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Food from the Sky

A forward-thinking city supermarket – Thornton’s Budgens in Crouch End – has given its roof over to be a vegetable patch in the sky. This community garden is being put together by local community volunteers and the positive earth project.

“The space on the roof is vast and full of potential – 400/500 m² to start a pilot project that we aim to set up as sustainably as possible ( re-using, re-pairing and re-cycling as much as possible what can be found in our community) while growing, educating, promoting and selling ‘endangered vegetables’, fruits, mushrooms and herbs that will then be sold to the local community in the store below.

Our seeds will be then gathered, swapped and given away every year to the community.

We are also planning to have a few chickens (no foxes on roofs) and top bar bee hives in the near future, following the Natural bee keeping method.”

For more details you can check out the news article from the BBC or look at the Food from the Sky Ning networking site. If you’d like to support the project, they are currently in need of second-gand gardening tools and plant pots, polytunnel frames, wormeries, watering cans, a wheelbarrow, shelving units, mushroom inoculation logs and funding streams!

Flow Form

In the latest episode of the Alternative Kitchen Garden Show I’m talking about the course I went on at Garden Organic Ryton last week – an introduction to biodynamic gardening.

One of the things we learned about were flow forms – carefully designed water features that turn a steady stream of water into a series of rhythmic pulses. There are two flow forms at Ryton, one in the Cook’s Garden and one in the Biodynamic Garden itself.

This is a short film of the one in the Biodynamic Garden. I took it with my iPhone, and the day was overcast, so there’s not much light. And I have shaky hands, but if you look carefully (particularly at the bottom section of the flow form) then you can make out the changes in the water flow. It’s probably easier if you click through and watch the larger version on YouTube :)

Sowing New Seeds at Ryton

On Thursday I went up to Garden Organic Ryton for their afternoon course ‘Biodynamics for Beginners’. I’ll have to tell you about that another day, because my notes are in the car, which is in Sussex with Pete, but I went up during the morning so that I could meet up with a couple of people who I knew online but not in person.

The first was Sally Cunningham, who is heading up the Sowing New Seeds project I mentioned a few weeks ago. The idea behind the project (which is based in the midlands) is to collect seeds and plants of exotic edibles and grow them on to find out the best ways to grow them in this country – and then disseminate that information more widely.

The latest news from the project talks about the plants that you can see when you visit Ryton. The weather wasn’t good, and I didn’t manage to photograph them all, but I did see the ‘Red Noodle’ yard-long beans (Vigna sesquipedalis var ungicularis), eddoes (Colcoasia esculenta) and Polenta maize (Zea mays), among others.

Sally also gave me a behind-the-scenes tour, which was fascinating. She really knows her plants, and constantly brings out little snippets of information.

This plant:

I thought was a big patch of nettles, but it’s Korean Mint (Agastache rugosa). According to Sally it has a flavour like a cross between mint and lavender, but is hot. Two or three of the flowers, served with ice cream, are delicious. You need something to counter the heat!

Tree spinach (Chenopodium giganteum) self seeds – this one is a volunteer from my garden, which came up by the compost heap this spring and which I have since potted up. The photo doesn’t do the bright pink centre justice – it is covered in little crystals that shimmer in the sun, like glitter. Sally says that if you shake it, the pink colouring comes off, and that it was used as a cosmetic, particularly in Japan.

I was also lucky enough to meet the lovely Vicky Love Thy Space. They sell classy garden stuff and have an office at Ryton, which must be a lovely place to go to work, but I imagine it must also be very distracting! How much self-control must you have not to keep popping out into the gardens? Vicky and I had a good chat and she showed me her allotment in a bucket (plants which need taking home and planting out!). I met Vicky on Twitter, and it’s always nice to be able to put names to faces.

Oxford Garden Project Open Days

Herbs growing at the Oxford Garden Project

The Oxford Garden Project is a not-for-profit social enterprise delivering talks, demonstrations and courses on gardening, growing fruit and vegetables, local food, cooking, preserving, composting and allied sustainability issues.

