Christabel Reed is the co-founder of the online platform, Earthed. Through peer-to-peer lead courses, subscribers can learn from farmers, conservationists, and community leaders about how to restore nature, grow food, the best gardening starter tips, share skills, and discuss practical steps to help the planet.
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If you’ve spent 10 minutes with me, you know that one of my life goals is to grow my own food. Living in a city, I’ve dabbled over the years, but one hurdle (outside of space) has been finding the educational resources to learn how to grow food sustainably in an urban environment. YouTube, and the countless gardeners sharing on the platform, have been a great resource. But, it wasn’t until I was introduced to Earthed, that I found a platform that offered a wealth of educational resources tailored to my specific concerns and needs all in one place.
From Indigenous teachers offering traditional approaches to restoring soil health to urban farmers sharing how to compost, the platform offers an abundance of resources that you can watch on your own time. Yet, what I love most about the platform is that these aren’t just gardening starter tips. Each course focuses on ecosystem restoration through practical tips we can all do now, wherever we are.
Earthed was founded by Cara Delevingne, Ruby Reed, and Christabel Reed as part of the Initiative Earth charity. On the platform, members donate what they feel to access practical courses led by Nature Teachers from around the world. You can learn how to grow food, restore your local river, harvest rainwater, start a farmers’ market, urban garden, reforest, increase biodiversity, prevent droughts or floods, defend against wildfires or desertification and so, so much more.
To learn more about this platform and the community that it’s creating, I asked Christabel Reed to share her insight about Earthed.
How did the idea for Earthed come about?
Myself (Christabel Reed) and my sister, Ruby Reed, founded Earthed whilst running our climate action campaign EcoResolution with Cara Delevingne. EcoResolution was an impactful campaign for raising awareness, however it opened our eyes to how many people desire action but lack access to practical solutions. We found that so many existing initiatives and campaigns for sustainable living focused on humans as consumers rather than as ecological citizens. Whilst we realise that storytelling is important, if we are not building the mechanisms and tools that enable people to go from awareness into practical action then we will never be able to co-create the regenerated futures we all dream of.
And so, the founding team – in love with the transformative potential of ecosystem restoration – set out to build the first ever platform for anyone who wants to restore the air we breathe, water we drink, land we farm and food we eat. Today, the platform is 10 months old and has already gathered thousands of members who are learning from the 20+ courses already live on the platform.
How do you choose and curate the environmental leaders featured on the platform?
There are thousands, millions even, of incredible humans based around the world who are engaging in action for our planet, and so it is difficult to choose! With so much incredible knowledge of the platform and so many skills to share through our Earthed courses, we really are spoilt for choice.
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All of the Nature Teachers we have featured on the EarthedPlatform so far have been chosen based on their expertise, the incredible grassroot projects they run, and their authentic dedication to healing nature and growing food regeneratively. As we continued to grow and produce further courses, a core feature of Earthed is recognising the diversity (and biodiversity) across the movement, and celebrating the different skills, local knowledge, and learning approaches of Nature Leaders based around the world.
For someone new to this space, what’s a good lesson to start with?
Whether you’re a total nature novice or an experienced restorer, there’s a course for you on the Earthed platform. The courses are all 60-90 minutes long and broken down into short 5-minute modules, so if you’re struggling to carve out time, we’ve got you covered!
For those living in a city and wanting to learn to grow, we recommend Urban Gardening with Alessandro Vitale: Covering all the basics to get you started, as well as Alessandro’s top tips and creative ideas, this course invites you to reach out to your community, rethink old materials, and reimagine the possibility of your space – no matter how small.
For those wanting to grow indoors, we recommend Mushrooms and Microgreens with Jack Hodgson: Grow microgreens and mushrooms anywhere with quick results! Based on permaculture principles, this course teaches you how to grow nutritious food using regenerative practices to benefit human and soil health.
How do you personally practice some of these skills or philosophies that we see on Earthed in your everyday life?
I’d never grown my own food before but had watched Charles Dowding’s Earthed course on No Dig Gardening and so when I finally got a little space to grow, I applied all the lessons that I’d learnt and over a year and grew an abundance of veg in a super simple, easy and practical way. Since then I’m a No-Dig advocate and recommend it as a way of growing to anyone who’s getting started as not only does it reduce the need to weed, but it also means you don’t disturb the mycellial network in the soil.
A lot of our team are based in London, with limited access to growing space, however there are still so many skills and learnings from the Earthed courses that we are able to practice in our everyday life. For example, Helena Norberg-Hodge’s course on Localisation teaches why it is so important to shop locally, and build strength in local economies. Similarly, Tayshan Hayden-Smith’s course is such an inspiring introduction to the role of community-building in becoming an active citizen and how to advocate for accessible and inclusive green spaces, even in the middle of a big city.
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And for even deeper learning, Vandana Shiva’s incredible course on earth democracy has taught us all so much about the toxic roots of industrial agriculture, and how to food we eat and the way it is grown deeply connects to all other aspects of society.
How can we care for and advocate for healthy soil, biodiversity, and a better food system?
We can only care for healthy soil, biodiversity, and a better food system when we are equipped with the skills we need to actively participate ourselves. Of course, where you buy your food and products from makes an enormous difference, but Earthed hopes to take people beyond just being a conscious consumer towards being an active, ecological citizen.
The good news is, as humans, we have the power to be a positive and regenerative force for soil, biodiversity, and bountiful food growth. Contrary to the narrative that humans have a wholly negative impact on nature, for millennia and still today, millions of humans have lived in a way that actually creates the context for nature to thrive. For many of us, we just need a bit of support and the tools to start actively participating in this regenerative movement.
That is why Earthed are making accessible the ancient wisdom, practical skills, supportive networks and vital learning tools, so that everyone can play are part in not just advocating for, but actively building back healthy soils, biodiveristy, and better food systems.
What tips do you have for people looking to eat more sustainably?
Of course, growing as much of your own food as possible is a radical and rewarding thing to do. When you grow your own food, you also become aware of the importance of eating seasonally, which is often an overlooked aspect of eating sustainably.
When growing your own food is not possible, we recommend reducing meat intake whilst supporting your local farmers who are farming in responsible, ecological ways. For those in the UK, we highly recommend Riverford which delivers organic and just food right to your doorstep.
Soil Association is also an amazing organization that provides certification to organic foods. Whilst eating organic has long been praised for its individual health benefits, it is also hugely impactful when it comes to healthy soils and waterways as organic farming does not contribute to the damaging consequences of chemical pesticide and fertilizer use.
Of course, we would also reccomend watching our course with Vandana Shiva in order to learn more on the impacts of alternative food systems!
What’s a lesson that you’ve learned from Earthed?
That I am not alone. There are millions of people around the world who are actively participating in creating the more beautiful world we know in our hearts is possible. All we have to do is get involved, learn from each other and share our progress along the way to inspire others.
What excites you for the future of Earthed?
We are working towards scaling out the ecosystem restoration movement by removing the obstacles that prevent people from getting involved: mainly, access to skills, funds, and networks. We are excited to get to a point where we have hundreds of thousands of Earthed members, all getting active in their local community. At this point, we’ll be able to be distributing funds from the Action Fund that will help these members with starting, sustaining or scaling their nature restoration projects.
