From knives and riots to a rich seam of community spirit

It's Friday and there's a vegetable stall selling fresh produce from farms in Norfolk and Kent, both of which deliver to the centre early morning. The prices are incredibly low. Jane Silverman and Ruth Green, local residents who run the stall, only add on 10 per cent to the purchase cost, making a lovely-looking cauliflower just £1.14 and a kilo of still-wet-from-the-fields spinach just £1.10. They don't just sell fruit and veg. Further down the trestle tables are dry goods bought from Community Foods in south London: organic lentils, five varieties of rice, pulses, oats, barley, dried fruit, nuts, all bagged into half-kilos.

Again, they just add 10 per cent, making a bag of bulgar wheat £1.15 a kilo, organic brown rice £1.04 and le puy lentils £1.35.

"Anyone can do it," Jane says. "You just need a community to sell to. We buy in orders of up to £200. It's plenty."

Anything left over goes to the kitchen, where it is transformed into the Friday lunch. This is another community project. Every Friday, different nationalities cook one course. The day I'm there it is the turn of a Portuguese cook, next week it might be Turkish, Russian or Malaysian. In come a group of women who have been on the Natural Health Walk, also organised by volunteers to encourage estate and local residents to get out and walk.

Outside in the garden, volunteers are working on the raised vegetable beds. It is a Capital Growth site, funded from other sources. The workers come from GP referrals and the local psychiatric hospital, St Anne's, as gardening is proven to be one of the best therapies for troubled minds. Beyond the fence is the park: people are walking, kicking footballs, looking for conkers and pushing prams. It wasn't always like this.

"The funding cuts to parks in the Eighties and Nineties reduced the number of park staff in Haringey from 300 to just 60," explains Dave Morris, who runs the local Friends Group and chairs its user forum. "This place was a nightmare 10 years ago: dog mess, broken fences, long grass, rubbish, weeds."

Working with local councillor Paul Ely, they decided to try and put it right. "After the riots, the residents of the estate had made an amazing effort to change things. They planted some trees and created a few grassy spaces: before, it was concrete everywhere. They lobbied to build this community centre and put proper locks on the doors. But over the years, things started to slow up. When we took over, not much was happening."

Paul and Dave were joined by Martin Burrows, founder of local charity Back to Earth, responsible for all the food projects on the estate. They wanted to create a vibrant community, with the centre at its heart but with plenty of activities. Trax, the Saturday bike club, has 100 members. Then there's the Friday meal, which they hope to extend across the week, the walks, the sewing club and the horticultural displays. There's also a football team, an annual dog show, a peace picnic, a mother-and-toddler club, tai chi and sports training for 11- to 19-year-olds.

Paul, Dave and Martin wanted to create the space in which these things could happen, then let others take over their management. It would be a disaster if this good work was undone by funding cuts. It's taken 25 years to get this far from the day PC Blakelock was stabbed to death yards from where a group of people are enjoying a healthy lunch.