Green-fingered families brought their pride and joy to a farm as it held its first ever community harvest festival.

The event, held at Newham City Farm, in Beckton gave them the chance to exhibit the produce they have grown at home and in their community.

Families from the area brought their vegetables, flowers and displays to the Stansfeld Road farm where children enjoyed a variety of activities including dressing up as scare crows. The event also gave the farm’s junior volunteers the opportunity to show off their animal handling skills.

There were prizes for the most unusual looking fruit or vegetables, the largest pumpkin, best sunflowers and the best displays from a community garden.

First time exhibitor Katie Blake won the category for the largest variety of home grown produce while Alison Touzout, a gardening volunteer at the farm, won the category for best container of herbs and best display from a home grower.

Anna Whatley, community education and involvement worker at the farm, said the event was such a success that they plan to hold another one next year.

She said: “We have recently enjoyed building a team of wonderful community gardeners and see no better way to celebrate this. We want to encourage more people to get involved at the farm through many new clubs and opportunities that are becoming available to the community and hope that this event will inspire people from across Newham. We aim to grow the Community Harvest Festival as an annual event and want to encourage schools, community groups and families to become more and more involved.”