Meeting with MP Sir Stephen Timms at Newham's First Food Forest

Thank you to everyone who helped to pave the way for today’s visit with our MP, Sir Stephen Timms! Countless man (and woman) hours went into maintaining the site, further to our initial ground prep and planting days, including extending the site from its original boundary and installing the large rainwater harvesting system.

Between us we have added new plants, weeded, removed litter, watered during hot spells and helped keep pests at bay. Fortunately, we will see less such work required as the food forest gets further established with mature plants, we install an anti-littering mesh barrier, plus passive irrigation system for times of drought.

The meeting with MP, Sir Stephen Timms went well today. We would have liked to have been able to include all our members but didn’t do too badly for a weekday.

Thank you to Sir Stephen Timms for kindly requesting a meeting to see the food forest for himself, with explanation from us. We were happy to have this opportunity with Stephen, a serving minister in the government cabinet, to show him the first Newham-based example of this truly sustainable, perennial food growing system which will not require chemical inputs once established. We find ourselves in the fortunate position to be able to communicate to our MP just how important food forests are to our long-term food security and why we need more of these throughout the UK.