Growing round the houses

Rising food prices and increased interest in healthy food, means more people are looking to grow their own. Growing Round the Houses is a briefing paper by Ben Reynolds of Sustain and Christine Haigh of the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN), which explains how social housing providers and their tenants can work together on their estates to grow food. As well giving advice on how to set up a food growing project on their estate, it describes examples such as the Spitalfields Estate Community Garden, where residents worked together to build themselves a food growing space for vegetables and herbs popular with the local ethnic minority community.

With urban allotments like gold dust, housing estates, with wide, underused green spaces are coming into their own, turning over their lawns to food growing plots. Ben Reynolds said “There’s incredible interest in growing your own food. Vegetable seed is overtaking flower seed sales for the first time. We hope this work will be the catalyst for a new dawn for urban agriculture.”

Christine Haigh, who works on WEN’s Local Food programme with women’s groups in East London, says “This paper provides inspiration and useful guidance for residents and social landlords looking to set up similar projects.”

Simon Donovan, community development manager at Tower Hamlets Community Housing comments, “The food growing project on the Spitalfields estate is an inspiration. Residents are talking to their neighbours, taking charge of their own space and having a pride in it. As well as cheap healthy food, there are physical and mental health benefits from the outdoor activity involved.”

The document was launched in June 2008 at the 'Growing Food for London' conference in London (organised by London Food Link), the first time that the diverse urban agriculture communities – such as food growers, park keepers, architects and others - had been brought together in London.

Notes
[1] Growing Round the Houses: Food production on housing estate land is a joint briefing by Sustain and Women’s Environmental Network launched on 30th June 2008. A downloadable pdf is available free of charge on the WEN website and the Sustain website. The paper makes recommendations to social landlords, planners and developers, and residents to facilitate new food growing projects on housing estates across the country.

[2] Capital Growth is coordinated by London Food Link (www.londonfoodlink.org), the large and rapidly growing network of people and organisations interested in healthy and sustainable food for the capital. Its members are as diverse as farmers and food writers, caterers and community food projects. Both London Food Link and its members work towards:

increasing the availability of sustainable food in London
tackling barriers preventing access to healthy and sustainable food for all Londoners
protecting and celebrating London's diverse food culture

If you are an organisation or individual interested in sustainable food, please consider joining London Food Link.

[2] Women's Environmental Network is the only organisation in the UK working consistently for women and the environment. WEN’s local food project provides training and support to groups of women growing food in urban areas. http://www.wen.org.uk/

4) Tower Hamlets Community Housing (THCH) is a Registered Social Landlord (RSL) and a Registered Charity that owns over 2,800 homes in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. http://www.thch.org/

5) The Growing Food for London conference was an all-day event at London's City Hall, on 30 June 2008 organised by London Food Link. Speakers included Tim Lang (City University), Joe Nasr (author of Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities), Fritz Haeg, (author of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn) and Ian Collingwood (Middlesborough Council regeneration, and lead on the Middlesborough Urban Farming project). The event was jointly organised with the London Parks and Green Spaces Forum, as part of the London Festival of Architecture.