Urban garden in London: Walworth Garden Farm

Today I will talk to you about an organic garden in the middle of the city, the Walworth Garden Farm, in London. As I told you in previous posts such as Urban Gardens in London, this is a city full of green areas, including a lot of orchards and community gardens, like the one I’m going to talk about today.

It is a few stops from the most touristic area of ​​London, 5 minutes from Kennington tube station. The address is 206 Manor Place / Braganza Street, SE17 3BN, London.

It is a community garden that participated in the Open Garden Squares Weekend event that I told you about in the previous post. Residents of the area and volunteers who have been trained in these facilities work there and now «return the favor» to the community.

The Walworth Garden Farm was founded in 1987 by residents of the Southwark area with a social purpose, to teach and
promote Organic Farming practices. It is a charitable, non-profit institution, which since 1991 has had the main objective of training unemployed people as qualified gardeners or professionals in this guild. In fact, it is a center recognized by the City & Guilds institution, dedicated to preparing and certifying professionals to improve success in the job search.

What’s at the Walworth Garden Farm?

With a bit of skill and a little while I have transformed the interactive map of the Walworth Garden Farm into this other one, with the division of the entire land and the description of each area in Spanish.

And now I will leave you some of the photos I took during my visit, so that you can get an idea of ​​how cool this place is. Here are the two glass greenhouses and you can see a little of the plastic one on the right (light blue on the map above):

This is the interior of one of the greenhouses, with seedbeds for the plants that are later transplanted onto the terraces or in pots to sell. Seedbeds of ornamental flowers are grown here, but also vegetables such as beans, melon, cucumber, tomatoes, cabbages…

These are the terraces that you can see on the map at the top left. In them I could see in the month of May crops such as tomatoes, potatoes, beans, sweet corn, beets, garlic, onions, shallots, saffron, marshmallow… There are also aromatic and medicinal plants on the terraces of the central area.

This is an organic garden so techniques such as composting, intercropping or the use of beneficial insects could not be missing. In fact, at the Walworth Garden Farm they have an apiary with two hives to take advantage of the benefits that these insects, the bees, can bring to the garden (later I will write a post on this topic, I have always found it very interesting…).

social role

The main work of the Walworth Garden Farm, as I have told you before, is social. For this reason, they carry out various activities such as participation in environmental education for children: thanks to the help of volunteers and an environmental educator, they collaborate with schools to organize wildlife clubs, courses on horticulture, school gardens, organic farming … and receive school visits.

One of the main activities of this community urban garden is the «Greenfingers» project, the work of volunteers with groups of people with learning disabilities or intellectual disabilities. In addition to activities in London such as walks, visits to museums, etc., these groups collaborate in the garden by carrying out maintenance tasks and other activities while benefiting from its therapeutic function. A very satisfactory and helpful task for them, as we saw in reports such as La huerta de Montecarmelo or HuertAula Cantarranas (urban gardens in Madrid with garden therapy activities for people with problems).

They also carry out free courses for adults: beekeeping, gardening, wood carving, medicinal herbs, garden design… And, as I mentioned at the beginning, they offer an official qualification: an approved horticulture course with work experience included that will be held in this same urban garden and that lasts about 4 months. By the way, if you live in London or know someone who might be interested, the next edition of this course starts in no time, the application deadline is July 31.

Plant sales and other services at the Walworth Garden Farm

Everyone can take a little piece of this ecological urban garden by buying some of the plants that are sold. In the central area of ​​the garden, surrounded by grass and benches for resting, there are tables where we can see a lot of pots with seedlings for sale to the public: ornamentals, vegetables, herbs or aromatic plants… Here I leave you a photo I took of a poster with some prices, to give you an idea.

This community garden offers garden maintenance services, landscaping, supply of plants for orchards and gardens, lawn care, irrigation… The work is carried out by qualified personnel, many of them trained in Walworth Garden itself.

The income is dedicated to financing the activities, courses and social tasks that are carried out.

And, if you pass through London, do not forget to visit it… it is a special place, one of the urban orchards that I have liked the most of all the ones I have visited, it is worth stopping by. It is also completely open to the public and they will attend you with sympathy, explaining everything you want to know.

I hope you liked it and that I can continue visiting and showing you orchards around the world to complete this category of Agrohuerto! Greetings