Prince Charles’ favourite garden designer plans productive landscape

Chelsea Barracks masterplan includes food gardens. 3. Promenade garden producing fruit and vegetables tended by gardeners. 10. Community-tended productive gardens.

Prince Charles guru gives Chelsea Barracks a green makeover

By Nick McDermott
Daily Mail
14th June 2010

Excerpts:

It was the ultra-modernist makeover that put Prince Charles at loggerheads with one of Britain’s foremost architects.
But the latest vision of Chelsea Barracks will see the site undergo a green transformation, with Prince-friendly features including beehives and a market garden.

‘It should be as productive as possible, rather than just be ornamental,’ said Mr Wilkie, who many suspect has been brought in to appease the prince. Key features include a nuttery – walnut and hazelnut trees planted around a central square – as well as fruit orchards and space for beehives.

The central spine of the site will include vegetable gardens, with the produce sold at a farmers’ market in the square.

And to keep the plans as green as possible, the power plant servicing the 12.5-acre site will be built beneath the plots, with the heat produced warming the earth and allowing year-round production.

See the complete article here.

See more on the design here.