Category — England

Photo by LunaModule

Just 10 minutes from Canary Wharf (London’s second financial district and home of the UK’s three tallest buildings) on the Isle of Dogs, is a wonderful city farm – Mudchute Farm. On 32 acres of fertile land (nutrient-rich as it is just next to the Thames) live 200 animals, mostly rare breeds. Mudchute Farm is also home to 70 community allotments, a farm kitchen and restaurant, horse stables, and smokehouse. Wood from the farm is used in the smokehouse where butter, geese, and cheese are often smoked.

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By The National Trust
2009

Excerpts:

Gardens connect people with food

21 per cent of people have taken up gardening to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

The Trust now cares for 26 working kitchen gardens, from Trengwainton, Cornwall, to Wallington, Northumberland. At the magnificent 2.5 acre kitchen garden at Knightshayes Court in Devon we work with local schools who now come on a regular basis to tend their plots and learn about growing
food.

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Started in 1979, Nottingham urban farm needs help

The Petition

Stonebridge City Farm being pressured by the city council to give up of 10% of the farms land as a condition of renewing the lease for the farm. The council wants the land to be used by the farms neighbours to park cars in front of their houses.

After a “consultation” with 31 neighbours next to the farm it is said that 15 neighbours wanted this parking scheme. Were the 10,000 visitors to the farm last year consulted? It appears not.

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The government plans a landbank to pinpoint unused plots where communities can grow their own food. Photograph: David Levene

Ministers consider temporary allotments scheme?Fruit and veg plots part of strategy to cut reliance on imports

By James Meikle
guardian.co.uk,
4 January 2010

The government plans to launch a “grow your own” revolution by encouraging people to set up temporary allotments or community gardens on land awaiting development or other permanent use.

It aims to develop a “meanwhile” lease to formalise such arrangements between landowners and voluntary groups and is considering establishing a “land bank” to broker better links and ensure plots are not left idle.

Ministers believe the move could foster community spirit and skills as well as improve physical and mental health.

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Is it possible to feed yourself for a week simply with food you find growing wild – in London? Bella Bathurst takes up the urban foraging challenge

By Bella Bathhurst
The Observer
Dec. 6, 2009

Foraging is very now. On trend and magnificently seasonal, all you need is a pair of gumboots, a set of Kilner jars, and the time and inclination to preserve everything you see. There’s wine out there, and gin, and beer, soups, salads and soufflés – a whole great Waitrose of stuff all just waiting to be turned into chutney.

“Everyone,” says one wild food expert glumly, “is making jam this year.”

So why, when it all sounds such fun, should the cities be left behind?

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See larger map image here.

Celebrations As Bristol City Farm Is Saved By Hitting £50K Target

Bristol Evening News
December 21, 2009,

A city farm in Bedminster has been saved from closure thanks to the public, who have helped raise £50,000 in just five months.

The four-and-a-half-acre farm was started on derelict land in 1976 as a result of the demands of local people, and has grown to an attraction visited by 200,000 people every year.

Windmill Hill City Farm, which currently employs 80 people, is a registered charity, so there is no charge for entry, but every donation helps to keep the farm operating as a free community facility for the enjoyment of the public.

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Photo by Carl Warner. Edible city: London’s skyline has been recreated using fruit and veg as part of a promotional campaign. Larger image here.

The city that’s good enough to eat: London’s iconic skyline recreated using fruit and veg by photographer Carl Warner

By Daily Mail Reporter

16th November 2009

A photographer has recreated London’s iconic skyline using 26 different types of fruit and vegetables, with stunning results.

Carl Warner and a team of five model makers spent three weeks crafting the edible panorama and series of landmarks to promote healthy eating.

In the image some of the world’s most famous buildings are given a fruity twist and constructed from hundreds of pieced of fruit and veg – all painstakingly glued together.

The Houses of Parliament are built from a mix of asparagus, green beans and runner beans which are subtly mixed with baby sweetcorn to depict the intricate stonework.

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Larger image here.

Zany Vision or Critical Solution?
Urban Greenhouses Aim to Help Cities Combat Climate Change

By Jess Smee
Spiegel Online
Dec 4, 2009

With its massive glass dome, the Plantagon Greenhouse wouldn’t look out of place in a sci-fi movie. And if all goes smoothly, one may soon crop up in a city near you. In these days of global warming, its creators argue, it’s not a question of if it will become reality but, rather, when.

Nestled among the skyscrapers is a gigantic glass sphere housing a mysterious spiral pathway. At first glance, the structure may look like an alien spaceship or a modernist architectural fantasy. But, in fact, it is an unusual response to climate change and the challenges of urbanization.

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Brixton urban agriculture. More photos here.

Growing Round the Houses – Food production on housing estates

By Ben Reynolds and Christine Haigh
2008

Rising food prices and increased interest in healthy food, means more people are looking to grow their own. Growing Round the Houses, a briefing paper by Ben Reynolds of Sustain and Christine Haigh of Women’s Environmental Network, explains how social housing providers and their tenants can work together on their estates to grow food. As well giving advice on how to set up a food growing project on their estate, it describes examples such as the Spitalfields Estate Community Garden, where residents worked together to build themselves a food growing space for vegetables and herbs popular with the local ethnic minority community.

