Putney Community Garden marked its 10th anniversary of helping residents grow plants and connect, earlier this month.
The party included a big barbecue, face painting, a treasure hunt, a free fruit and vegetable giveaway and a sunflower seed-counting competition that ended with 1,837 seeds.
The community garden now has five main gardens, each with a care team and dozens of smaller patches where residents grow plants on balconies and near their homes.
Explaining the origins of the gardens, the lead organiser, Rowan Salim, 43, said: “Even though I’d lived on this estate for three years, I didn’t know any of my neighbours.
“I lived here, but my work was elsewhere, my friends were elsewhere, my family were elsewhere.”
Walking around her local area, she found people growing plants in secret on council land, and when the council came, they cleared them up.
She said: “What people needed was simply permission, and somebody to liaise with the council.”
The group began to organise in autumn 2016 and came across the Putney Food Assembly and other residents passionate about growing food locally and reducing their carbon footprint.
Reflecting over the past decade, Rowan was proud of the community that has developed, with groups focusing on crafts, walking and foraging, and one for food-sharing, where surplus food is collected for local bakeries and redistributed within the community.
Rowan said: “We have a lot of dreams. One of them is to have chickens. Another is to have goats we can take to graze on the heath. That would be quite helpful for the habitat as well.”
She also mentioned plans to restore historic ponds, which residents support.
Talking about her move to London, a resident artist, Yuan Wang, 44, said: “We came, just the three of us. We had no family here, and no friends, pretty much just on our own.”
But when coming across the community garden, the local artist and art psychotherapist said: “It feels like I have a sense of community, and my children started to make friends, and they were quite busy and very happy, always running in and out. I don’t worry about them and know they are okay.”
Residents who enjoy the community garden include 67-year-old Maria Corless.
She said: “For me, the community garden is not just about growing food. It’s about connection, connecting with nature, sharing knowledge, and continuous learning.”
Another resident, Olessia Willybiro, 46, said her 10-year-old daughter enjoys caring for the plants there and making friends with other like-minded children.
Feature image courtesy Rowan Salim
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