Garden twinning
Twin your garden and grow side by side with a family in rural Migori, Kenya
Rural Africa is rich with opportunity: resourceful communities and land which can produce enough food to feed the continent and beyond. But families in rural Kenya are finding it increasingly difficult to grow enough to eat as the climate crisis worsens and they experience longer periods of drought and unpredictable heavy rainfall.
But it doesn’t take much to help a family change their future.
Twin your garden with Ripple Effect today and your donation of £60 could help a family living in rural Migori, Kenya, with three years training in sustainable organic farming. Starting with small kitchen gardens, families can grow enough to eat, set up small businesses, send their children to school and go after their dreams.
What you'll receive
- sustainable wooden plaque to display in your garden
- vegetable growing guide from Charles Dowding, our no-dig expert
- some wildflower seeds to get you started on your Garden Twinning adventure
We can’t wait to share the practical techniques families in rural Africa are using in their own gardens to fight hunger and the climate crisis.
What difference will my Garden Twinning donation make?
We have based the cost of your Garden Twinning donation on the accurate cost of providing training in sustainable agriculture to a family in rural Migori, Kenya for a three-year period. This is only an example of what your money could achieve. Your donation will go towards the full cost of our Women of Migori project in Kenya.
Caroline, Participant in Ripple Effect's Improving Nutrition project, Rural Kenya
What do people think of Garden Twinning?



FAQs
Here are some answers to the questions we are most commonly asked. If your question or query is not detailed here, please get in touch with us at supporter@rippleeffect.org or call our friendly team on 01225 874 222.
Garden Twinning is Ripple Effect’s garden twinning campaign and for a donation of £60, you can twin your garden with another in rural Migori, Kenya. Your donation could help a family living in rural-Africa with 3-years training in sustainable organic farming. In return you’ll receive a sustainable wooden plaque to hang in your garden and further information on gardening both here in the UK and in rural Africa.
Garden Twinning was inspired by our supporters’ love of gardening, and the life-changing effect gardening can have on the lives of families we work alongside in rural Africa.
We don’t link individual donations from Garden Twinning to specific gardens, as the cost of administering this would reduce how much we are able to spend on delivering life-changing training to families living in poverty. Rest assured that every pound you donate, will go towards supporting our Women of Migori project in Kenya where we are working together with 1,000 women farmers to grow their families out of poverty.
At the moment all Garden Twinning donations will support our Women of Migori project in Kenya as this has been identified as a priority project for the organisation and where the need is currently greatest. In the future, once 1,000 gardens have been twinned as part of this project, we will move our focus to another priority project.
We have based the cost of your Garden Twinning donation on the accurate cost of providing training in sustainable agriculture to a family in rural Migori, Kenya for a 3-year period. This is only an example of what your money could achieve, and your donation will go towards the full cost of our Women of Migori project in Kenya.
The first 1,000 gardens twinned will support our Women of Migori project Kenya where we will be working alongside families so they can grow enough to eat from their gardens, set up small business and go after their dreams. Once we have twinned the 1,000 gardens through this scheme, we will choose another project where the need is greatest.
The families we work with focus on growing diverse and vitamin-rich varieties such as sweet potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, spinach and squash to name a few. Often families also grow African leafy vegetables such as black night shade, spider weed and jute mallow.
If you tell us you’d like to receive ongoing emails from us, we’ll continue to keep you updated on the impact of your donation and further ways to get involved. This will include how gardening can be life-changing for the families we work alongside, plus tips on how to make the most out of your own garden. We are unable to give you information on specific family's gardens as the cost of administration would be too high.
When you receive your Garden Twinning plaque, you’ll also receive a planting guide which references the plants grown in Kenya, plus some techniques farmers in Kenya are using their Gardens. You’ll also receive a QR code to access a webpage on our website with further information.
We have based the cost of your Garden Twinning donation on the accurate cost of providing training in sustainable agriculture to a family in rural Migori, Kenya for a three-year period.
By Garden Twinning, you are joining a community of gardeners who are kindly supporting our Women of Migori project in Kenya. We hope our Garden Twinning pack will inspire you to grow more in your own garden, plus learn more about how the families in rural Africa we work alongside are changing their own lives through growing. You’ll also receive a plaque in recognition of your gift to show off in your garden – we hope you’ll tell you friends!
Online – you can order here on our website using your debit or credit card.
Cheque – if you have received an order form in the post you can return this and pay either using your debit or credit card, or with a cheque made payable to Ripple Effect.
Telephone – you can call our friendly supporter care team on 01225 874 222 from Monday to Thursday 9am-5pm.
Your plaque will be made from sustainable timber resources and all other printed items are produced on paper from sustainably managed forests. We hope that our supporters will enjoy learning from their resources, but we’d also love it if they were shared with friends or recycled after use.
Please note that we will aim to dispatch gift orders within 5 working days of your order being placed, so please order in advance to avoid disappointment.
Our plaques are not personalised but have the following text:
This garden is twinned with another in rural Migori, Kenya
Growing side by side to plant hope for the future
Yes – all you have to do is change the delivery address as you go through the checkout process.
You will receive an automatic confirmation via email that your order has been placed.
We will send you a hook with your plaque, so you are able to hang it on a wall. However, the plaques also stand up by themselves if you wish to display on a shelf or window ledge.
The Gift Aid system allows Ripple Effect to reclaim the tax on all Garden Together donations from UK taxpayers. Ripple Effect can claim 25% back on every donation/garden twinned i.e., £15 on top of your £60 donation – at no extra cost to you!
You can make a Gift Aid declaration to Ripple Effect if you are a UK taxpayer by completing the Gift Aid details when making payment on our website or using a paper order form.
The idea of Garden Twinning is that you display your plaque in your garden or home. We hope you’ll show it off with pride, and that your friends might be inspired to twin their gardens too, raising further funds to help more families in rural Africa to grow enough to eat and plant hope for the future.
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