NOBEL Prize winner Wangari Maathai was in East London to plant an apple tree as part of her world movement to create more sustainable living. The first black African woman to receive the Nobel Peace prize arrived at Spitalfields city farm where she planted a Cox’s Orange Pippin

NOBEL Prize winner Wangari Maathai was in East London to plant an apple tree as part of her world movement to create more sustainable living.

The first black African woman to receive the Nobel Peace prize arrived at Spitalfields city farm where she planted a Cox's Orange Pippin.

She invited children from the nearby Thomas Buxton School in Whitechapel to help her with the tree and surround it with wild flowers and shrubs.

The children had designed flags on 'saving the environment' in a competition run by the farm, with the winner receiving an animal sponsorship.

The classic English apple tree arose as a chance seedling from a pip around 1825 and has inspired apple lovers ever since.

Spitalfields farm, celebrating its 30th year of bringing a little countryside to the heart of the East End, also started its life as a 'small seedling' as allotments created on land at the back of Allen Gardens no longer needed as railway sidings when the old Bishopsgate goodsyard closed down. It has grown into one of East London's popular visitor centres.

Prof Maathai included Spitalfields City Farm while in London visiting the Green Belt Movement, the charity she founded in 1977 to promote sustainable livelihoods in Kenya which has planted four million trees to date.

She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.