When Lewisham-born Valerie Goode launched Coco Collective in Bellingham in 2021, she wasn’t just creating a place to grow food but a space to connect to her heritage, writes Myfanwy Fleming-Jones…
Four years on, the garden has launched a new health programme – the Plantain Project – working with local GP surgeries to bring medical check-ups, therapeutic gardening, and culturally grounded support to Black residents.
“Systemic racism is the number one driver for mental health and physical health deprivation in Black communities across Lewisham,” Valerie told us.
Lewisham has one of the highest levels of deprivation in the UK, meaning many residents face food insecurity, poor housing and limited access to healthcare. These pressures fall disproportionately on Black communities.
Valerie, who attended Sydenham High School before a career as a fashion entrepreneur, says she saw a gap that existing community spaces weren’t filling.
Too often, she argues, similar projects did not know how to meaningfully support Black residents navigating health problems tied to lived experience of racism and structural inequality.
“It is so important not to underestimate the power and the need to have marginalised-owned spaces,” she said.
At Coco Collective’s Bellingham site, young people come straight from school to tend the garden. Youth director Lee-Roy Shabaka, 27, describes the thinking behind it: “We have built a system providing green spaces and green thought that are often absent in urban environments.”
For Sarah Abdelmagid, the project’s coordinator, who came from Brent to Lewisham drawn by its strong African gardening culture and its connection to her Sudanese heritage, the garden represents something broader.
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“Afro residents around London need a space like this. We hope that it shows people how much the community needs a culturally appropriate space to just be and heal,” she said.
Research consistently shows that racism and discrimination have a measurable negative impact on the physical and mental health of Black and minority ethnic groups as these communities experience worse health outcomes and face greater barriers to accessing care than white residents.
Government data shows Black African (32.3 per cent), Black Other (31.6 per cent) and Black Caribbean (29.2 per cent) people are the most likely to live in the most deprived neighbourhoods in England.
Whilst a 2020 Greenpeace UK investigation found that waste incinerators are three times as likely to be located in the most deprived and ethnically diverse areas.
This is a finding that gained renewed public attention after the 2013 death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, the first person in the UK to have air pollution officially recorded as a cause of death.
The Plantain Programme, launched this March, brings healthcare directly into the garden. Alongside this sits the Ital Community Clinic: a drop-in health check service at the Bellingham garden run by trained community health champions supported by GPs.
Visitors can have their blood pressure, kidney health and weight checked in a relaxed, non-clinical environment. With food growing and healthy eating conversations woven into the sessions to create a relaxed non-judgemental atmosphere.
This comes as studies show that simply being outdoors can reduce stress, lower blood pressure and significantly improve mental wellbeing.
GP Thileepan Thevarajan, 37, from Kingston, trains the community champions and administers health tests. “It would be great to pick up more undiagnosed health issues and see over time those who do come to us with high blood pressure get better,” he said.
He hopes the informal setting will encourage more people to talk openly about their health.
The Institute of Race Relations has long argued that health researchers too often reach for biology to explain outcomes that are better explained by social inequality and lack of access to specialised care.
Lewisham launched a Food Justice Action Plan in 2023 to tackle rising food insecurity across the borough. Coco Collective is already part of that response, and there are plans to expand the Plantain Programme to their second site in Catford, alongside summer food growing courses and children’s workshops.
Dr Catherine Mbema, director of public health at Lewisham Council, has been direct about the stakes: “Food injustice is one of the biggest and most complex challenges facing Lewisham and it is becoming increasingly urgent.”
For Valerie, the sense of community created by the project is paramount.
“Being in Lewisham back in the 80’s it was common to have our community gatherings in peoples houses – it was a way to keep family and friends together” she explained, highlighting that as the initiative’s founder she hoped that seeing a black woman running the project would inspire others.
“There is a lot of work to do and knowledge that needs to be shared,” she added.
The Bellingham garden is open Wednesdays and Sundays, 11am–3pm. The Plantain Programme’s health drop-in runs 12–2pm. Coco Collective can also be frequently found at the Black Farmers Market in Brixton.
More information about the Plantain Programme is available here.
