An Open Letter to you all for 2026

What if growing food was never really about the food at all?

Hello you lovely lot, and a huge Happy New Year to you.

Did you survive Christmas? Here’s hoping the sprout recipe turned you into a family Delia Smith, and that your use of newspaper for wrapping gifts and foliage from your garden for decoration has hailed you as the new Martha Stewart.

I wanted this growing guide, and this year ahead, to be a bit different. I want it to concentrate on growing YOU.

How Grow Up Began and Where It’s Headed

My aim when I set up www.thegrowup.co.uk was to help everyone, young and old, big gardens to window boxes, allotments to school gardens, have a helping hand with knowledge and encouragement to grow their own food. But it has grown, notice my pun there, into something much bigger than just that.

What started as seeds and soil has become conversations, community, confidence, and connection. It has become about slowing down, paying attention, and finding meaning in the everyday.

Why Slow and Sustainable Changed Everything for Me

I try to live a life as kind to the planet as I can, sustainable and slow. I genuinely have found that living like this brings contentment and happiness in ways that the over consumerist world cannot.

The more I talk to others and the more my Grow Up gang grows, the more I hear from you that you too feel better with your hands in the soil, having a go at growing. And that it is not all about bumper harvests or getting it right all the time. It is about the purpose, the time outside, and the way you can literally use your patches of green goodness as therapy.

There is a new way to heal and help and it is called green prescribing. We have ignored this free therapy for far too long, even though many of us have felt its benefits without realising it had a name.

Sustainability Starts at Home

Sustainability is not all about campaigning for plastic free oceans and climate change, although that is obviously super important. It is also about taking control of things right there in our homes and gardens, making small changes in the way we live and think.

Once we might have been called cheap for reusing things, mending, upcycling and foraging, but now these skills are celebrated. A slower pace of life, more aligned with how our grandparents lived, is what people are aspiring to. Not because it is trendy, but because it feels right.

There is power in doing less, buying less, rushing less. In choosing to notice the seasons, the weather, what is growing, and what is needed rather than what is being sold to us.

What 2026 Will Be About

Over 2026 I will continue to inspire you to grow your own food. The health benefits of this are well documented. It is time to stop relying on chemically enhanced food laced with pesticides. It is time to eat in season.

But I also want to help you grow in a way that leaves you feeling more satisfied with life. To fall in love with that slower pace. Cooking outdoors around fire pits or on grills. Weekends cooking from scratch. Learning again that time spent nourishing ourselves and the people we love is never wasted time.

It has always annoyed me that we use the phrase convenience food. Since when did nourishing our bodies become an inconvenience? The same goes for cleaning our homes with traditional recipes and products that do not expose us to harsh, harmful chemicals. These things are not backward or old fashioned. They are thoughtful, considered, and deeply caring.

Finding My Place and Owning It

For years I have felt out of place with my passion for wanting to go back in time and live largely like they used to. Now I realise it is my calling to inspire and celebrate these things and to be your cheerleader for a simpler, kinder, healthier way to be.

I do not have all the answers. I am learning as I go. But I believe deeply in this way of living and in the quiet joy it brings.

Growing Together

So to have you here with me means the world. Whether you have acres of land or a single pot on a windowsill, whether you are just starting out or have been growing for years, you belong here.

I hope you enjoy my company, my friendship, and this little piece of the internet that we can call our own.

Let’s take our time. Let’s get our hands dirty. Let’s Grow Up together

Lets make 2026 our Year

Love Lynne x