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Caribbean Sports Club volunteers transformed a dumping ground into a living tribute to the Windrush generation. Des Smith explains why the project means so much.
At the edge of the cricket field at the Caribbean Sports Club, something remarkable is growing.
What was once a dumping ground full of rubbish and brambles is now a flourishing community garden, rich with flowers, wildlife and stories. The Windrush Garden is more than a green space. It is a living tribute to the Windrush generation, their struggles, their contributions and the communities they built.
Fury Mets-Mallin spoke to Des Smith, one of the founding members of the Caribbean Sports Club, about the history behind the garden, the power of nature, and why this project means so much.
“We had to establish our own clubs”
I’m one of the founding members of the club, so I’ve been involved from the very beginning. The Caribbean Sports Club started way back in 1967.
It really grew out of the experiences of the Windrush generation. My parents came here around 1957, like many others, to work. Back then, it was common for parents to leave their children in the Caribbean with grandparents or relatives while they settled here and tried to build a life. I didn’t see my parents for about seven years.
People don’t really understand what happened in those days. Parents left their children for seven, eight, or ten years. Some children never joined their parents at all. I came to England in 1966 on my own, joined my parents, and suddenly had to get used to a family again after years apart.
At the same time, racism was really bad. Really, really bad. “No Blacks, no Irish, no dogs”, all the usual stuff. So special youth clubs were set up for West Indian and Asian children because we weren’t always welcome elsewhere.
That’s how our club really started. We joined the youth club, started playing football, cricket and netball, and eventually created our own teams because we faced challenges joining the established clubs. We played on rough fields and fought our way through racism.
Eventually, we acquired the ground at Ecclesfield in 1985, and we’ve been there ever since.
“The garden says: we were here”
I became the chair of the Sheffield Caribbean Sports Club about three years ago. We had this spare piece of land at the bottom of the football pitch, which was basically used as a dumping ground by the former owners. It was an awful sight. Worse than people probably realise.
There were fridges, televisions, settees, all sorts dumped there. Volunteers were dragging rubbish out for weeks and months. Luckily, we didn’t find any bodies! But our volunteers just got stuck in. And I think something really special happened because more volunteers started coming to join in, and our plan began to come together.
Many of the Windrush generation citizens came from rural backgrounds originally, so there was something familiar and comforting about getting your hands dirty again and working with the land. At the same time, I kept thinking about legacy.
The Windrush generation made a massive contribution to this country, but there are very few physical legacies left behind to recognise their contributions. Cricket has always been hugely important within Caribbean communities, and this sport, in particular, has played a big role in fostering integration here in Sheffield and across Britain.
For me, the garden became part of that legacy. Something permanent. Something that says: we were here.
“The garden mirrors the Windrush journey”
Yes, absolutely.
In a way, the whole garden reflects the journey travelled by the Windrush generation. First, you’re dealing with the rubbish, the obstacles, the difficult conditions. Then you start clearing and building pathways, bridges, fences to shield, protect and tools to guide people through and make things easier.
That’s what our parents did for us. They faced all the rough ground first so that life could be smoother for the generations coming after them.
Then, eventually, you reach the flowers at the end. And to me, those flowers represent the children and grandchildren of the Windrush generation continuing to contribute to this country. They’re blooming.
“When the Trust got involved, everything changed”
Yes. I think the turning point came when the Trust got involved.
When the team from Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust visited and saw the challenges facing the volunteers and listened to our plans and vision and said, “Yeah, we’ll help you,” it completely changed the feeling around the project.
Suddenly, there were tree surgeons, helping to clear branches and decayed trees; more volunteers and experts got involved, which motivated everybody. You felt like things were going somewhere. The team from the Trust were excited about it too, and that motivated us even more.
Then the local area committee put some funding in, and things just seemed to catapult very, very quickly after that.
