Spitalfields City Farm permaculture garden and shelter

A National Lottery funded community permaculture garden and shelter on a disused Railtrack storage site at Spitalfields City Farm.
We transformed a large area of concrete hard-standing (previously used to store machinery for the building of the London Overground) into an abundant permaculture vegetable garden for the local community.
Using permaculture design principles we have created a garden that produces thousands of meals each year. Rain water is harvested from swales and the roof of the shelter to irrigate the garden. The trees used to build the decking and the shelter were from a sustainably managed woodland in East Sussex.
The garden is now farmed by local volunteers and was opened by Mayor Lutfur Rahman in 2017.
It gives us great satisfaction that our work gives the local inner-city community an opportunity to connect with the soil and nurture their own food garden. We feel that equally significant as the yield of vegetables is the yield of physical and mental wellbeing that gardening gives the community. Having a space to work together towards a common good in the open air amongst flourishing nature is a worthwhile thing indeed.