Awarded through the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project will engage over 200 people to explore the heritage of our movement and create a picture of the history of food growing in London, while building a vision for the future.  

Every London Borough was once surrounded by vegetable gardens to feed the urban population. In WWII, ‘Dig for Victory’ urged people to grow food for the war effort, with open spaces reclaimed as allotments, from domestic gardens to public parks – even the Tower of London lawn. In modern times, we have our own victories to win, on obesity, climate change, mental health and social cohesion – for which community food growing offers many delicious and sociable solutions.

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A selection of photos from the various events, garden visits, and oral history interviews taken during the Growing Culture project.

Growing Culture focuses on London's food growing heritage and how this has contributed to the culture of families, communities and our city.

Our fantastic Growing Culture volunteers went to local heritage hub events, research visits to libraries, community gardens and archives and interviewed growers to collect memories of food growing, traditions and how this influenced daily life, work and the landscape of London.

We talked to people with a personal connection with food growing. People who have been food growing for a long time, or who can remember stories about food production in their local area. We talked to people with diverse heritage to learn about their growing cultures and how it has shaped London's food culture.

Please have a look through our online resource of photos and oral history recordings on food growing and biodiversity heritage. 

We want to share and celebrate this history and identity to help reinforce the importance of the amazing work the city's food growers do every day to make our city greener and healthier.

If you would like more information about the project, please email janelle@sustainweb.org.

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