Impact Investment Snapshot:
Founded in 2021: Frustrated by a 28-year allotment waitlist in Lambeth, three friends launched Roots Allotments to revolutionise local food production.
Subscription Service: Starting from £9.99 a month, Roots provides allotment patches, tools, seeds, plants, knowledge, and a supportive community for members to grow their own food.
Growth: From their first site in Bath, Roots has grown across the UK from Leeds to Bristol, with their 9th site launching soon.
No Dig Method: Advocates of Charles Dowding’s "no dig" method, to regenerate soil health and reduce need for weeding and watering.
10-Year Vision: 1,000 global sites with 250,000 members growing organic food while regenerating soils.
We caught up with Ed, Christian, and Will, the visionaries behind Roots Allotments — a pioneering platform reconnecting people with the joy of growing their own food. Their ambition is bold and urgent: establish 1,000 sites globally, shifting the food narrative from supermarket reliance to regenerative, community-grown produce.
Be The Earth Foundation is thrilled to have supported Roots during the early stages of their journey. After speaking with the trio, you’re left with a savoury taste that Roots could be exactly what our broken food systems needs.
On the ground at their Croydon allotment, Will was busy building wheelbarrows, Christian was driving across the UK on site visits, and Ed enjoyed a rare moment of tranquillity in his garden.
What’s the origin story behind Roots?
Will:
It's quite funny actually. Christian and I met because I launched a competing club night — he swiftly killed my night as he was more experienced. So I ended up working for him! Ed was running the cocktail bar upstairs. We've been mates for over 12 years now.
I come from farming stock — my twin runs our family farm where our first Bath site was. I worked in events and sales for 10 years before returning to my roots.
Christian:
I come from a family of entrepreneurs. No one in my family has ever had a job — I don't think we're very employable! When I was 22, I built a semi successful tech company which I sold to an energy firm.
We came up with the idea behind Roots over some pints after a game of squash in Brixton!
Ed:
I worked in advertising for 7 years before becoming disillusioned with the industry. I quit my job and moved home with my grandma in Devon. That's when I went to a growing talk by Charles Dowding.
During lockdown, I was inspired to start growing my own food. It was transformational: it helped me heal from my shitty experiences in advertising and helped me heal from grief. I’d found something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
We wanted to get our own allotment in Lambeth but found a 28-year waiting list. Luckily, Will’s family had this 9-acre field that we could test our idea on… We sold out in a few months!
How do you choose your sites?
Christian:
We use software to identify fields around cities and then analyse the population data. We aim for 150,000 people within a 15-minute drive. Accessibility is key — we also consider how many people are within a 20-minute cycle and nearby public transport links.
After identifying sites, we send around 300 letters to landowners per city; we get a 15% response rate. The land is generally private — we try to avoid Council land because it can be a sensitive subject for some.
Will:
Most Councils are systematically failing to provide allotments, despite their legal responsibility. Leasing to us could seem like privatisation, which is not what we are. We’re about giving more people access to land, creating new growing spaces, not taking over existing ones.
Who are your backers?
Christian:
We’ve got support from key players like the guys from Innocent Smoothies, the original Soho House investors, and Sir Terry Leahy — former Tesco CEO. Terry’s experience in scaling locations from 300 to 6000 is invaluable. He understands how to build businesses to scale in the most efficient way, and now he’s putting his money where his mouth is — which is a really good place!
To reach 1000 locations, we’re looking at £300-400 million investment, so that investor mindset is crucial.
Biggest challenge so far?
Christian:
Compost — at scale. We’ve uncovered a significant issue within growing: I think the UK would be frightened to find out that thousands of tons of unsieved compost gets ploughed into our fields across the UK. On occasion, we've found things such as dolls legs and bits of plastic in our 10mm sieved compost.
We want to figure out a way to totally minimise non-organic matter ending up in council green waste compost and utilise it as part of a circular system.
We’re planning on getting ourselves to 50-60 locations in the UK and then tackling the problem with a Roots-owned composting facility.
Ed:
There’s some compost legends out there — Michael Kennard from Compost Club, Pete’s Peat-Free — all doing great work to solve the issue on a local scale. It would be lush to collaborate with them, and I reckon we’ll find the answer. Hopefully we can scale it so that it's affordable and the quality that our planet deserves — without some of the strange things in it that we sometimes find!
Will:
Transporting compost is also a challenge. We're buying it at such a scale — in a few years we will probably be the UK’s biggest purchasers. This site that I'm on now needs up to 3000 tonnes!
What do you love most about your work?
Ed:
I love physically seeing the impact we have on people and nature around our sites. People come up to me and say, “I’ve had a really shit week, then I come here and feel totally cleansed of that negative energy”. In our mental health crisis, providing people with that space is amazing.
We’ve also seen a 221% increase in biodiversity at our Bath site in just 3 years. This year, we've had 3 hedgehog litters.
While everyone on social media is asking where the bees, butterflies, and moths are — if you walk around one of our sites, they’re there in abundance. Creating these bastions of safe spaces for pollinators is wicked. I love it.
Oh, and I get to grow my own food! I've just hit 40 kgs of produce from my 36-square-metre patch. I’m recording all my harvests this year, and at the end of the season, I’ll calculate it against organic and non-organic supermarket prices, as well as single-use plastic savings. It’ll be an important experiment.
Will:
I love the hard work! I studied engineering at uni, so I love solving all the problems that we have. I’ve done events, engineering, sales — now I'm back in agriculture, which is where I always wanted to be.
We’re farming without a farm, and that’s exciting. It’s basically a big farm diversification project!
My dream has always been to own my own farm, and this is a step in that direction.
Christian:
Ever since I was a kid, I've wanted to solve a global problem with a massive impact. I’ve always looked for business ideas that I thought could have huge opportunities and scale.
The global allotment shortage combined with the supermarket’s stranglehold is that problem. To see how much impact we can have over the next 20 years — that gets me up in the morning. It’s a massive opportunity.
Ed:
My favourite thing about Roots? It's a bit “f**k the system”, but in the humblest way — we're just people growing food in a field.