This summer they are running gardening courses in a half acre kitchen garden (in Longworth) with long established no-dig deep beds as well as new areas being developed. They are run in half day modules covering a wide range of subjects, and each module contains both theory and practical sessions. Each module costs £25.00, with a discount of £10.00 if you book three or more modules at the same time during June and July.

Subjects covered include: Introduction to low input and organic gardening; growing techniques including no-dig, deep beds and containers; growing in small spaces and containers; growing under cover; omposting and wormeries; sowing and pricking out; propagation techniques; understanding your soil; gardening tools, how to use and look after them; planning your plot and crop rotation and practical sessions. Full details can be found on the website.

The OGP is also running some open days in association with Garden Organic. The gardens will be open from 10-5 on Thursday 17th to Saturday 19th June, allowing an opportunity to look around the garden and workshop, ask questions, buy plants, browse the gift shop and view our courses. Entry is free, donations to Garden Organic are welcomed. Refreshments will be available.

For more information on either the courses or the open days, visit the OGP website or download their PDF flyer.

Kathy Brown's Garden

We’re experiencing a few days of unusually hot weather here in the UK, with glorious sunshine and high temperatures that cause me to wilt faster than the plants. It’s hard to spend much time in the garden (for me, at least, the neighbours don’t seem to suffer the same problem!) and so there’s a tendency to stick to doing the bare essentials – mainly watering.

But today I have already spent an hour in the garden, repotting sunflower and nasturtium seedlings that won’t survive another scorching day in tiny amounts of soil, and giving everything a good soak with the hose before the heat of the day.

Despite the heat, yesterday Pete and I went to visit Kathy Brown’s garden in Stevington, Bedfordshire. It’s about 1.5 hours drive from here, but I particularly wanted to see it as Kathy is the author of a book on Edible Flowers and has one of the few open gardens where edible flowers are a real feature. (My copy of Kathy’s book arrived on Friday, so expect a review in due course!)

As I am consciously incorporating edible flowers in my garden for the first time this year, I just had to go. But actually, with the odd weather we’ve been having, gardens are a few weeks behind schedule this year, and in retrospect yesterday wasn’t the best day to choose to see the edible flowers – they just weren’t blooming.

Kathy & Simon (her husband) have obviously put a lot of time and effort into their garden for many years. Their 4.5 acre plot is a design showcase, divided up into garden ‘rooms’ with different themes and feels. This room, inspired by painter Mark Rothko, was stunning – great slabs of colour created just by hedging.

There are plenty of lovely container displays around the garden. This one, created in a disused fish pond, was particularly impressive:

Amd behind the fish pond a lovely, shady ‘grotto’ type area had been created using reclaimed telepgraph poles, some of which even still had their identification numbers on:

If I had the space then I would recreate something similar here, as my garden is pitifully short on shade in this weather and shade-tolerant plants are even less at home out there than I am.

What I most liked about the garden (beyond its edible plants) was the way that quirky and recycled touches were incorporated everywhere. You can see more photos in my Flickr set, and as well as her website Kathy keeps a blog. Her garden is open for several days a year, including several under the NGS scheme. Check Kathy’s website for more details.

Hampshire Green Fair 2010

I went to the Hampshire Green Fair last year (at the Sustainability Centre) and had so much fun that I forgot to take any photos, except this one of a lovely view from the centre down towards the sea.

This year I’m going to be having even more fun on Sunday May 9th because at this year’s Green Fair I’m going to be running a seed and seedling swap! So if you are going to attend, don’t forget to bring along your surplus seeds and plants – edible, useful or just pretty – to trade in and try growing something new in the garden this year.

I will also be available to sign copies of my book, and there will be opportunities to snag yourself a copy if you haven’t already done so, as the wonderful Green Shopping shop will be open!

The Hampshire Green Fair is set to expect record attendance this year, and promises to be a fun-filled and informative day out for the whole family.