We only really started work around 2023. The first year was mainly preparing the site and building pathways. Most of the planting has only happened recently, but somehow we’ve ended up extending the planting of flowers and trees far further along the site than we expected.
We had a five-year plan, and suddenly we’re already three-quarters of the way through it.
“Most of the plants came from people’s homes”
Yes, definitely.
A lot of volunteers bring plants from their own gardens. Somebody will see something cheap at the garden centre, buy it and bring it to the garden. Others approached neighbours, friends and businesses for the donation of plants and garden furniture.
That’s what’s lovely about it, really. The garden belongs to everybody because everybody has contributed something to it. We’ve also learned a huge amount from the Trust about wetland planting and wildlife habitats because we didn’t know much about that side of things at first.
Then there are the banana trees. One of our former youth club members, Austin Grant, gave us two banana trees for the club. Apparently, he’s one of the only people I know in Sheffield to successfully grow and harvest bananas from his own trees. So now we have them in the garden. We bring them indoors during winter and look after them carefully. They’re a tangible connection to the Caribbean and to the people who helped build this community.
“People are noticing nature properly now”
Absolutely! We discovered there’s a mink living nearby. We’ve got pheasants wandering around the field every day like clockwork. There’s a beehive nearby. Suddenly, people are noticing butterflies, birds, fungi, insects, all sorts.
Before, you’d probably walk past these things without really seeing them. Recently, whilst on the local bus, I mentioned the garden to a fellow passenger, and this man, who was sitting nearby, overheard our conversation and began to share his interest in moths – it was fascinating to listen to him – obviously he is being invited to visit the garden and hopefully become one of the volunteers. One volunteer brings books about insects and fungi. Everybody’s paying more attention to the wildlife and the benefits of being involved in the garden.
The garden has changed how people see the space around them.
“It gives people peace”
Completely.
A lot of the volunteers weren’t involved in the sports side of the club at all before this. They’d never come to watch cricket or football. Now they come because of the garden.
Some people spend the whole day there. One volunteer said it gives him something to get up for in the morning after years stuck indoors. Another calls it her peaceful place. And honestly, I understand that feeling. It’s very calming there.
You forget about time. You forgot about lunch. You simply spend a happy day together.
“The younger generation is the flowers”
As you get older, you start thinking more deeply about what your parents went through. They never really told us about the racism, the abuse or the difficulties they experienced because they were too busy surviving and making life better for us.
They worked day and night. And when you look back properly, you realise how much they sacrificed. So for me, the garden reminds me of their struggle, but also their contributions.
That contribution continues through children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. If you look at British sport now, for example, many of the teams are made up of Black and mixed-heritage athletes making huge contributions to society.
That’s why I think of the flowers as representing younger generations blooming and continuing that contribution.
“We want it to become a living museum”
I don’t want it to be somewhere where people simply walk through and look at flowers. I want it to become educational, too.
We’re planning to add photographs and information about Caribbean fruits, plants and food produce along the pathways. We already have markers showing the route of the Empire Windrush journey through the Caribbean before it arrived in Britain in 1948.
I’d like people to walk through the garden and learn something about Caribbean history and culture while they’re there.
One idea I’m particularly excited about involves an old cricket roller. We want to place it on a small incline, with rough ground in front of it and smooth ground behind it. The rough ground represents the difficult conditions faced by the Windrush generation when they first arrived here. The opposite side of the roller symbolises how they helped smooth the way for future generations.
They started in a rugged situation, but they levelled things out for the people coming after them.
“Get on with it!”
Get on with it!
Honestly, I’m so glad we decided to do this. The more we work on the garden, the more ideas come. It keeps growing, physically and emotionally. And what I love most is that the garden allows people to use their imagination. It allows stories to grow as well as plants.
When the Windrush generation came here, they brought more than suitcases or their ‘grip’. They brought music, religion, food, fashion, cricket, culture and hard work with them.
The sunshine they left behind was within them anyway. That’s what I want the garden to reflect.