London’s prize veggies celebrated as part of Capital Growths’ Urban Harvest day
Capital Growth’s 8th autumn open day took place on Saturday 16 September at 27 flourishing community food gardens across London.
(Photo: Urban Harvest Photo Competition winner taken by Clapham Common Bandstand Beds)
This year the focus was on the wonderful harvest that the gardens work hard to produce, with activities including an annual vegetable show at Cordwainers in Hackney, a pick your own salad event at Agnes Riley garden in Clapham, smoothie making at the Castle Climbing Centre garden in Manor House and a garden pizza feast for over 300 people attending the Regents Park Allotment Garden.
Across London over 1300 visitors took part in harvest feasts, hands-on workshops, and competitions to give Londoners a taste of all the fresh and delicious food grown in the city.
The edible autumn open day (this year called 'Urban Harvest) has been running since 2010 and is organised through London's food growing network, Capital Growth which helps over 2500 edible gardens and demonstrates how much food is being grown within London’s urban gardens. Many of the gardens used the event to raise funds for their gardens through selling produce and garden grown goodies, with five gardens receiving match funding for money made on the day including Bandstand Beds in Clapham, and Stepney City Farm in East London.
“This year;s Urban Harvest, has 27 incredible gardens taking part. We also used the event to celebrate the incredible local food that these gardens produce, which we have been helping them to measure through our online Harvest-ometer with over 1 million portions of fruit and veg recorded to date - a fantastic achievement” explained Chris Speirs, Capital Growth Coordinator.
Maryon Park Community Garden, in Lewisham, commented “A great event which was wonderful [in bringing people] together to celebrate our harvest engage volunteers and members of local community”. A full list of participating gardens and their activities can be found on our Urban Harvest map.
The Urban Harvest was a showcase event taking place during London Food Link’s Urban Food Fortnight, and is part of Capital Growth’s London Grows initiative, supported by City Bridge Trust.
For full details about The Urban Harvest, please visit www.capitalgrowth.org/events/opengardens
Published Friday 29 September 2017
Capital Growth: We believe everyone should have the opportunity to grow food as part of a healthy, resilient food system and we are working with our network of growers in London to make this happen.