The Kids Area will bigger and more central this year, providing lots of fun activities, including bushcraft, chalk carving and traditional bread-making. Children of all ages can participate in hands on activities, culminating in a parade of fancy dress costumes created throughout the day

The Centre’s main paddock will be lined with stalls selling ethically-sourced goods and local produce. There will be hands-on displays of practical crafts – rag-rug making, green woodworking and willow-weaving to name a few, as well as information on green building techniques.

The GreenShare marquee is a new feature this year, offering a series of talks and discussions on green issues concerning local residents and the wider community. The Centre’s ‘Green Beans’ baby and toddler group will be on hand, happy to share in green parenting experiences, and story teller Jonathon Huet will be keeping all entertained with some engaging and fantastic yarns!

Food will be provided by the Centre’s Beech Café, working alongside the Art House Café from Southampton to serve up delicious food throughout the day, wherever possible using local, organic and fairly traded ingredients.

Music maestro Trevor Thwaites will be assembling a fine and enthusiastic group of successful local musicians, playing a mixture of music to appeal to all tastes and give the day a really festive swing.

And if all that wasn’t enough, you can wash the day down with a pint of ale sourced from a local microbrewery and a scrumptious Hampshire ice cream!

For advance tickets, or directions, click through to the Sustainability Centre website. You can also download a flyer.

The Great London Garden Trail 2010

If you’re looking for inspiration for your garden then you may be interested to know that The Great London Garden Trail is being repeated this year, to celebrate the launch of the latest RHS book ‘How to Grow Practically Everything’.

Last year’s Trail attracted 5,000 visitors, and this year’s event features ten gardens designed by experienced garden designers including Charles Rutherfoord, Andy Sturgeon and Andrew Wilson that range in size from small courtyards through to large family gardens and are spread across London from Bow in the east through to Shepherds Bush in the west.

If you head over to the Garden Trail website then you’ll find more information about each of the gardens, plus a downloadable map. The ten Trail gardens will be open between 12 – 5pm on Monday 3rd May 2010, and it’s completely free to visit each one.

Blackheath Park. Designer Joanna Herald, photo copyright Caroline Hughes.

It looks as though at least two of the gardens incorporate edibles. Blackheath Park is “a large, spacious family garden complete with an avenue of young trees, traditional greenhouse, vegetable patch and gravel garden”, and Loftus Road is “a small, walled garden featuring swathes of planting including fruit, vegetables and fragrant herbs”.

The Oxford Garden Project: Open Days

Kale growing at the OGP in September

The Oxford Garden Project in Longworth will be open from 11am until dusk on Tuesday-Friday 30th march-2nd April and 10-5 on Saturday and Sunday, 3-4th April.

The OGP is a not-for-profit organisation concerned with growing food and gardening (organic and low-input), cooking, preserving, composting and other sustainability issues.

We are opening next week following on from recent talks, to give visitors the opportunity to look around our organic, no-dig, deep bed vegetable garden, ask questions, be first to see the dates for our spring courses and have the opportunity to buy vegetable plants, each individually grown to organic principles.

Further details can be found on the website or by telephoning 01865 820206.

One Pot Pledge

Yesterday marked the official launch of Garden Organic’s One Pot Pledge campaign to get 30,000 people to grow their own food for the first time this year.

There are no free seeds on offer (try the BBC counterpart, Dig In if you’re looking for freebies), but there is plenty of advice on offer on the special One Pot Pledge website (and of course there’s more on the Garden Organic website).

They even have six expert bloggers on hand (including Alys Fowler) for the One Pot Pledge blog and some interesting posts available already – on colourful broad bean pots, spuds in containers, microgreens and a tip to get the most out of your coriander seed.

Making Plant Supports

I spent yesterday at Harcourt Arboretum, on a training course entitled ‘Making Plant Supports’. The idea was that by the end of the day, all participants would have a nice woven willow plant support to take home. The day started bright and warm, but by lunch time the weather had closed in and we were willow weaving in light rain, but we just put on our jackets and got on with it – no one wanted to chicken out and go back inside.

