.

The awards celebrate the individuals and organisations who make Leeds a more welcoming, connected and compassionate place to live. To be recognised in this way, in a room full of people doing remarkable community work across the city, meant a great deal to us.

We never take for granted how special it is to work alongside the communities we do, or how much trust people place in the Lincoln Greeners as a space to connect, learn and grow together.

A garden that grew into a community

Lincoln Greeners began three years ago as a small weekly gardening group for people living in the surrounding neighbourhoods, including many refugees, asylum seekers and families in high-rise housing. We wanted to create a place where people could grow their own food, meet their neighbours and spend time outdoors in a way that felt welcoming, local and easy to access.

Since then, the group has blossomed into a thriving community. Every week, participants share skills, swap seeds, teach each other planting techniques and harvest fresh herbs and vegetables from the garden. Neighbours often stop by to see what’s growing. Children race between the beds. Conversations flow across languages. The space feels lived-in, cared for and full of life.

This is what makes the Roxby Community Garden a true Garden of Sanctuary - a green space created with the community, for the community.

Growing more together: micro allotments, seedling sharing and biodiversity workshops

In recent years, this work has grown in meaningful, community-led directions. Micro-allotments now give local residents space to grow their own food; our vegetable library shares surplus produce and seedlings across the neighbourhood; and our biodiversity workshops make environmental learning accessible and multilingual. We also run seasonal and creative sessions that bring nature, wellbeing and cultural exchange together in ways that feel rooted in the needs of the community.

These projects sit alongside our work as a refugee and asylum seeker community organisation in Leeds, and help strengthen wellbeing, food access and climate resilience in an area with limited green space.

Why this award matters for Lincoln Green

The award recognises Lincoln Greeners for its inclusive approach to environmental sustainability and for transforming a disused playground into a thriving green space, improving wellbeing, biodiversity and community connection.

For a neighbourhood with some of the lowest levels of publicly accessible green space in Leeds, this recognition matters deeply. It acknowledges the hard work of everyone who has dug, planted, watered, weeded, harvested or simply shared a cup of tea in the garden. This award isn’t just for Mafwa Theatre, it’s for the hundreds of people who have shaped the garden over the last three years.

Thank you to every participant, volunteer, partner and neighbour who has helped make Lincoln Greeners what it is today. We’re so proud to be part of a wider movement for community gardening, climate resilience and nature-based wellbeing in Leeds and we’re excited for everything still to come. Here’s to growing more together.