Category — England

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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Illustration by Monika Mitkute

The Abundance Handbook – A guide to Urban Fruit Harvesting (Learning from our experiences of harvesting in Sheffield, England)

The Abundance Handbook
Published by Grow Sheffield, 2009
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England

Abundance harvests trees across the city on industrial waste sites, roadsides, the grounds of mansions and back yards. We harvest a range of soft fruit, top fruit and nuts. Over fifty volunteers of all ages and from many different backgrounds harvest and process the fruit. Fruit is distributed to Surestarts, community groups, community cafes and individuals across Sheffield.

We receive tip-offs by word of mouth, text and email as to where to find ripe fruit trees. The greatest journey any fruit travels from tree to mouth is five miles often by bike and trailer. We have found at least fifty varieties of apples and more than twenty varieties of pears. We give away hundreds of fruits and lots of freshly pressed juice. Tree owners are offered the first share of fresh fruit.

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Looking West across the Square Mile showing 30 St Mary Axe and Tower 42, Barbican, with Westminster in background.

The local authority wants some of its 9,000 residents to use sites awaiting development to grow food in giant grow bags.

By John Vidal
The Guardian UK
16 June 2009

The Square Mile, capital of commerce and the site of Britain’s most expensive real estate, could soon host some of its first temporary allotments with giant “grow bags” set up on building sites.

The City of London, one of the few authorities not to have formal allotments, wants some of its 9,000 residents to use the spaces to grow fruit and vegetables. The authority has only 22 acres of open space, mostly in old burial grounds and small squares, but the recession has left many building sites vacant.

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Staff from Buckingham Palace gardens and Garden Organic discuss the new venture.

The Queen has joined the “grow your own” revolution after creating a vegetable plot at Buckingham Palace.

By Andrew Alderson,
The Telegraph, 14 Jun 2009

For the first time since the Second World War vegetables are being grown in the Palace’s grounds alongside ornamental plants.

The move comes amid a surge in demand from people up and down the country to have their own allotment to grow their own food during the recession.

The Queen’s organic vegetable patch is about 10 yards by eight yards in size. It is at the rear of the garden in an area which is called the Yard Bed. (article continues on next page after the video.)

Gardeners deal with a bumper crop of turnips in the gardens at Buckingham Palace.

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It takes place at the Bath Organic Group Allotments, Victoria Park, Bath.

‘The time is ripe for digging. As cheap imported fruit and veg rapidly become a thing of the past, Kilter invites you to grab a spade and elope to the allotment for a theatrical journey into the future of food. Through an intimate tale of love and vegetables, Kilter leads you and your neighbours down the bean-rows to explore food-security in a post-oil world.

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Green Boris Johnson sends vegetables to the Tower

By Chris Gourlay
The Sunday Times
April 19, 2009

THE rooftops and open areas around some of the capital’s most famous attractions could soon be sprouting crops of vegetables under plans drawn up by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London.

His advisers hope to convert unused plots of land around the Tower of London, Marble Arch and on the roof of the Hayward gallery into public vegetable patches as a model of sustainable living. Johnson will lead the way by planting runner beans in the shadow of City Hall.

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27th August 1948: Mr John Hodder and his wife, aged 86 and 80 respectively at work in their allotment in Fulham, London. Photo by William Vanderson

Allotments – Take this job and shovel it

Apr 8th 2009
From The Economist

As spring makes its usual staggered start, the Fielding Street allotments, off south-east London’s Walworth Road on a second world war bomb site, are buzzing. Plotholders—a mixed bunch of beekeepers, university lecturers, Zambian migrants and “Nyudies” (new yuppie diggers) alongside the London-Irish flat-cappers of old—are making up for winter neglect. Exotic tubers and decorative blooms jostle carrots, spuds and beans in plots that range from pocket handkerchief to half a football pitch in size. For the privilege, the allotment society pays a nominal rental to Southwark Council, which owns the land.

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Photo Credit: © NTPL/Robert Morris

Vegetables growing in the garden at Rosedene the cottage in which early Chartists lived, first occupied in 1849, County Worcestershire. Residents were given a plot of land to cultivate fruit and vegetables to supplement their income, and diet.

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See larger image here.

An artist’s impression of a canal boat being used to grow food. Photograph: British Waterways.

Feb 19, 2009
BYM News

British Waterways’ Chairman, Tony Hales said: ‘British Waterways is very excited to be part of the Capital Growth project. The 100-miles of canals and rivers we care for in London provide a green corridor through the city, offering an escape from the hustle and bustle of the streets.  We are working with Capital Growth to identify any suitable pockets of land along London’s waterways that we or others might not be using, and matching them up with local groups and schools looking to grow their own food. 

‘We are also looking into more creative options, such as giving a new lease of life to some of our retired workboats, saving them from the breaker’s yard and converting them into floating vegetable gardens, moveable feasts that could provide growing opportunities in even the most built-up of areas. 

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World War One Food Garden Parade. circa 1914.

Produce from village war gardens on display. Opens with parade. Man leading horse pulling a wagon of produce and Union Jack stuck on front. Boy Scouts walk behind the wagon carrying gardening tools and flags. Then a local marching band. This procession comes marching into town square; as other people watch. Lots of lettuces; other vegetables piled high on truck; pan to men standing beside truck; and another truck loaded up with marrows and potatoes and things — less leafy than the other one;

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Alan Titchmarsh helped to popularise landscaping, which has given way to ‘edible gardening’, favoured by a younger generation. Photo from The Independent.

As shoppers feel the pinch, more Britons are tearing out the decking and turning their lawns into vegetable plots.

By Rachel Shields
The Independent UK
18 January 2009

The nation’s landscape is changing before our eyes. Record numbers of people are preparing to dig up their manicured lawns and privet hedges. Even the most modish gardens are sporting freshly dug vegetable beds, sapling fruit trees and nascent compost heaps.

Fruit and vegetable seed sellers last week reported record sales, with many saying that they cannot keep up with a sudden rise in demand. Meanwhile, the landscape gardening industry is in crisis, with many firms laying off staff.

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