By SOPHIA EPSTEIN

Thursday 13 April 2017

Forget everything you were taught in biology – plants don't need sunlight to grow. Growing Underground is a farm 33 metres below Clapham, south London, swapping sunlight for LEDs. "Over the past three to five years, LED development has reached the stage where we can grow without any natural light whatsoever," says Steven Dring, who founded the project with fellow Bristolian Richard Ballard. "You can even change the light spectrum to cater to the different plants that you're growing."

Growing Underground's focus is on the leafier vegetables, from microherbs to baby leaf salad. They grow quickly and need little space. "What's new about the latest lights is that you can stack them very close to the crops, 25cm away, if not closer," says Dring, "so you can layer products and lights on top of products and lights." This means that spaces such as car parks, warehouses and Growing Underground's second world war tunnels are all commercially viable spaces.

Presently, Dring and Ballard are using a 550-square-metre area fitted with hydroponics that will produce about 20,000kg of greens every year. As the business grows, so will the farm – they have 20,000 square metres to expand into. And their produce will be exclusively for those within the M25. "We'll be cutting it at four in the afternoon and people will be eating it at the next lunch time," he says. "And there's a desire to do this in other cities."

Moving production underground frees up more space on the surface for bulkier crops or livestock. "We have a growing population and a finite amount of land," says Dring. "We've got to find other spaces to grow in."

This article was originally published in March 2016.