Beki Hoyland

Beki Hoyland moved to the Forest of Dean in the early nineties. In 1994 she started Dean Community Compost in Newnham, collecting kitchen and garden waste, before the days this was done by councils; composting it, selling it back to local gardeners and using it to grow veg on a small scale. As part of the team that started the Community Composting Network she worked on a national level to promote composting as a way of dealing with core issues around climate change. 

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Working closely with the incredible Biodynamic Garden at Oaklands Park she started and ran a veg box scheme of 100 boxes a week delivering to Newnham, Blakeney, and up through Yorkley to Bream and Littledean alongside the composting project. 

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Since 2009 she worked as a gardener and became the gardening teacher at Wynstones School in Gloucester, working with the Steiner curriculum and the school to develop a wide, practical land based experience, gaining experience of working with children of all ages in an outdoor setting.  

In 2010 Beki was a core part of the team that started Blakeney Hill Growers, a community small holding, growing veg, milking goats, tending bees, ducks, chickens and a beautiful hillside meadow. She is still an active member and sees it as a positive creative way to strengthen and develop the local community providing the opportunity for everyone to connect with the land.  

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As for many people life has moved on since the start of the pandemic and Beki is now working on a project funded through Rewild by Thirty Percy teaching gardening in three local Primary Schools and is excited about bringing practical outdoor learning to more children as well as hoping to effect positive change and build resilience in her local community by working with the Green Party and being a Green Councillor at County level.