In the photo above we have just had our first lesson of the day and been turned loose to make our first willow project – a woven fish or leaf. This is mine when it was nearly finished (the loose ends get trimmed off):

Once we had got the hang of willow weaving we start our plant supports – a willow obelisk, which is made on a base:

Making the fish was easy enough, but the obelisk was a lot trickier. I needed some help from our instructor Tom Hare to make mine resemble the right shape, but it turned out OK in the end and is pretty sturdy:

Even if I bring it inside and look after it over the winter, it will only have a lifespan of a couple of seasons, but willow grows rapidly so this is a sustainable product.

Once my obelisk was finished I spent the last part of the day making a willow cage, which will keep cats and chickens from being too aggressive with whatever is planted inside it.

In the rare moments when none of us needed his help, Tom borrowed some prunings from the Arboretum and demonstrated how you can use hazel to build an ‘invisible’ plant support – it will blend into the background much more readily than bamboo canes:

And one course participant had a silver birch in her garden, so Tom wove a couple of silver birch branches into an arch:

The willow used was Salix triandra, prized for basketry. All willows are supposed to root easily, so I brought home a few offcuts and have potted them up as cuttings. I soaked them in water overnight but they may be to old – we will have to wait and see.

As for willow weaving – it was fun, and tricky, and not something you can master in a day. But Tom is a willow artist – you can see photos of his astonishing work on his blog. You can see his work on display at Kew, and RHS Wisley, among other places.

Totally Tropical

The sun is shining this morning, and it feels like spring might – at last – be on the way. But last week the weather was vile and we had cabin fever, so Pete and I paid another visit to The Living Rainforest near Newbury. (Our last visit was in 2007.

It was a cold day, and it was overcast and raining. We discovered that there are no lights in the Living Rainforest, so it wasn’t a good day for photography. But we also discovered that the price of an entry ticket gives you an annual pass – so we can go back for free on a better day (or several!), which is really cool. During the warmer months there are butterflies flitting about, which are absent in the winter, so that’s another reason to return.

The highlights for me this visit included:

A Marquesa palm (Pelagodoxa henryana, one of the world’s rarest palms) that was reaching for the skies. Originally from the South Pacific, it bears large edible fruits that apparently taste a bit like avocado.

A beautiful Dumb Cane specimen (Dieffenbachia), which is anything but edible as it is one of the most poisonous plants in the place, despite being a popular house plant. I’ve developed an interest in all things poisonous since reading Wicked Plants.

The Magic Bean (Mucuna spp.) is far more useful. Farmers in its native Central America use it to fix nitrogen in their soil to add fertility. It also has medicinal and edible uses.

Banana flowers before the fruits appear and after they’ve been harvested.

And some mystery beans, enjoying the balmy climate. I’m hoping I can get someone from the Rainforest to identify them for me, via Twitter.

And they don’t just have plants at The Living Rainforest, there are birds and animals as well. Check out Pete’s photo of Spider Monkeys grooming.

Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens

Pete and I are gradually exploring the West Country with a view to finding the perfect location in which to create the second Alternative Kitchen Garden. There are lots of factors to take into account, and we’re nowhere near ready to move, but yesterday we moved on from exploring Somerset to Dorset – and it promptly moved to the top of the list because of the stunning views.

The view above is of Chesil Beach, and is taken from the viewing point at the top of Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens. Weather-wise it was an odd day, with brilliant sunshine and very cold breezes that kept bringin snow showers west:

It was clear that we weren’t seeing Abbotsbury at its best, but it’s a beautiful garden with many mature specimens that would be stunning on a warmer day (we weren’t the only visitors yesterday afternoon, but it was a close thing).

