From Thursday 4th February, you’ll be able to pick-up organic fruit and veg bags from Growing Communities’ community-led box scheme at The Castle every week!

Growing Communities’ veg box scheme is a great way of:

• reducing your carbon footprint
• supporting local organic farmers
• getting lots of delicious fruit and vegetables.

The Growing Communities’ box scheme is the only London box scheme that has salad bags which are actually grown in Hackney! Growing Communities’ is committed to cutting food miles and to supporting small sustainable farmers. Last year 81% of the vegetables on the scheme came direct from local farms. Growing Communities never buys air-freighted produce.

This January saw the launch of the latest Growing Communities’ micro-site in the grounds of The Castle. A bonus for box scheme members who pick-up from the Castle will be that over the next couple of years they will be able to see the salad for their bags being grown in The Castle grounds.

Ida Fabrizio and Sophie Verhagen, who both graduated from the Growing Communities’ Urban Apprentice Scheme last year, will be clearing the site over the next few weeks ready to start building raised beds which will produce the salad. Ida is also running a wider growing project at the Castle which will include fruit trees, fruit bushes and herbs.

For more details and to join the pick-up scheme at The Castle go to: http://www.growingcommunities.org/box-scheme/index.htm.

If you’d like to find out more about Growing Communities and how they are working to take back our food system go to: www.growingcommunities.org

For more details on the Castle Environmental projects and policy go to: http://sustainablecastle.blogspot.com/.