Visit of the Skip Garden in London

Today, we are lucky to have our Japanese academic visitor Akane Bessho here to jointly visit several community-based urban agriculture projects in Central London and discussed the commonalities and differences of urban agriculture between London, China and Tokyo.

We would like to introduce a lovely community garden named Skip Garden, run by the charity Global Generation in the middle of the King’s Cross development area, which – you may not believe it – is built among the cranes and cement mixers!

The Garden was established in partnership with students from the Bartlett School of Architecture. Teenagers from local schools also took part in the construction in order to understand food production and sustainability. The educational charity Global Generation is one of London’s urban agriculture pioneers, and Katrin Bohn and André Viljoen have worked with them as far back as 2008.

Skip Garden in London (images: Dong Chu 2019)

The Skip Garden looks like an urban oasis with wild flowers, vegetables and herbs, beehives and a chicken coop. There is a gardener’s shed, a construction built of sash windows, an office ect, all of which are built from reclaimed materials by volunteers. The garden is portable and can be moved to different locations. Everything here is grown in portable cabins and completely mobile. There are tomatoes, chillies, beans and lettuce grown in a polytunnel. Thanks to a full complement of organic gardening practices, the garden is said to be largely self-sustaining.

The gardeners’ community consists of people of all ages and backgrounds. It has grown into a sustainable community project that provides all kinds of opportunities for local young people. The kitchen serves delicious vegetarian food with the ingredients grown and cooked on the site.

We were lucky to be told that the garden will move to the story garden in the British Library at the end of the year. We look forward to seeing it again in a new expression and composition at its new site.

For further information on the garden see the project’s own website.

For information on Global Generation see here.

Image: The Skip Garden (source: Global Generation www 2019)