Garden Details
Cranbrook Community Food Garden
The Garden
Local residents designed and built this garden in 2009 as a free, community-led food growing space, and the team celebrated 15 award-winning years in 2024. The garden contains a range of growing spaces including raised beds, a greenhouse, a mini food forest and 'fungarium', compost bays, a pergola with a green roof, frog pond, bird spa and bee mound.
The garden has received nine Outstanding ratings in London in Bloom between 2016 and 2025, won the London in Bloom Environmental Challenge in 2024, and was named Tower Hamlets in Bloom Best Garden for Wildlife in 2022 and 2023.
The garden nestles proudly within the iconic modernist Cranbrook Estate, designed by Skinner, Bailey and Lubetkin. Completed in the 1960s, the estate is home to Elizabeth Frink’s sculpture The Blind Beggar and his Dog.
In 2023, the team expanded beyond the garden fence to create Berry Lane, a row of planters alongside the garden containing native fruit bushes for passers-by to enjoy. Visitors can also enjoy the Little Free Library and Stumpery, added in 2024, as well as Wormery Corner, where the garden team produces organic fertilisers from comfrey, banana peels, and wormeries. The garden's compost system includes four open bays for garden waste and leaf mulch, and two large hot bin composters where residents can drop off their food waste, which is not collected by the council. Thanks to this system, the garden has been self-sufficient in compost for the last five years.
A solar panel was recently added to the shed roof to charge tools, and 'Project Raindrop' saw the installation of seven new water butts and tanks around the garden, to reduce reliance on mains water. Last year a 'hugel' was built - from the German for mound, this is an alternative way of building a raised bed from logs, twigs and leaves to mimic the actions of a forest floor. A wider range of herbs and medicinal plants and 'weeds' are also being planted, both inside and outside the garden. This herbal planting will expand knowledge and attract a wider range of pollinators to the already buzzing garden.
Summer 2025 saw the launch of The Cranbrook Community Cookbook. Two years in the making, it is packed with quick and simple ways to cook the food grown in the garden, from classic veg like rhubarb, tomatoes and potatoes, to some more unusual fare such as cucamelons, shark's fin melon and slipper gourd. There's something for every taste, and the cookbook will be on sale during LOG.
Chair: Lizzy Mace
Capital Growth garden: 68
Further information on London Parks & Gardens Inventory
Visitor Information
- Open
-
Saturday 10:00–15:00
Sunday 10:00–15:00 - Activities
- Meet the gardeners, enjoy refreshments in the pergola, follow a nature trail with a self-guided map, and buy a plant or some homemade jam or chutney to take home.
- Entrance
- From Roman Road, take the diagonal footpath that runs into Cranbrook Estate with the brick archway overhead. Look for the painted white lines on the path and the big banner that says 'Come on in!' The entrance to the garden is through the gate between the trees where the white lines are.
Nearest postcode: E2 0RD - Buses
- Map of nearby bus stops
- Stations
- Stepney Green, Bethnal Green
- Cycle hire station
- Globe Town Market (Map)
- Access
- Garden not fully accessible to wheelchair users.
Wheelchair access to most of garden; some uneven ground. - Dogs
- Dogs on leads welcome
