Abbey Gardens

Abbey Gardens is a community garden open to all visitors, based in West Ham, London. It surrounds the ruins of a 12th century abbey. Registered Charity 1158147

Abbey Gardens is a community garden and park with local history: it surrounds the remains of the gatehouse of Stratford Langthorne Abbey.

It’s different from an allotment: we grow and harvest food and flowers together at our free, drop-in gardening sessions on Tuesdays 1pm-3pm, Thursdays 4pm-7pm and Saturdays 11am-4pm. New gardeners are always welcome, no experience necessary, tools and gloves are provided. We also run sessions with local schools, health organisations and corporate volunteers. We only harvest at our gardening sessions: at the end of each session, we share what we’ve harvested.

But it isn’t all about gardening: Abbey Gardens is run by and for the local community by Friends of Abbey Gardens, a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, with a small board of Trustees from the garden’s founding group and wider community of interest. Friends of Abbey Gardens has monthly planning meetings which are open to anyone interested to get involved behind the scenes or hear the latest news. And we have volunteers who help with tech, maintenance, social media, graphic design, blogging, event setup and stallholding, finance and the many other jobs that help the garden to thrive.

The garden is open to visitors every day from dawn to dusk. We hold regular community events and we often take part in The Big Lunch and Open Garden Squares Weekend.