Growing Good Seeds: St Bart's Community Garden

This project links with all 3 of the identified priorities for the East Ham Community Neighbourhood, ‘A safer, cleaner and more accessible neighbourhood’, ‘Environment’ and ‘Parks and Open Spaces.’ The project is to create a community garden in a small square of ground on Navarre Road, and a pleasant seating area around the tree  on the corner of Navarre Road and Barking Road.  The  seating area will encourage shoppers, parents with children and more elderly residents to rest for a moment. The square will be divided it into raised beds. Some of these will be ‘edible’ – growing herbs and soft fruit, and some will be seeded with native wildflowers, to attract bees. We hope we can encourage neighbours to pick the edible bits of the garden, providing fresh food in due season.  In addition, we run a community café in St Bart’s and are about to start a food pantry (food co-operative) – so some of the ‘edible’ bits of the garden would also end up as ingredients in the café offer, and as part of the pantry offer.