London’s food gardens urged to take action for nature

The new campaign, supported by the Mayor of Londonⁱ, provides training and materials to help food growers learn to identify and record species on their sites and create habitat for wildlife. The first 100 to get involved via a 5 minute survey also can win prizes worth up to £400 to help their community growing site increase nature-friendly growing. 

With the alarming loss of nature in the UK - data shows that 1 in 6 species in the UKⁱⁱ are at threat and the UK is in the bottom 10% of countries for biodiversity abundanceⁱⁱⁱ - urban food growing spaces are a potential sanctuary of hope for our insects and mammals, with many gardens using nature friendly and organic gardening principles. 

Groups are being encouraged to contribute and strengthen the evidence of how food growing enhances nature. This will help campaigners working to protect existing gardens from development, increase land for growing and leverage funding. Plus, groups who get involved early will get access to materials and training to measure, map and make space for nature. 

We have a not-to-miss opportunity to measure and map biodiversity across all our food growing sites and use this evidence to prove the value of food growing for nature. This critical data could help fight planning applications, preventing developers from building on our green spaces. We now have the chance to work together to make that a reality."

- Rachel Dring, Capital Growth Coordinator

This project is the next phase of Capital Growth’s ‘Growing for Change’ campaign, which has been supporting gardens to unite around core principles that place wellbeing, health and respect for people and nature at their core.  

Become part of the Growing for Nature project by completing the biodiversity questionnaire by 31 March 2024. By doing so, you will be entered into a prize draw to win a £400 voucher for gardening equipment or a £200 voucher to Tamar Organics seeds.    

Find out more about the project 

i Capital Growth are working in partnership with the GLA's Nature Recovery team, who are undertaking an ambitious project to develop a biodiversity baseline for London that will inform local Nature Recovery Strategies in each borough.  

ii https://naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2023/09/29/state-of-nature  

iii https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2021/october/analysis-warns-biodiversity-is-below-safe-limit.html

iiii Capital Growth are gathering data from it’s network of 1000 food growing spaces to feed into this biodiversity baseline.