garden
Hawkwood Nursery, 115 Hawkwood Crescent, E4 7UH
We are a 12-acre organic food-growing workers' cooperative, located on the edge of Epping Forest. We grow food that is delivered throughout Waltham Forest by our fruit and veg subscription service, hold volunteering and run courses. Our open days are a rare opportunity to experience the site on the weekend.
Walthamstow Central
Chingford
215, 379
The nearest station is Chingford. From here it is a 25-minute walk through the forest or the 379 bus. From Walthamstow Central, the 215 bus.
The site is a working farm and therefore there is uneven terrain across our growing areas.
During the tour, there will not be any seating areas to stop at. Please wear sturdy shoes as the ground may be wet and muddy.
In 1854, Hawkwood House was built on this site, with Pole Hill clay bricks. The house and grounds were built to impress, occupying a total of 19 acres of former woodland (compared to the 12 acres now worked by OrganicLea). Several changes of ownership later, the house was eventually sold to Chingford Council in 1937, with the stipulation that the land be preserved as open space.
Damage to the house from a bomb in World War 2 meant it became increasingly unsafe, leading to its demolition in 1951. Today its legacy still lives on: tiles from the house have been dug up on site and we still use the old kitchen garden, where the soil was discovered to be especially fertile, as one of our growing areas.
During the 1970s, Waltham Forest Council turned the site into a nursery which ran until 2006 when it was closed. By happy coincidence, OrganicLea discovered this and submitted a proposal to lease out the site for development of a community plant nursery and market gardens. This was accepted in 2008 as part of Waltham Forest Council's Climate Change strategy, and so began OrganicLea's presence on this site.
Today, OrganicLea is a thriving community food-growing project, selling food, flowers and plants locally throughout Waltham Forest. We hold volunteering sessions twice a week on-site, offer courses, and work with local community groups off-site.
Our vision is of a socially and environmentally just food system where the means of production and distribution, including access to land, seed and water are controlled not by markets or corporations but by the people themselves.
We are working to create just production and trading systems that provide a fair income to food producers and guarantee the rights of communities to access healthy and nutritious food produced using ecologically sound and sustainable methods, a food system existing in a wider context of social justice.