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Fungi and Rhubarb Garden – The north facing end of the site will be in shade most of the day and most of the year. Large logs would be impregnated with fungi spores, the rhubarb and mint would be grown beneath them providing interesting food and creating am exotic and educational lunch time destination.

Leadenhall City Farm
By Mitchell Taylor Workshop

“Parks, allotments and markets are set to spring up across Britain on the sites of building projects that have been mothballed in the recession.

“Piers Taylor, of Mitchell Taylor Workshop, one of the practices shortlisted for the Leadenhall site has proposed a city farm, populated with colour-coded chickens. He wants to create grassy banks to picnic on and plant blackberry bushes amid the surrounding steel, granite and glass.”
- from The Times Oct 30, 2009

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Beatrix Potter, ‘Benjamin Bunny nibbling lettuce leaf’ © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

The Real Mr. McGregor’s Garden

Written by Victoria and Albert Museum

“Before she married in 1913, Beatrix Potter would accompany her family on three-month summer holidays in the countryside. In 1903 the Potters rented Fawe Park, a large, comfortable house in the Lake District, on the edge of Lake Derwentwater. Here, Potter was able to escape outdoors, sketching the terraced gardens that sloped down towards the lake and the beautiful fells beyond. The kitchen garden, with its greenhouses, cold frames and potting shed was a favourite retreat and inspired the setting for The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904).

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10 minutes from the Introduction to Victorian Kitchen Garden.

The Victorian Kitchen Garden

The Victorian Kitchen Garden was a 13-part television series produced in 1987 for BBC Two (Must see. Mike). It recreated a kitchen garden of the Victorian era at Chilton Foliat in Wiltshire. The presenter was the horticultural lecturer, Peter Thoday, the master gardener was Harry Dodson.

Harry James Dodson (1919 – 2005) was an English gardener who became a celebrity as a result of the BBC television documentary series, which featured his professional expertise and his reminiscences.

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Trengwainton House, near Penzance, Cornwall. Gardens are open to the public. All photos. NTPL/Andrew Butler

Kitchen garden crops are gradually being reintroduced into the productive area. Visitors can climb on to a raised platform to take in the scale of the walled gardens and their unique raised beds, built to the dimensions of Noah’s Ark, as described in The Bible.

See photos of the Kitchen Garden. Follow – “Read More”.

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Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives
By Carolyn Steel: Food urbanist
Published: 26 Mar 2009

“The question of how to feed cities may be one of the biggest contemporary questions, yet it’s never asked: we take for granted that if we walk into a store or a restaurant, food will be there, magically coming from somewhere. Yet, think of it this way: just in London, every single day, 30 million meals must be provided. Without a reliable food supply, even the most modern city would collapse quickly. And most people today eat food of whose provenance they are unaware.

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Mr Rotervator by Chris Cyrus.

Chris Cyprus
Born April 1971, Gorton, Manchester.

“I read somewhere recently that digging potatoes is like unearthing buried treasure and the excitement of watching your own vegetables grow brings the child spirit out of us.

“This is similar to the thrill of opening new tubes of paint, and starting a fresh canvas and not really knowing what the finished product will become. After your last crop before winter sets in, there is the exciting process of planning what to do with next years crop, and where you are going to plant it.

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Midmar Drive Allotments by Sandy Gemmill
Larger image here.

By Jake Butcher
This research was conducted as part of an Ecology (conservation and management) dissertation at the University of Edinburgh.
16,000 word dissertation. Complete paper on-line. Link on next page.

Summary

A recent increase in urban food production has been stimulated by both the recognised advantages which it brings in terms of health, recreation and urban sustainability and by the solution which it represents to the many problems associated with the globalisation of the food system, urbanisation and increasingly intensified agriculture.

The City of Edinburgh has experienced not only a growth in the number and diversity of urban food growing projects over recent years but also a rise in waste, carbon emissions and both human and environmental health problems.

This study aimed to address these problems by assessing current food production and subsequently quantifying the room for expansion of food growing in the city. Case studies were conducted detailing information on 16 different food production projects within the City.

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An exterior view of the Tower of London showing Middle Tower with guards and a vegetable garden in the foreground.
Photographer: York and Son
Larger image here.

19th June 1942: Waitresses from the ‘Quality Inn’ restaurant in Regent Street, London, watering and gathering tomatoes that are growing in boxes on the pavement as part of the ‘Dig For Victory’ scheme. (Photo by Paget/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Cowslip or More Cautionary Stories in Verse
By Mrs. Elizabeth Turner
1811

The Worm

As Sally sat upon the ground,
A little crawling worm she found,
Among the garden dirt;

And when she saw the worm, she scream’d,
And ran away and cried,
As if she had been hurt.

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By Liz Hoggard
London Evening Standard
June 11, 2009

Rosie Boycott — career feminist, newspaper supremo and Mayor Boris Johnson’s “Food Tsar” — is proof you can start gardening at any age.

She was 51 before she picked up a spade. “Six years ago, I’d never grown a single vegetable,” she laughs.

Like many frazzled Londoners, she thought growing your own was some boring activity reserved for dullards and oldies with nothing better to do. Back then her life was full of smart parties and TV appearances. The first female editor of The Independent newspapers, she socialised with actors and politicians. In 1998 she became the editor of the Daily Express. But then in 2001 she lost her job when the paper was acquired by Richard Desmond.

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