Roots in the City: How an Urban Farm internship is inspiring parallel thoughts about education

From the main road, you might miss it. There’s a golf course on one side, a woodland on the other and a couple of bus stops right by the entrance. But step through the gate and follow the path down to the far left corner and you’re in Sitopia Farm: a two-acre organic plot stitched into a Woodland Trust site in south-east London.

It’s August now. The beds are a patchwork of colour - aesthetically-pleasing sunflowers, glossy courgettes, feathery fennel - bordered by untidy grass where the odd golf ball hides among clover and beet leaves. When you bend down to weed among the flowers, you feel the slime of the fluorescent orange slugs, while hearing the rustle of sparrows or field mice family, the occasional cry from the golf course and the steady hum of the main road beyond.

The wildlife here is as much part of the crew as the weekly volunteers. There’s Russell, a resident crow with a habit of watching everything from a fencepost, and two small robins who flit between beds, still waiting to be named. On some mornings, their song mingles with the clink of trowels and the low chatter of people working side-by-side.

The wider site is full of small stories. Grandparents bring grandchildren to see the chickens and sheep; a free day out, but also a chance to show them where food comes from. “The Shed” charity operates here too, offering older men a workshop, a kettle, and company, all under the guise of carpentry. Each pocket of the wider site feels different, with shaded woodland paths, open fields and the social buzz of the sheep pens alongside Sitopia - the one that feeds my inner being. It provides armfuls of edible goodness, rows of floral beauty for local wedding tables and a hum of activity that’s both purposeful and gentle.

The Alchemy Beneath Our Feet

The farm runs on cycles. Compost arrives in dark mounds from the local authority - the product of countless kitchen food bins filled with coffee grounds, carrot peelings and banana skins (and the odd plastic party packet, reminding us we're still very much in London). I used to assume this waste went to landfill. Instead, it has actually been transformed, returned to feed the soil that feeds the plants that feed some of the people who filled those food bins in the first place.

Sometimes the planting is for the soil itself: green manure in the form of bulgar wheat or nitrogen-fixing legumes like clover and vetch. These crops are never harvested for eating, but ploughed back in, quietly improving the earth for whatever comes next.

It’s a rhythm that anthroposophy - Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy - recognises in human growth too. In learning, as in farming, not everything must produce an immediate result. Some work exists to prepare the ground, strengthen unseen roots and create the conditions for flourishing later.

Seasons, Not Deadlines

Here, you quickly realise there’s no rushing a seed. The process is deliberate: prepare the soil, plant carefully, tend daily and give it time. Steiner’s biodynamic farming treats land as a living organism; his education model does the same for schools. Both accept that growth is seasonal, not linear - you respect the natural pace and work with it, rather than against it.

This is where the farm offers a counterpoint to the AI era’s tempo. Technology promises speed, efficiency and instant results, but the development of curiosity, moral sense and resilience is more like a root system - invisible at first, spreading quietly, strengthened by time and care.

Many Wheels Turning

In education today, there is broad agreement: change is overdue. But it won’t come from a single reform. It will look more like this farm, where one idea, followed by a circle of hands and minds making it real, has created a ripple effect of benefits: jobs for local people, fresh organic food for the community, volunteer opportunities, education for children and a stronger local ecosystem (including more bees!).

Across the Education sector, countless small wheels are already turning - teachers testing new approaches, parents pushing for balance over pressure, communities creating alternative spaces, technologists seeking to make AI more human-centred. Like composting, each act enriches the whole, even if the result isn’t immediate.

The Lesson of the Farm

By late afternoon, the light softens over the field. Someone stacks empty crates in the shed; others linger, chatting. A bus hisses to a stop just beyond the hedge. Inside, the rows are quiet now, except for Russell and the two robins, hopping between the shadows in the poly-tunnel.

The work here is slow, repetitive and sometimes physically exhausting. But it is also purposeful, beautiful and rooted in connection - to the land, to each other and to something larger - so the headaches (like the ones I get in teaching) are non-existent.

In farming and in education, the truth holds: you cannot force growth. You can only create the right conditions and trust that, given care, diversity, and time, life will find its way.