We are currently looking for volunteers to join us in our beautiful garden in Benham. Please get in touch if you have a few hours to spare - We'd love to garden with you! 🌻🌱
#thecomfreyproject #volunteering #communitygarden #gateshead #growyourown #refugeeswelcome #bensham #northeast #ourgateshead
The flowers are blooming at The Comfrey Project 🌸
A little reminder that growth, warmth and community can still flourish - even when the world feels uncertain.
#thecomfreyproject #gateshead #staystrong
This is a retrospective post from our project, Weaving for Wellbeing.
This week was a special week where @borrowedcolour came to give us a wonderful session on natural dying. We got to dye some of the fabric and yarn for the flatweaving and quilting we will be doing later on. Thank you Katie 🙏
This project is supported by @comfreyproject@dingybutts@shipleyartgallery
Project funded by @aceagrams
Photos taken by @sayarosemedia
#naturaldyes #earthycolours #process
The Melissa Bus will be at The Comfrey Project today from 10:00am - 2:00pm.
Come along to:
- Speak to local health and wellbeing services
- Receive a free blood pressure check
- Find ways to stay warm and save money
- Take part in fun activities
Free, all welcome!
This is a retrospective post from our project, Weaving for Wellbeing.
In the rain and cold we harvested willow from the Comfrey gardens to start weaving our foraging baskets🧺
If you’re interested in reading more about the project, check out the link in my bio!
This project is supported by @comfreyproject@dingybutts@shipleyartgallery
Project funded by @aceagrams
Photos taken by @sayarosemedia
#basketweaving #wellbeing #northeastuk
That’s a wrap 🎉
Our Easter HAF programme was so much fun! 🌼🐣
We packed in so many amazing activities, including:
🌱 Gardening
🐝 Beekeeping with North East Young Dads and Lads
🎶 Music making with The Glasshouse Gateshead
🧦 Recycling old socks to create Easter Sock Pets with Gateshead Libraries
🧠 Looking after young minds with activities from RISE
📚 A wonderful book signing (with free books!) from the amazing author Chloe Daykin
🦷 Dental health activities
🎨 Magical mandalas with Dynamic Community Fusion
👌 Delicious food from @thegraze.newcastle
…and so much more! 💛
A huge thank you to all our volunteers, partners and everyone who joined us – what a brilliant Easter it’s been! 🌸✨
🌍 Breaking Bread – Sharing Cultures & Stories 🍞
Come together to celebrate the simple act of breaking bread!
✨ Discover breads from around the world
✨ Hear stories from different cultures
✨ Share your own memories and traditions
📍 Kittiwake Trust Multilingual Library
📅 Thursday 16th April
⏰ 1:00pm – 2:30pm
Everyone is welcome 💛
Bring your friends – and maybe a story or a piece of bread to share!
This is a retrospective post from our project , Weaving for Wellbeing.
This week we went to visit Shipley Gallery to take a look at their textile collection to help inspire the group for some upcoming sessions. We also go to see the space where we will exhibit all our work in Fall 2026. Lastly we got to do some wet felting in their Shipley’s workshop space.
This project is supported by @comfreyproject@dingybutts@shipleyartgallery
Project funded by @aceagrams
Photos taken by @sayarosemedia
#natureconnection #wellbeingthroughart #mentalhealth
Retrospective post from our project, Weaving for Wellbeing.
We led the group through the process of cyanotype printing onto fabric. Everyone got to experiment with using sunshine outdoors and a UV lamp indoors to expose the prints. We continued working into these over the Winter months.
Weaving for Wellbeing is a fourteen month project supporting wellbeing and nature-connectedness through creative practice, for women who attend the Comfrey Project. The project supports the participant’s emotional wellbeing, in particular those who have experienced trauma and uncertainty; help them reconnect to the earth and foster a sense of grounding and stability.
This project is supported by @comfreyproject@dingybutts@shipleyartgallery
Project funded by @aceagrams
Photos taken by @sayarosemedia
#cyanotype #wellbeing #natureconnection
✨🐎 Happy Lunar New Year 2026! 🧧🎉
Wishing everyone a joyful and prosperous Lunar New Year!
May the Year of the Horse bring strength, success, happiness, and exciting new opportunities. ❤️✨
Here’s to fresh beginnings and good fortune for the year ahead.
#LunarNewYear #YearOfTheHorse #CNY2026 #NewBeginnings #GoodFortune
💚 Seed love across borders 💚
A huge thank you to Sue Davies for the beautiful package of seeds and the even more beautiful letter that came with them 🌱💌
Sue gardens on her allotment in Oswestry, Shropshire, on the Welsh borderlands, and saves her own seeds with so much care. Many of these varieties are especially meaningful — Sue and her late husband (who was Bangladeshi) loved growing and eating vegetables popular in Bangladesh, and those stories and memories are carried right along with the seeds.
Included are some real gems:
🌱 Scunthorpe Amaranth, originally shared with Sue by a Bangladeshi grower and known for self-seeding freely
🌱 A mix of open-pollinated beans saved from her own harvests
🌱 Red-stem Malabar (Ceylon) spinach, grown and saved from Sue’s own plants
🌱 Shales Finn melon, a vigorous climbing gourd
🌱 Bateekh Samara melon, a fascinating melon–cucumber cross with roots in Iraq, grown by Sue from Real Seeds and saved with love !💚
This is exactly what community seed-sharing is about - generosity, heritage, stories, and connection 🌍🌿
Thank you, Sue, for trusting us with these seeds and for sharing a little piece of your garden and your life with us.
You’re always welcome to visit our garden 💚
#SeedSaving #CommunityGrowing #SeedStories #TheComfreyProject #HeirloomSeeds
We are delighted to invite you to the official launch of our first published book 'The Comfrey Almanac', from 12:30pm to 2:30pm.
'The Comfrey Almanac' is the result of a two-year collaboration between members of The Comfrey Project community and Dr Gillian Jein (Newcastle University), bringing together seasonal skills, knowledge, stories, and artwork shared by people who have been displaced from different parts of the world and have made their homes in the North East - you can find out more here: The Comfrey Almanac.
The project was made possible with support from ESRC’s Impact Acceleration Account, the North East Combined Authority, Newcastle University’s Centre for Researching Cities, the Humanities Research Institute, the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University, and many generous individual donors.
The launch will include a presentation of the book by Dr Jein, along with readings and art activities from those who helped create it.
We hope to see you all you there!
The Comfrey Project
