This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to London
The city farm is over 50 years old. These unique pockets of urban agriculture, where city dwellers are given the opportunity to spend time outside, encounter animals and learn where their food comes from, first sprung up in the UK in the 1970s. Over time, their remit grew more ambitious: farm shops were founded to sell food and flowers; partnerships with schools and businesses were formed to further education and volunteering; and animal inventories were expanded from pigs and sheep to llamas and rheas.
What started as a way to transform derelict land and involve local residents in animal-keeping and agriculture has evolved with the times. Most recently, London’s dozen or so city farms, whose footprint is constrained by their built-up surroundings, have become test beds for experimental, environmentally conscious agriculture.
“These green oases meet some of the toughest challenges we face in our modern cities such as food inequality, limited access to fresh food and poor health,” says Leon Ballin, the Soil Association’s programme manager for sustainable food places. He points to city farms’ involvement in initiatives such as the Sustainable Food Partnerships programme, which seeks to tackle issues including food poverty, security and climate change, and in creating wildlife corridors to make up for habitats otherwise lost in the sprawl.
At Horsenden in the borough of Ealing and Sitopia in Greenwich, farmers follow a “no-dig” approach in their planting — soil is disturbed as little as possible when planting or weeding, leading to improved soil health, drainage and microorganism presence. Woodoaks in Rickmansworth, meanwhile, recently divided one of its fields into six segments in order to experiment with different approaches on a smaller scale, while Stepney City Farm last year added shiitake, oyster and winecap mushroom growing to its repertoire, as part of a collaboration with Kew Gardens around sustainable food production.
These changes in priorities don’t mean that city farms are closing their doors to visitors and volunteers, however. “What has remained constant is providing a connection to animals and gardens for local people,” says Pamela Park, chief executive of Kentish Town City Farm, which was the first of its kind in the UK when it first opened in 1972. “Half our staff were involved in the farm as young people. We have visitors who have been visiting the farm for generations. We were founded by local residents.”
City farms are increasingly turning to businesses for help too: almost every London location now welcomes corporate volunteers to assist with maintenance and conservation efforts. Sitopia has welcomed groups from the O2 Arena and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, while Barclays, Gucci and Warner Brothers have all visited Horsenden. So whether you’re looking to get your hands dirty, learn about experimental farming or just visit a shop where the produce was actually grown on site, here are four of London’s busiest and most interesting city farms.
Horsenden
Horsenden Lane North, london UB6 7PQ
It’s hard to think of anything they don’t do at Horsenden. Among the tasks entrusted to the 30 or so regular volunteers at the north-west London community farm are vegetable and flower growing, composting, orchard care, animal tending, produce selling, conservation programmes, habitat restoration, hedgerow planting and scything.
“The main priority is doing right by nature,” says trustee Justin Bonnet, who has been helping out since 2020. “But people can bring their own interests.” On the afternoon it is wintry and outside the growing season, but there is a hive of activity in the fields and gardens surrounding the Victorian farmhouse on the south-east corner of Horsenden Hill. Volunteers from MindFood, a mental health charity that shares the space, are tending raised beds; hop plants are being strung up; rugs are being tufted in one of the outbuildings; nettles are drying in the cowshed to make tree hay; and two new kittens are coming to terms with their new roles as rat catchers.
Most of the working farm — including its animals — is accessible only to volunteers (anyone can sign up for its Monday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday sessions, which entail a range of farming and conservation work). And there is still plenty to visit besides: in summer, a shop selling seasonal produce; Perivale Brewery’s tap room is on site, as is bakery The Horsenden Loaf, whose wood-fired oven turns out pizza and loaves using kindling from the farm site; oh, and the 250-odd acres of ancient woodland, meadow and walking trails up Horsenden Hill itself. Website; Directions
Stepney City Farm
Stepney Way, London E1 3DG
Dotted across this 4.5-acre site are reminders of the many faces of the East End: the brick facade of a chapel, all that remains of a 19th-century Baptist College; a tumbledown wall running alongside one of the growing fields — the last remnant of an old trade-union hall bombed during the second world war. More recently, next to the site, a more modern access shaft for the Crossrail line — somewhere below the pig pens, the railway’s northern and southern branches meet.
