‘The system is the problem, not people’: how a radical food group spread round the world

Her big idea is guerrilla gardening – with a twist. Where guerrilla gardeners subvert urban spaces by reintroducing nature, Incredible Edible’s growers go one step further: planting food on public land and then inviting all-comers to take it and eat.

“I used food because it seemed to me that we needed to act fast,” Warhurst says. “We needed to get experience as soon as we could, and probably food was the thing that we could demonstrate an alternative way of living around, in a really simple way.”

Warhurst conceptualises the mission of Incredible Edible as three spinning plates: “You grow, in the place you call home, food to share – sometimes you ask permission, sometimes you don’t. You share the skills you’ve got, you find out who knows how to do things in your community.

“And the third plate is, if you’re really going to try to create impact in the place you call home, you have to try and support the economy, you have to try and see if there’s local jobs in it.”

The result is an all-round benefit for the community: free, healthy food, physical activity, and a forum to connect with neighbours in an increasingly atomised society. And for Warhurst, it shows something else: “What it’s doing is demonstrating that in a crisis when you’ve not got a load of money, there’s a lot you can do if you trust the people.”