GROFUN was birthed in Bristol in 2006. It all began when the  founder, Nadia Hillman, hosted a film screening of The End of Suburbia and The Power of Community which both look at the implications of increasing oil demand & dwindling supply (peak oil) & the building of local food economies. The post-screening discussion about what could be done to increase Bristol's resilience to peak oil and improve our food security helped to catalyse GRO-FUN. The experiment was hatched in Montpelier, the district of Bristol in which Nadia lived at the time.

The GRO-FUN community initiative was launched with Nadia handing out flyers, door-to-door, in her neighbourhood, hoping to integrate gardens & people into a local-food growing community (Spring 2007). The Scarman Trust gave a small grant to get the project started. Subsequent to a initial enquiry evening, ten members signed up & in that Spring saw their gardens transformed & ready for growing food. After a moderately successful growing season (2007) several harvest-meals to share the food grown by members took place in celebration of our efforts. In 2008 a further 12 people signed up. The project has completed its third year & is now called Many Hands. In January 2009 the council gave GROFUN a small allotment plot in St Werburghs, where volunteers come to learn skills and share food, this was extended to over double the size in early 2010 when we installed our very own clay pizza oven.

GROFUN has 330 members in its facebook group. Please join if you want to keep up to date with what we've got going on in Bristol. Alternatively, we have a Yahoo Mailing group. To request an invite please e mail

Schools work. This began as a pilot in academic year 2008/9, supported by Awards for All, taking workshops into two primary schools in Easton, a deprived area of Bristol. This pilot grew into 'Plant to Plate'. This year (2011) we are working again at St Patricks and at Easton C of E.