Ines Jeveons speaks to Young Green Party Co-Chair Ciara Alleyne about her plans for the upcoming local council elections, and her penchant for plant-potting
From canvassing and gardening to socialising and studying, Ciara Alleyne is a madly impressive young woman. At just 22, the Brighton denizen manages a position as a co-chair of the Young Greens (tipped as Zack Polanski’s protegee by party insiders), a steady netball streak and a master’s at Imperial College in environmental technology.
She may be on the brink of a burgeoning political career, but Alleyne is also just a girl next door, with a touch more greenery about her. Second to her nine-to-five canvassing around Lambeth for the upcoming election this May, Alleyne is a plant mother. “It’s my guilty pleasure – I love going to a garden centre or a plant shop,” she says. Nurturing small potted plants on her Balham balcony has become her swift solution to maximising the limited green space she has in London, as well as combatting insane prices for fresh produce.
She continues, with true political flair: “I recognise that in order to live the perfect sustainable life, it involves quite a fair amount of privilege in terms of having the money to be able to decide where you want to shop and not having to just get the cheapest option. So both while growing up and now, I will just go to the cheapest supermarket.”
The British-Barbadian grew up in Hove, Brighton with her mother, who planted the roots of her political drive. Alleyne’s sense of worldliness is a mosaic of a council estate upbringing and her mother’s resourcefulness as a sole provider. She was forced to assume a political identity long before any of her peers.
“Blatant racism was something Alleyne encountered in most classrooms.… Standing up for herself spurred her political career into action.”
Where most children begin to erect a political belief system aged fifteen, Alleyne remembers having to embrace her voice as early as primary school: “Unfortunately it was early – I remember in primary school, people would be racist to me.”
Blatant racism was something Alleyne encountered in most classrooms, and was an unceasing occurrence throughout her school career. “It was really awful in secondary school, to be honest,” she recalls.“Like people would just kind of like throw around the N-word all the time – I was like, but I’m mixed. Are you guys just ignoring half of my identity?”
Standing up for herself spurred her political career into action. Before the age of twenty-two, Alleyene boasted an appointment as Head Girl and a degree in politics from the London School of Economics – before embarking on a master’s in environmental technology from Imperial College London, a highly competitive course.
Overachieving might just be Alleyne’s signature. “I think being at LSE made me realise, okay, now I’m in that space where I can grab these opportunities…. And I just went a bit crazy.”
Alleyne quickly became a member of the Labour Party – a “common” trope for people from working-class backgrounds, Alleyne says – but it wasn’t until she met Zack Polanski, then deputy head of the Green Party, that her perspective was entirely changed.
“I spoke to Zack and I was like, ‘Look, the general election’s coming up. My main goal is to help with getting the Conservatives out.’ I said to him: ‘You’ve really impressed me, but I’m just so concerned that I need to tactically vote in order to get them out.’ He essentially gave me the pitch: he explained that if you’re not voting for what you believe in, what’s the point? I cancelled my Labour Party membership and joined the Greens on the train home,” she recalls.
Alleyne converted to the Greens on the cusp of their true political recognition. She was appointed co-chair of the Young Greens in September 2025, almost exactly the same time as Polanski’s landslide election to party leader. It seems they have flourished together: Polanski has proved to be a great mentor to Alleyne, who is now standing for election as a Green candidate for Herne Hill & Loughborough Junction in the Lambeth local election later this year.
“He explained that if you’re not voting for what you believe in, what’s the point? I cancelled my Labour Party membership and joined the Greens on the train home.”
Spinning plates is something Alleyne enjoys, so she’s naturally impossible to lock down for an interview.
Over Zoom, we chat about the everyday practices that make her Green through and through. Alleyne reveals a penchant for potting: “My boyfriend Felix, he made a wooden palette into a little flower bed. So I’ve started planting my bulbs – hyacinths and some pansies. And I want to start doing tomatoes and strawberries, because they’re so expensive to buy.”
If she can, Alleyne will shop local: “I really love Electric Avenue and Brixton Market, Brixton Village. There are loads of little independent shops there selling fresh produce. I absolutely love to get food from there. And it’s nice to support local businesses as well as getting cheap prices.”
Greenery seems to be a natural impulse for Alleyne. “I think it’s important to support local businesses and to develop that kind of local economy,” she says. “It has profound benefits – not just on the livelihood of [British] farmers, but also community values. I think buying from your neighbours encourages cohesion – it’s that community vibe that we’re going for.”
In her spare time, Alleyne can be spotted cycling between South West and South East London on a Forest bike (for sustainability reasons, obviously), playing netball competitively for Imperial’s College Netball Club and tending to her beloved plant pots.
All bets are on Lady Greenfingers for electoral success in May – she might just have it.