London Nomadic Community Gardens (Shoreditch street art)

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Space is a premium in cities and although they are centres of development and innovation they are also places where experiences of isolation and alienation are frequent.
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Higher cost of living can impact negatively on quality of life for many. Our communities, those vital support networks, can be marginalised. Due to austerity measures and funding cuts community centres are closing down. There are no more ‘third spaces’ that people can interact in.

By opening spaces that become community gardens we are enabling local residents to re-establish their communities, to learn new skills, discover new interests and new purposes.

There is a truly universal language in growing food. It is cross-cultural, pan-religious activity done by all ages and genders. But anyone that’s tried to get an allotment will know there’s no hope of it unless they are willing (and able) to wait years. We build raised vegetable planters that are movable, by mounting them on plastic pallets that local residents can use as allotments. We construct them on site or move them into place from another site using a forklift and flatbed truck.

We ‘raise’ the beds not only to make them portable, but to also eliminate any risk of contamination with the ground. This means that practically any outdoor space can be used for a garden, or just about anywhere (with enough access to sunlight!).
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And when it is time to move we do just that!

Nomadic Community Gardens (NCG) is a not for profit organisation based in Shoreditch, East London. We are dedicated to transforming disused spaces into urban gardens where people can grow their own produce, create art, share skills, and discover what it means to build their own community from the bottom up.

Our goal is to build “third places” ( home and work being the first and second) that serve as vital points of social interaction and community building. These spaces are important not only for biodiversity, but social and cultural diversity as well. By creating mobile vegetables beds, modular furniture, and transportable art pieces, we are able to transfer both the structures and the ethos of the garden to vacant sites around the city.

We breath life into disused parts of the city that become places where nature and community thrive. We transform these spaces into urban oasis’ that produce food and where people can learn and grow

Welcome and support your neighbours
Share your perspective and your tools
Create more than you consume
Give without expectations.
Make the garden a space for everyone.
Growing your own and being a part of these kinds of spaces benefits people in so many ways. What matters most is quality of life and part of the frustration, alienation and powerlessness so commonly felt, especially in cities, can be attributed to our relationships; relationships to our environment and each other. A community garden is just the sort of place where these symptoms of the current, modern human condition are alleviated if not reversed. Not only is it good for your health- it gets you outdoors in the sunshine and the work is physical but what you reap is nutritious. It's good for your wealth as growing your own is akin to printing your own money. And you learn or re-learn what is fundamentally a universal language, of food growth. It's empowering to watch your efforts grow and then there's the social side, where we are able to re-establish local support networks, rely on our neighbours and co-create a space that we share a responsibility for.
Each garden will be different in character and operation depending on the size of the site and the wills and wants of the people using it. We want each space to grow organically from the interaction and relationships it is based upon. We hope eventually people will hear our story and be inspired to do something similar for themselves where we only need supply them (if that) with a replicable model to get their gardens started. We hope growing a vegetable will be a catalyst for the systemic change humanity so clearly needs. Let's start from the ground up, at the grassroots, with dirt under our fingernails, where we have always started and re-gain what we have dearly lost- our connection to the land, each other and the intimate knowledge that allows them to commune harmoniously with one another.