That development helped fund a new barn and outbuildings for the working farm, which was first opened by local residents in 1979 to make use of a bombed-out farm complex. Corporate volunteering and teambuilding now account for much of its income — 4,000 visitors from the city’s banks, start-ups and law firms mucked in last year alone — since the farm is otherwise free to visitors. “We’re never going to have an entrance fee,” says CEO Clare Hawkins, who also welcomes local charities, young offenders on reparations programmes, allotment holders and around 5,000 students every year.
It’s a working farm — one that eschews pesticides, chemicals and heavy machinery — where the meat and produce are sold to local restaurants and at a Saturday market each week. There are also three studios (currently housing a potter, a woodworker and a mixed-media artist), indoor and outdoor classrooms, and a new café. “A farm is somewhere that has something for everyone,” says Hawkins. “If there’s anything you’re not doing, you’ll get people asking about it.” Website; Directions
Sitopia Farm
331 Shooters Hill, London DA16 3RP
In just two acres of fields in deepest south-east London, a remarkable variety of food and flowers is growing: rocket, chard, spinach, red kale, vivid choi, komatsuna, asparagus, artichoke, broad beans and broccoli. Come summer, there will be 25 varieties of heritage tomato — and that’s to say nothing of the apple, pear, quince and cherry trees. Crucially, though, there are no potatoes: instead the focus is on “cut and come again” plants that can be partially harvested and then left to keep growing — food that can be sold with minimal processing.
This variety feeds Sitopia Farm’s vegetable box and flower subscriptions (from £10.95 per week). “We want to help create a more healthy, equitable, sustainable food system,” says founder Chloë Dunnett as we tour the polytunnel, greenhouse and array of beds (the site is leased from the much larger Woodlands Farm on Shooter’s Hill). That means variety over volume, year-round growing, no pesticides and a no-dig, no-till approach. “If you’re not disturbing the soil, you’re helping preserve the structure of it,” says Dunnett, pointing out that one teaspoon of soil contains more microbes than there are humans on earth.
Sitopia also deals in cut flowers — partly in order to tackle the 90 per cent of blooms that are imported rather than grown in the UK, and partly to encourage biodiversity and beauty. The farm is a not-for-profit community interest company, and volunteers come once a week, school and corporate groups are welcomed, and March saw the return of its organic growing courses. The scale is relatively small for now, but Dunnett is planning a crowdfunder for an eco-barn to house proper facilities. “We can’t feed London,” she says, “but we can have a lot more farms like this.” Website; Directions
Woodoaks Farm
Denham Way, Maple Cross, Rickmansworth WD3 9XQ
Three years ago, when Rose Lewis arrived at Woodoaks Farm near Rickmansworth in London’s outer reaches, the land bore the scars of decades of intensive, mechanised, chemical-heavy agriculture. After a century of ownership by the Findlay family, the farm was gifted to the Soil Association Land Trust in 2020 with the goal of turning it into a fully organic, community-led and sustainable site.
“We went on a journey to transform the land,” says Lewis, the farm’s programme director, who has overseen the gradual regeneration of the 300-acre site. This has meant crop rotation, hedgerow replanting (2km so far, and they are looking to plant up to 5km), the creation of a market garden and wildlife corridors, soil sampling and a weekly compost club that donates its production to local community gardens. Fringed by the M25 motorway on the outskirts of London, Woodoaks is less pressed for space than other city farms, but its focus on education and community fosters the atmosphere of a smaller site.
Chief among Woodoaks’ transformation is the renovation of the 16th-century Black Barn, a Grade II-listed timber post and truss building once used as a threshing barn and now envisaged as an events space and community hub, for which a crowdfunder has just launched. Two adjoining cart sheds will house a volunteer and education centre for the families, retirees, school and corporate groups that come to help out with planting, composting and conservation. “All farms should be engaging with their communities,” says Lewis. “All farms should be looking after nature.” Website; Directions
Do you have a favourite urban farm in London or your own city? Tell us in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter
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