As well as being home to animals, Stepney City Farm is a community food growing site. With generous support from the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food Scheme and Power to Change, in just a few short years we have transformed food growing into a sustainable social enterprise. Read more about Stepney City Farm’s Power To Change Grant.
What’s growing
In Spring we grow cabbage, cauliflower, purple sprouting broccoli, radishes, rhubarb, spinach, spring greens and spring onions.
Summer sees aubergine, beans (broad, Borlottti, runner), beetroot, courgettes, garlic, lots of varieties of lettuce, radishes and tomatoes; currants (black, white and red), raspberries and strawberries.
Autumn is harvest time for our pumpkins and squashes, including their leaves, red Russian kale, chard, spinach and sweetcorn; the apple and pear trees are small but thriving.
Winter has more cabbage, chicory, Jerusalem artichoke, curly kale and cavalo nero, parsnips and turnips.
All this amazing produce is grown with care by our growing team. Danielle, our Head Food Grower, takes us through how the food-growing principles we use here on the Farm help us to grow quality produce naturally, in our blog on No-Dig Food Growing at the Farm
Buy
Pop along to see what’s for sale on site, or order a £5 seasonal veg box for collection via on our online shop.
Plant shop
Not only do we sell produce ready-to-eat; we empower our local community to grow their own food at home, with our range of seasonal plants and herbs. You can find them near the entrance, and our growers are always happy to share advice and tips to get the best out of your crop.
Restaurant partners
To subsidise our income from on site sales, we are proud to also supply fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers to top London restaurants including our own onsite cafe, The Allotment Kitchen.
All deliveries are made via bicycle courier.
Contact for restaurant sales: danielle@stepneycityfarm.org
The Allotments
Stepney City Farm has 64 small allotment spaces, occupied by local Tower Hamlets residents. The plots provide opportunities for those with no outdoor space of their own to grow food and experience the respite of working outside with nature.
Read about Our longest-standing allotment holder, Mr Fred Iles.
The annual charge for an allotment is £50, or £40 for those on benefits.
Our waiting list is currently closed. The allotments are in very high demand, and we currently estimate the waiting list to be 23 years.
The Forest Garden
The Farm’s forest garden, funded by the Permaculture Association, is designed to permaculture principles and mimics a natural forest ecosystem.
“Permaculture [is] the creation of human systems which provide for human needs, but using many natural elements and drawing inspiration from natural ecosystems. Its goals and priorities coincide with what many people see as the core requirements for sustainability.” -Emma Chapman
We’ve grown perennial plants with extensive root systems, making our garden resilient to extreme weather and needing little or no maintenance.
The canopy layer will provide figs and mulberries and the understory medlars and cobnuts. The forest floor has plants with a spreading habit, including alpine strawberries and Egyptian walking onions.
The Farm is a member of the Permaculture Association and a Learning And Network Demonstration (LAND) learner site. We aim to regularly host permaculture courses.
Wildflowers
Wild areas and a great mix of plants and insects help to create a healthy growing environment, so we’ve also ensured that the Farm’s wildlife and biodiversity have continued to flourish. We only use alternatives to pesticides and artificial fertilisers at the Farm, and have maintained plenty of natural areas around the food growing sites to encourage bees and other insects. Thanks to funding from the Tower Hill Trust, we were even able to host a recent series of wildflower workshops. We built a wildflower meadow on the Farm with the help of participants, and it was a great opportunity to chat with them about the benefits of wildflower spaces for biodiversity.
Read more about Stepney City Farm meadow is blooming.
No picking please
Everything we grow on the Farm is harvested by staff or volunteers, and the proceeds help to keep the Farm free and open for all, 6 days a week. We utilise all the space that we can, which includes the hedgerows and beds next to the paths on the Farm. Visitors don’t always understand the difference between this and wild growing, and we suffer a lot from theft of fruit from the trees and bushes.
Please do not pick anything on the Farm; if you see something tasty-looking, it’s waiting to be harvested. If it goes missing, we can’t fulfil orders, or provide it for sale at the Farm. Thank you.