As well as bamboo, tree ferns, bananas (wrapped up against the cold) and lots of other plants that thrive in the subtropical microclimate, Abbotsbury is home to fish and pheasants, including the beautiful Golden Pheasant. Most of the pheasants we saw were either running away from us or ignoring us, but this one – we called him Spike – took an interest in Pete and tried to eat his coat, before hopping onto his arm and pecking his nose. Pete took it very well.

(They’re are some more photos on Flickr.

Maddy & Tim's permaculture garden

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to go and visit Maddy and Tim Harland’s permaculture garden (Maddy and Tim run Permaculture Magazine). They have a lovely big garden, with space for lots of trees, and I am very jealous! Here are some of the highlights:

The raised beds close to the hosue are very productive

The compost bin is made from 3 tractor tyres, and heats up nicely. There’s even a step so that the men of the household can make their contributions!

Hops (‘Fuggles’) growing over the shed

The greenhouse, and rampant squash plants

Lush growth

Which just goes to show, if you weren’t convinced already, that productive plots can also be beautiful – and if you design them along permaculture principles they’re not too much work either!

Cambridge University Botanic Garden

Last weekend I spent a couple of very sunny hours wandering around the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. It’s quite central within Cambridge (and close to the railway station). If you’re planning a visit then it’s helpful to know that the nearest parking is metered and the ticket office doesn’t accept credit cards, so make sure you’ve got some cash before you show up.

It was too big for us to see the whole thing in one visit. The only space dedicated to vegetables is the school garden, which looked very nice with a polytunnel and fruit trees, but which was closed to visitors.

The glasshouses are home to collections of plants from several different climates, all of them impressive, including the standard collection of tropical edibles (bananas, papaya, lemongrass, vanilla, coffee, etc). Outside the glasshouses is the Bee Border, packed with bee-friendly plants and a lovely little hive which I suspect is purely ornamental:

There were some interesting edibles on display in the plant family beds.

According to PFAF, the fruit on this Malus toringoides is edible, and the flavour improves after the first frosts.

This Crataegus atrosanguinea also has edible fruit, that can be eaten fresh, dried or made into preserves. It was a lovely small tree, and very attractive.

And there was a fantastic bed of amaranths (I must get around to growing some myself). This one is Amaranthus hypochondriacus, which makes me smile. It’s common name is just as lovely – Prince’s Feather.

There are more photos (including plenty of ornamental plants!) in my Cambridge Flickr set.

There is a café (which we didn’t try) and a shop (which sells very upmarket stuff and a few plants). If you’re in Cambridge and have a couple of hours to spare then I would thoroughly recommend spending them here. Bring a picnic :)

Le Manoir: Vegetable Garden

The vegetable garden at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons covers around 2 acres and is certified organic by the Soil Association. Kitchen waste is carefully sorted so that any non-organic produce used in the kitchens (used when an organic alternative is not available) doesn’t make it to the compost heaps.

There wasn’t a lot growing in the vegetable garden on the day that I visited. The cabbages were coming to and end, the potatoes were just coming up. The vegetable gardener was gradually seeding rows of carrots and other crops, to keep a steady supply growing throughout the season.

Apparently they don’t suffer much from pests in the vegetable garden. All of the beds are surrounded by gravel paths, and as there is plenty of vegetation in the rest of the garden, slugs and snails don’t feel the need to cross the barrier. Any that do make it are quickly spotted by the gardeners, or the chefs who pop down to pick something, and removed.

They do have rabbits, and the occasional deer that wanders in. They have a fence to keep them out, but deer have been known to wander across the car park and use the guest entrance to the gardens….

The garden scarecrow is actually one of the statues, portrayed with a bird resting on his arm – which makes him less than scary to the real birds in the garden. The story is that the scarecrow is modelled on Raymond Blanc himself, but I didn’t get close enough to confirm it!

Explore other parts of the garden at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons:

• Fish ponds


• Mushroom garden


• Tea garden


• Exotics


• Field beans


• Microgreens


• Courgettes


• Fruit

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