It’s raining in South London, but an enthusiastic Sally Knocker is harvesting her first ever crop of rocket and coriander from a container on her front windowsill, brimming over with rich green leaves. “It makes me feel summery, despite the weather,” says Knocker.

Knocker, 42, a charity director from Balham, is a participant in the South London Food Up Front scheme. The scheme was set up in May this year by Sebastian Mayfield, 28, a student, and Zoë Lujic, a 37-year-old office manager, to encourage local residents to grow vegetables in their front gardens and balconies, and already has 34 participants, from company directors to musicians.

Their inspiration for the scheme, which is funded by UnLtd, a body funding social entrepreneurship schemes, came after they met on a course in Permaculture, an ecological design system that helps people to create their own solutions of sustainability. They were keen to promote self-sufficiency in their local borough Wandsworth, where the wait for an allotment can be several years. They also sought to foster community spirit, by bringing people out into their front gardens and encouraging dialogue with their neighbours.

Mayfield and Lujic realised there were wasted spaces which could be utilised for growing, with balconies and urban front gardens of only a few metres square often disused or concreted over. Although they don’t discriminate against back gardens, it is these small spaces at the front of properties that are perfect for container gardening and for first-time growers. Despite a plethora of allotment-lit and newspaper columnists propagating the suburbosexual idyll of growing your own vegetables, many people are still intimidated by the challenge. “People lack confidence with growing vegetables, and need someone to give them a kick start,” says Mayfield.

“I’d never grown anything before, but I was spending so much money on salad leaves at the supermarket that I thought I’d give it a try,” says Knocker. The visibility of her crops, near her front door, prompts Knocker to remember her plant-nurturing duties. Like many busy working parents, she admits she doesn’t often even venture into her back garden. But now she keeps a watering can by the front door, and waters the herbs on her return home from work.

Food Up Front’s hand-holding approach works especially well for novices like Knocker – it provides everything required for a successful start-up. This includes free containers, surplus recycling boxes from nearby Lambeth council which they have lined with anti-pest copper lining, and compost from an organisation that creates it from waste locally. They are also on site to help you plant the first seeds of the season.

The scheme’s participants often share holiday watering duties, seeds, and excess bounty with each other. On the day we meet, Mayfield offers Knocker three green chillies from his own balcony’s yield. Mayfield and Lujic provide as much horticultural advice as required, making periodic visits to check on progress, and arranging social events for participants to swap growing tips.

Other participants are more naturally green-fingered than Knocker. Susan Sheehan, a 42-year-old writer, has a front garden resplendent with door-height beanstalks, broccoli leaves, carrots, spinach, purple peas, tomatoes and runner beans. Her house is in an affluent street near Tooting Common but, like many urban areas, her back garden does not provide surplus space for rows of well-drilled vegetables.

Sheehan says: “My back garden is for the children, the front for me.” Her children are eagerly learning about the origins of their food, and often “pull the carrots out and eat them like rabbits.” Sheehan’s plot is doing more than expanding upwards with her giant sweetcorn plants. Her neighbour has offered his front garden for her to regenerate an overgrown and unused space, perhaps in return for some of her homemade carrot and spinach soup? She has also successfully persuaded four other residents on nearby streets to sign up.

Although this summer has been the wettest summer on record, with challenging growing conditions, the scheme is set to continue and hopes to expand further, with seeds for winter salads being handed out at the next social event in a local pub.

With her harvesting complete, Knocker heads indoors to prepare a fresh salad of rocket, pine nuts and olive oil. Nearby Waitrose’s salad revenues may not be significantly down due to her switch to salad self-sufficiency, but if the scheme continues to grow the supermarket may have some cause for concern.

For more information: www.foodupfront.org

Click here for the latest installment from Times Online's New Urban Farmer

THIS WEEKEND

London City Harvest Festival
Urban gardeners and farmers across the capital showcase food produced in London. This family event is on 22nd September at Capel Manor College, Enfield, and is as close as London gets to its own county show, complete with animals and cookery demonstrations. "The container of food plants" competition awards prizes for imagination: “The prize might go to tomatoes growing out of an old shoe, or a windowbox of salad leaves," says Oliver Rowe, the owner and head chef of the restaurant Konstam, which sources more than 90 per cent of its produce from within the area covered by the London Underground. (08456 122 122; www.capelmanorgardens.co.uk)

The Middlesbrough Town Meal
The finale of a community project that has involved more than 1,000 people takes place this Saturday, September 22, in Centre Square. It marks the end of Urban Farming, a project that is part of Designs of the Time 2007 (Dott 07), and has seen individuals and community groups cultivating their own food in unusual places.

NEXT WEEKEND

The Farming to Food Show
Potters Field, More London, 27th-28th September 2007, opens with a traditional Michaelmas drive of black turkeys, geese, ducks and chickens on to the site, and will host British producers and farmers and their wares, including: Jamaican vegetable farmer - Clara's Pepper Pots; cold-pressed rapeseed oil producer Farrington Oils; organic wines from Sedlescombe vineyard and cooking demonstrations by Michelin-starred chef Adam Gray, showing visitors how to prepare simple, fresh and quick meals.

More neighbourhood garden schemes

GroFun, in Bristol, co-ordinates groups of neighbours in communities to grow food in their own back gardens, sharing labour, resources and food. E-mail: nadiahillman@yahoo.ca

Tavistock Garden Share Alliance, in Tavistock, Devon, has a Vegetable Garden Share Scheme that partners able gardeners with garden owners who are not able to use their garden to its full potential. Contact Chris Avent (01822 613743; C.Avent@bctv.org.uk)

Green Lane Oasis Community Garden Project, South Shields, Tyne and Wear (0191 424 5460; istimpson@crtne.org.uk) This project cultivates derelict allotments to produce organic vegetables for sale to the community. Works with volunteers, a local school, and people with mental health issues.

Moulsecoomb Forest Garden and Wildlife project, near Brighton.
An allotment scheme which works with local schools and aims to improve community health by offering organic and locally grown vegetables to low income families and older people. Volunteers take home vegetables. Anyone can participate in the pick and cook events, where food picked on site is then prepared and cooked on site for everyone to try. (079888 37951; www.seedybusiness.org) Email: info@seedybusiness.org

Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses, South-East London
Volunteers, including ex-offenders and a homeless group, grow vegetables to sell to the local community (0208 671 5936; Email: shane@gn.apc.org)

The Year of Food and Farming is a government campaign, in partnership with industry, to promote healthy living by giving young people direct experience of the countryside, farming and food. The year runs from September 2007 to July 2008. For more details: www.yearoffoodandfarming.org.uk/

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