City farming communities

Thriftily, I began growing herbs, then I planted tumbler tomatoes and salad leaves and after the first bite of a sun-ripened tomato my passion was ignited. I read anything and everything I could find about gardening. One of my favourite books was garden journalist, Elspeth Thomson’s Urban Gardener in which she describes the trials and tribulations of having an allotment and trying to set up a community garden.

I continued to grow food on my roof when I moved to a home on Grays Inn Road, but I really wanted to dig into the soil and get composting. I put my name on Camden’s allotment list – a frustrating affair – I have been on it for 10 years and I am still only 127th. I decided to get creative and visited an allotment site in Highgate, where I met an 80-year-old woman who wanted some short-term help to maintain her allotment.

Finally, I was digging the earth and planting neat rows of carrots and beans. I moved again and stumbled upon Kentish Town City Farm (KTCF) where I badgered the friendly staff to give me a small space in the community garden area.

Finally they succumbed to my persistence and gave me a metre square of my own. The soil, honed by years of well-rotted compost and manure being dug into it, was perfect. Anything seemed to thrive and survive. Now with two mini gardeners in tow, my son and daughter, we grew beetroot, salad, carrots, onions and leeks.

I added a frame so that I could make the most of the space and grow peas, beans and squashes vertically. The farm was an ideal space because it allowed me to plant, clear, dig, potter, cut back and harvest whilst my kids ran around, petted animals and were entertained by older children.

After a while I volunteered to do an art project at KTFC, this eventually led to paid work there and that is how I began working in the movement of City Farms and Community Gardens, all born from few seeds in a window box.

Case Study Kerry Marie Kennedy, aged 17, volunteer at Kentish Town City Farm first became involved in city farming at the age of four. Her family are from Ireland and Ashford and have a farming background.

Kerry was born in inner London and her Dad first brought her to their local city farm (KTCF) to get a taste of farming life. Kerry and her younger sister Sian, began helping with the animals at the age of eight and by eleven Kerry had become a member of the pony club.

Here she learnt to ride and got stuck into grooming and mucking out. She helped with lambing and proudly told me that she had to stick her hand ‘right in to pull out a lamb’. Under the supervision of stockman John Langan and the other staff, Kerry has given injections, clipped horses, trimmed toes, sheared sheep, and helped with birthing. She is currently studying sports and recreation at college as well as volunteering at the farm. Kerry would encourage anybody who loves animals to get involved with city farming.

She said: “Do it, it’s fun. Yes you might get dirty but go for it. If I can’t do anything else in life, this experience will lead to me working on a farm.” She added that KTCF was like a big family and that her friends from school had also joined in.

Her mother is happy that she is so involved as, as Kerry’s says it keeps her ‘off the streets’.

Kerry says her time at the farm for taught her to cook and encouraged her to try a few more vegetables, although she still not a major fan. Kerry is busy volunteering and studying to work with children with special needs and it is obvious from her enthusiasm that she now has farming in her soul. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up running a city farm in a few years’ time.

Mark Fish and Room2Heal Gardening and growing food are not just a healthy option for psychotherapist Mark Fish; they are a practical form of therapy. He first began using gardening in this way when he cleared an overgrown plot at CASA, a recovery centre for alcoholics in Kentish Town, London. He worked with residents planting shrubs, clearing the garden, digging in topsoil, building bird tables and landscaping the garden.

This initial experiment in moving his therapy sessions outdoors proved successful. Three years ago Mark took this idea of an outdoor therapeutic space and used it with a group of refugees and asylum seekers he was working with through the Medical Foundation. He approached Culpeper Community Garden and the group called Room2Heal began meeting, gardening, growing food, cooking and building a community in which they could talk and share their problems. Many of the Room2Heal’s members come from rural situations and are a lot more comfortable being close to nature than in flats on the periphery of cities, where they are commonly housed. Room2Heal’s small north London plot is shared by people from Kenya, the Congo, Iran, Iraq and Russia, who are all seeking refugee status. From such a disparate mixture of people comes a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Their native recipes and digging techniques are not only shared amongst their group but also with the wider community of the garden.

For example, one member is always handing out his tera seeds – a Turkish leaf, like rocket but much more peppery, that he recommends should be eaten in flat bread sandwiches.

The Room2Heal organisation, advises and supports refugees and victims of torture but one of its softer, less measurable, outcomes is that, in the words of a member: “It gives you a family feeling. There are things I can discuss with the group that I couldn't with other people.”

The small vegetable plot in Islington provides not only food and a growing space for city dwellers but also a reliable, safe space and community for people whose lives are stressful and uncertain. Many have come from unbearably difficult and traumatic circumstances and are very much alone. Being part of Room2Heal has given them a community and a therapeutic outlet for their anxieties.