Rooftop Farming: How Nature Flourishes On London's Skyline - Plus The Top 5 Edibles For Beginners
Rooftop Farming: How Nature Flourishes On London's Skyline - Plus The Top 5 Edibles For Beginners
25 MARCH 2017 • 8:00AM
The winter purslane at the five star Rosewood Hotel in Holborn is excellent. Served immediately after picking, it is sweet and fresh. Amandine Chaignot, the hotel’s Executive Chef, tells me it’s the best crop they've ever had. However, I’m not eating it in the marble-walled serenity of the restaurant, but in the wind and drizzle on Rosewood’s roof, where it is grown in one of Bee London's rooftop gardens.
The Rosewood London is one of three rooftop farms in the part of London that is calling itself Midtown – the pocket of buses, offices and chain food outlets between Bloomsbury, Holborn and Clerkenwell. Another is sandwiched on a terrace on the first floor of an office block and a third is perched on top of Le Cordon Bleu cookery school, which overlooks the gently peaked roof of the British Museum.
Winter purslane at the Rosewood London CREDIT: RII SCHROER
Bee London, which represents 320 businesses across the area, is working with the Wildlife Trust to design and deliver greening projects to Midtown, helping to tackle air quality and urban sustainability. The rooftop gardens are one example of this. Sean Gifford of Sky Farmers Ltd, who works on Bee London's gardens, hopes the initiative will also change the way people see food by growing it locally.
In a city, that means making the most of every bit of space available – and it transpires that the tops of large buildings provide a lot of room to grow.
Gifford has transformed these wind-blown, sun-exposed spaces into enormous container gardens. Although the Bee London team sets up the farms in the first place (a more complicated process than it may sound – you try hefting 18 tonnes of compost in 20 kilogram bags through a five star hotel) and maintains them, much of the tending is done by volunteers from the buildings they sit on.
In the case of Le Cordon Bleu and The Rosewood London that would be chefs, who are learning about their ingredients in the process, but at the office block it’s lawyers who roll up their sleeves on their lunch break.
Head Gardener for Bee London Sean Gifford at the beehive at Le Cordon Bleu” CREDIT: RII SCHROER
Gifford has mastered a number of ingenious ways to grow in urban landscapes all year round. While I'm touring the rooftop farms on a particularly unpleasant day in early February, there is a lot of life going on.
Mustard, 'Arctic King' lettuce and rainbow chard emerge from the re-appropriated recycling crates which comprise many of the planters (they are cheap, eco-friendly in their re-use and, essentially, lightweight.
With holes drilled in the bottom they are perfect for small crops), three-cornered leekstumble over the sides of containers and mintputs on a good show against the cold.
While the country bemoans a courgette crisis, mizuna, green-in-snow, buckler leaf sorrel and lambs lettuce thrive in these most unlikely of gardens.
Biodiversity is a big part of Bee London's ethos, and as well as the planting and pest-control being chemical-free (although owing to Soil Association restrictions on acknowledging container gardens, the farms aren’t officially “organic”), these urban farms also house wormeries and beehives. Small plots of nettles are allowed to grow because their stems, over winter, provide “homes for allies” – the ladybirds Gifford bought online, were delivered in a box, and now dine on the aphids in the garden.
While the modest greenhouse at the office block currently houses a lemon tree, in the summer it will produce 1,500 vegetable seedlings.
But Gifford recommends Organic Plants as a provider of a diverse range of quality plug plants, and for rookies wanting to grow at home they are perfect, bundling up plants by seasonality to take some of the confusion out of growing produce.
The rooftop farms provide inspiration for those who think small spaces put a stop to growing food. The garden on top of Le Cordon Bleu is tiny, but possibly my favourite. A huge rosemary bush grows joyfully in the warm, cake-scented air that puffs endlessly out of the cookery school’s extractor fans. “It flowers four times a year”, Gifford says.
There’s also stevia, the leaves of which taste 130 times sweeter than sugar (I know because Gifford is very enthusiastic in making me eat everything possible), and is happily overwintering despite hailing from South America.
Fennel loves its windy, sun-exposed situation and there’s a self-seeded gorse bush just beyond the rail where health and safety stops humans from going. As a result, it is massive. Proof, perhaps, that nature can choose to flourish in urban environments, if only it is given half a chance.
For more urban gardening, follow Alice on Instagram.com/noughticulture