Food, glorious food: meet the growers and see the sites
The Growing Communities food map shows all the pick-up points around the borough. Image: © Growing Communities
Saturday 18 September will be the day to celebrate Hackney’s food-growing sites.
The social enterprise Growing Communities, which provides organic boxes to 590 households in Hackney and grows 5% of their contents within the borough, will run a one-day tour of its five sites and give out a colourful map illustrating their market gardens and pick-up points. It will also feature in Open House London, a city-wide celebration of great London buildings.
Firstly, the Growing Communities tour. For £3, visitors can learn all about growing organic food and meet some of the growers that are making great things happen within Hackney‘s soil. A light lunch at Stoke Newington Farmers’ Market is also included.
For those who don’t fancy the full five-site visit, all the Growing Communities organic gardens will be open for guests to drop in between 10.30am and 4pm. This includes the enterprise’s Patchwork Farm microsites, which are not usually open to the public.
Secondly, an attractive map is to be released on the same day. Designed by local man Michael Georgiou, it shows the scheme’s organic market gardens and community pickup points for their box scheme. It also features well-known Hackney architectural landmarks such at the Geffrye Museum, Chats Palace Arts Centre, St Mary’s Church in Stoke Newington and the Castle Climbing Centre, which houses the Growing Communities micro-site that featured in last month‘s Citizen.
“We’re really proud of being a community-led enterprise working in Hackney,” said Julie Brown, Growing Communities director. “We commissioned our new map to show our links across Hackney, from our popular community pickup at Hackney City Farm to our organic market garden in Springfield, Clapton.”
And last but not least, the tour and map release coincide with the annual London-wide Open House weekend, where hundreds of different types of building across the city welcome members of the public. And included in this year’s programme is the Growing Communities eco-building in Allens Gardens. Visitors will come from far and wide to admire its green sedum roof and composting toilet, set within a flourishing organic market garden.
Growing Communities, based at the Old Fire Station in Leswin Road, is run for local people by local people. It seeks to create community-led alternatives to the current food system and find out ways of feeding urban populations in the face of climate change, ecological crises and fossil foil depletion.
It believes that if we are to create the sustainable re-localised food systems that will see us through the challenges ahead, communities and farmers need to work together to take our food system back from the supermarkets and agribusiness.
Growing Communities’ main projects are the organic fruit and vegetable box scheme and Stoke Newington Farmers’ Market at William Patten School on Church Street. It employs 26 part-time staff and also trains two apprentices in organic growing a year.
If you’re interested in going on the tour on Saturday 18 September, email growcomm@growingcommunities.org.
For more information about Growing Communities, ring 020 7502 7588 or visit their website.
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