Our vision for Wolves Lane Centre is a thriving space for sustainable growing, education, social enterprise and community engagement.
What’s going on?
Plant Sale on Sundays
Get your vegetable seedlings and house plants from our organic growers at Wolves Lane. Visit our Centre on Sundays between 11.00 am – 3.00 pm.
Cash and card accepted.
We have also a variety of ornamentals and edibles for sale. Our volunteers have been taking cuttings from plants around the site and the palm house so you can grow them at home. There are also herbs and seasonal fruits and vegetables.
Our lovely vegan chef from Love Food serves a selection of vegan and gluten-free delights, available most Sundays. Kids meals and drinks are also available.
FREE family craft activities – from 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm.
Cactus and palm houses are open for visitors.
The Wolves Lane Centre – Shop & Food
By shopping and donating at the WLC Shop & Food you are helping to support this vision and maintenance of our treasured glass houses.
VOLUNTEER WITH US!
Food and horticulture volunteering opportunities at Wolves Lane provide you with the chance to spend time with nature, have fun, get active, share your knowledge and meet new people.
Wolves Lane Seed Bank
We are embarking on starting our own seed bank and seed distribution to support new food growers & equip people with seed starter kits to grow from home, either on a windowsill, balcony or in their gardens.
How to get involved?
We would love to receive donations of seeds from growers on your allotment. These may be seeds they have harvested from previous crops, or even excess seeds that they no longer want or need.
Step 1. Put the seeds into an envelope. Include the label with the type of seed, the year that the seed was harvested and name of donating allotment.
Step 2. Leave the envelope at the drop box at Wolves Lane Centre (available from 18th Jan)
Or Post: Send the seeds in an envelope addressed to:
Seed Bank, Wolves Lane Centre, Wolves Lane, Wood Green N22 5JD
Wolves Lane Centre Development
Our plan for building works is gathering pace! We are going to be redeveloping the whole back of the site – see this post for more details here
Tree work
To make way for the new buildings on site, we have to remove some trees that will compromise the foundations of the new buildings. The majority of the trees we’ll be felling are leylandii around the border of the site. These are not considered high quality trees, and have been planted very close to each other, so they need thinning out. We will remove one-third of these leylandii, which will aid more light penetration and visibility into the site and growing areas, as well as making space for the new buildings. Rest assured we will do this work before nesting season so breeding is not disrupted. All the timber we fell will be reused in the build or on site, including structural posts for the building and garden furniture, as well as mulching with woodchip.
See the chart elbow for details of the trees that will be going, marked in red.
Emergency COVID response at Wolves Lane
We’re responding the increased food insecurity brought on by the pandemic in two ways:
COVID-19 Meal project
We’ve adapted our community kitchen project to produce free meals for those hardest hit by the pandemic. Every week our volunteer chefs and food preppers are producing nutritious meals from surplus food, which are currently being distributed to the Selby Food Hub and Homes For Haringey.
This project is managed by Crop Drop and funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, Haringey Giving and Crop Drop customer donations. This project is also made possible by the surplus food donations from the Felix Project.
Food production
We have increased our food production at Wolves Lane to assist with the emergency food effort in Haringey. The additional produce will be donated, used for the COVID-19 Meal project and sold at a considerable discount to the community to support some of the most vulnerable residents in Haringey.
As part of our Food for All project, we have been growing produce to support the community during the pandemic. We’ve been delivering to local schools, senior homes, local elderly and vulnerable residents in Haringey, Lordship Hub and many more.
This is currently funded by the London Community Response Fund.
Whilst we have our own emergency food distribution at Wolves Lane, there are neighbouring boroughs who are also contributing to this essential work.
Rootz into Food Growing
RiFG is a collaboration project between The Ubele Initiative, OrganicLea, Black Rootz and Land In Our Names (LION) funded by Farming the Future.
Rootz into Food Growing (RiFG) aims to challenge and disrupt some of the structural inequalities that exist within the current UK food growing sector through the creation of a network of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic led growers pan-London who will receive relevant skills development and training opportunities enabling them to grow commercially.
News
Hiring Two Growing Apprenticeships 18-25y/o
We are delighted to be able to recruit two paid apprentice growers 18-25y/o at the Wolves Lane Centre, to work with the various growers and groups on site to get work-based training in small-scale commercial growing, as a first step in their career in food growing.
We received National Lottery funding to develop a community food hub
Since April we have been part of the Covid-19 emergency response providing cooked meals for distribution in the local area. This service has been complimented by our own food growing activity where fresh, healthy and culturally appropriate produce is being grown and distributed in the local area to schools food parcel programmes, youth clubs and …
Continue reading “We received National Lottery funding to develop a community food hub”
Have your say about the future of the Wolves Lane Centre!
The Wolves Lane Consortium is in the process of developing the Wolves Lane Garden and Horticultural Centre into a community hub. Our vision for Wolves Lane is a thriving centre for growing and distributing wholesome food and a space for the local food economy to develop through education, enterprise, and events, making good food accessible …
Continue reading “Have your say about the future of the Wolves Lane Centre!”
Who we are
Wolves Lane Centre was a council-run site that combined plant nursery operations and garden centre with community and schools education and volunteering. Haringey Council have been running the site since 2009, but Government cuts to their budgets led to a reduction in funding. As a result, it was agreed that a third party would be best placed to utilise the site and maintain it as a community asset.
We formed a coalition with a shared vision to transform Wolves Lane into a community food hub and to preserve the extensive rare urban glasshouse infrastructure. The Wolves Lane Consortium was officially established in May 2019.
The Wolves Lane Consortium
OrganicLea offering support from experience of running a community enterprise in food growing and training at Hawkwood Nursery.
The Ubele Initiative is an African Diaspora led intergenerational social enterprise founded in 2014, with the purpose of helping to build more sustainable communities across the UK. They support a wide range of communities, community-based organisations and groups with their community assets through social action, community enterprise development and next-generation leadership initiatives.
Wolves Lane Centre is also a home for a number of groups, projects and activities, which include:
Wolves Lane Flower Company are part of a new wave of farmer/florists committed to offering ethical, beautiful flowers while spreading the word about seasonality. They grow beautiful seasonal flowers for weddings, events and local delivery, with the environment at the forefront of their minds, using no-dig organic techniques.
Ottolenghi staff grows produce that provides part of their monthly veggie supply.
Black Rootz is the first multigenerational black-led growing project in the UK, where the older generation share their expertise on growing whilst also supporting youth engagement in their surrounding natural environment.
Friends of Wolves Lane is a group of volunteers and local residents. All welcome.
Our partners
Shared Assets, a ‘think and do tank’ which is researching and promoting good models of public land management.
LION, a Black-led, grassroots collective committed to reparative justice in Britain by securing land for BPOC (Black people and People of Colour) communities.
Supported by
Get in touch!
Want to get involved in gardening, natural food growing or any other activity happening at our Centre?
If you are interested, want to know more or would like to join in, please get in touch.
Sign up to Wolves Lane Newsletter & get regular updates delivered straight to your inbox!
* we won’t spam you or share your details.
Your address and personal information will be safely stored in our database. We do not share or sell this information with anyone. You can unsubscribe from this list at any time.