Growing food for community, climate and nature

This work, led by London food growing network Capital Growth, will help tackle the climate and nature emergency by protecting and increasing opportunities for nature-friendly food growing across the capital whilst building community resilience.

The funding will help demonstrate and enhance the role urban food gardens can and should play in addressing and mitigating, biodiversity loss and climate change, in London, as well as in creating community resilience.

Launched in Spring 2025, this project is funded for 1.5 years by the City Bridge Foundation and the GLA.

London-wide food growing festivals

At three points in the year we invite our members to join in London-wide festivals that celebrate the diverse and wonderful range of food growing gardens and projects, and raise their profile to attract new visitors and volunteers, allowing more Londoners to discover the huge array of edible gardens and get involved.

Grow Urban Festival – 7 to 15 June

Urban Harvest week – September

Good to Grow week - April

Networking events for food growers

SEWN Together: taking place in South, East, West and North London (hence the acronym!) these regional gatherings bring together community growers, networks and councils to build relationships and support food gardens to create resilient, nature-friendly and inclusive green spaces.  

The next one is SEWN South at Brixton Windmill on 15 May 2025

We’ll be going to East London in autumn 2025 and West London gathering scheduled for early 2026 so watch this space.

London-wide Food Growing Conference: scheduled for October 2026

Training programme

Our annual training programme provides low-cost workshops in practical food growing skills, nature-friendly and climate resilient techniques and how to increase and monitor biodiversity on food growing sites.  Sessions are led by food growers within the network, taking place at some of the finest community gardens around London.

See What’s On this spring/summer

Growing for Nature Campaign

Build upon Growing for Change that ran from 2021-2023, which supported food growers to create more resilient, nature-friendly and inclusive community gardens, we piloted a biodiversity project in 2024, reaching 200 people through training, events and a baseline survey.

We researched habitats and nature-interventions in urban food growing sites, developing a biodiversity baseline for the London Nature Recovery Strategy. Alongside this we provided a series of workshops, events and resources to equip food growers to identify and record nature and create more habitat on their food growing sites.  We also began to link gardens with their local council’s ecologists to ensure food growing projects are incorporated in local nature recovery strategies.

The next phase from March 2025 to Sept 2026 will develop this further by supporting more community food growing sites in diverse communities across London to harness nature-friendly growing practices and create habitat for nature. This will include

• providing a biodiversity toolkit for food growers,
• more training in identifying, recording and creatin habitat in a food growing setting
• a biodiversity recording tool in the members dashboard and London-wide citizen science events to evidence the huge biodiversity potential of urban food growing.

Want to get involved?

Are you interested in highlighting the links between urban food growing and biodiversity? Are you already growing your own or involved with a community garden in London? Or do you work at a London council supporting food growing initiatives? If yes, why not start by taking the following actions:

• Join the Capital Growth network 
• Come along to a workshop or networking event

We'd love to hear from you if you have ideas about, or are already working on, biodiveristy enhancemetns adnmonitoring in urban food gardens, accessing more space for food growing and making the link between urban food growing and the climate agenda.

Contact us

This project is made possible thanks to funding from the City Bridge Foundation and the GLA.