Hutton House promotes and supports people with disabilities through learning and life-enhancing programs that focus on everyone’s individual strengths, abilities, and interests. A throughline in all their programming is the importance of having a sense of belonging in your community. One of these programs is The Patch – a volunteer-powered accessible community garden program running out of Cavendish Community Food Hub.
Hutton House teamed up with London-based digital studio Web.is.odes in the summer of 2025 to produce Root Awakening – a documentary about The Patch, told through the lens of volunteer Faye Simmons. Faye, who uses a wheelchair, first became involved with Hutton House as a volunteer receptionist, but has been involved with The Patch since the project started in 2020.
“I was taken to a yard with nothing in it, and it’s turned into something I didn’t even think of,” says Faye, whose early input into the project ensured the garden beds were built at a wheelchair accessible height and far enough apart for wheelchair users to move between them comfortably.
The documentary shows the role The Patch plays in Faye’s life and explores topics like the importance of having diverse food programming, making fresh food available in food banks, and the social benefits of urban agriculture. Root Awakening is available for viewing on Bell Fibe, and for rental at watch.rootawakening.tv – where you can use the exclusive code LCFPATCH26 to view it for free! The code will give you free access for a week, and is redeemable until September 11, 2026.
Urban agriculture became an increasingly important part of London’s social services during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Joe Gansevles, who became Executive Director at Hutton House in August 2026 having previously been their Coordinator of Urban Agriculture and Environmental Sustainability, explains:
“When the pandemic hit, there were a lot of people in urban agriculture that were doing good work, and we knew that a project like this could have more of a life than simply just being a supported employment program that we could help directly with food security. What came out of that was a strong sense of social belonging.”
Joe Gansevles, Executive Director at Hutton House
The Cavendish Community Food Hub has received significant support from London Community Foundation in the past, receiving a 3-year, $230,000 Community Vitality grant in 2021 that paid for staffing and equipment costs at the space that became home to The Patch. Since then, the Patch has thrived and become a community of its own.
The Food Hub, which donates the food grown at The Patch to local charities such as Anova, Ark Aid, Indwell, and London Food Bank, is powered by a mixture of corporate volunteers, weekly individual volunteers, and the 300 people a year now using one of the three different skills and employment training programs the site offers.
“People hold all the different parts of The Patch together. It’s our vision for food security, and people coming together to make a community, and I’m somewhere in the middle of that.”
Faye Simmons, Volunteer at The Patch
Photography: Gabriel Ramos
