Sean cultivates fresh food and friends at city farm

Sean took inspiration from his mother, Savitri, a “great gardener and grower”. He moved to the UK to study and worked as a lawyer in London for 15 years but never forgot her passion for growing and eating her own food.

When Sean stopped practising law he opened a chain of health food shops. Then, when his mother became ill, he became her full-time carer for 12 years.

Savitri’s death, in January 2022, had a profound effect on Sean. He said, “It was very traumatic for me because it was unexpected. I went through some low times. Keeping myself going, keeping healthy and staying energised was very important and I decided to devote myself to gardening again.”

Sean, who is 57 and lives in Hackney, first became aware of the National Lottery-funded Spitalfields City Farm when it was featured in a TV programme. Intrigued, he visited the farm – a 1.3-acre plot on the site of a former railway goods depot - in January 2024. He said, “It looked like an amazing project and I wanted to get involved.”

Spitalfields City Farm is just one of the 700,000 amazing projects to receive National Lottery funding over the past 30 years.

Founded in 1978, the farm is an oasis in the heart of London where volunteers grow produce and tend to a menagerie of animals that includes sheep, donkeys, goats, a pig, chickens, rabbits, ducks and even ferrets. Adults and children – many of them from Tower Hamlets, a densely populated and multicultural London borough – get the chance to learn new skills, grow their own food and be part of a welcoming community.

Sean sensed the farm was special the first time he visited. He said, “It was a cold, wet day in January, but it had a kind of magic. There was an incredible sense of cooperation.”

After signing up as a volunteer a few months later, he helped Lutfun Hussain – a member of the local Bengali community – plant and harvest produce. Sean said, “I’m not the most talkative person and I have a stammer when I’m anxious. But I love the community you find here, the team spirit. People are working in harmony with nature, with the animals and the seasons. I feel a strong affinity with that.”

Sean feels “absolutely energised” by the day he spends each week volunteering at Spitalfields City Farm. It gives him a sense of doing something worthwhile and gives him a sense of connection to his late mother.

He said, “I think I’ve inherited something from my mother. I grew up eating fresh food and when I leave the farm I often have bunches of fresh spinach in my bag. This is a place where you can see food being produced from seed to harvest.”

Get a ferret’s-eye-view of Spitalfields City Farm by watching our video below.

17th January 2025