Category — England

Joy Larkcom is Britain’s most respected vegetable garden maker and writer. She has contributed to many magazines and newspapers, radio and TV programmes and has lectured all over the world. Her accolades include the Garden Writer of the Year award three times; Lifetime Achievement Award from the Garden Writers Guild in 2003, and the prestigious Veitch Memorial Medal for horticulture in 1993.

Homegrown style: These are salad days indeed

By Francine Raymond
The Telegraph
24 Mar 2011

Excerpt:

Without a shadow of doubt, Joy Larkcom has had more effect on the way we grow and eat salads and vegetables than all the celebrity chefs put together.

Often described as the original hunter gatherer, Joy studied horticulture at Wye, and her academic background encouraged her to dig deep — everything she writes has been researched in depth. She writes about what she knows and what she has grown.

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Food from the Sky has planted a vegetable garden on a shop roof in north London – and its founder wants other shops around the country to do the same

By Laura Barnett
The Guardian
9 March 2011

Excerpt:

Of all the things you might reasonably expect to be doing on a blustery March day, standing on the roof of a supermarket and dragging a rake through a bag of decaying vegetables is probably not one of them. I am on top of Thornton’s Budgens supermarket in Crouch End, north London, which volunteers have transformed from a flat expanse of concrete into a flourishing potted garden and vegetable patch.

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Ashley Jensen, best known for her role in television series “Extras”, in a flap over chicken shoot

(UKPA) – Dec. 12, 2010
The Press Association

Extras star Ashley Jensen has admitted she was in a flap as she filmed a new farm-set comedy – due to a phobia of chickens.

Jensen plays a media luvvie who swaps high heels for wellington boots in BBC comedy Accidental Farmer.

She said she was “excited” about working with animals for the first time but when she got down to filming the chickens really ruffled her feathers.

She said: “There was a hairy moment for me when I had to go into a chicken coop. I was fine with 12 bullocks and a 13ft pile of manure, that was a doddle – I did my milkmaids badge in the Guides – but the bit for me was the blimming chickens in the chicken coop.”

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Skip garden under construction.

Video link here. See video showing young people building skip gardens and then delivering harvested food to the Guardian newspaper kitchen.

A Movable Feast in London: King’s Cross Skip Garden

By Jennifer Cockrall-King
Foodgirl.ca
Oct 18, 2010

Excerpt:

Bert explained that this site just celebrated its 1 year (plus 2 months) anniversary, and they brought over 400 school kids through the site. Bert and his colleagues at Global Generation, the London-based charity that runs this skip garden plus other sustainable urban agriculture sites on the 67-acre redevelopment area, use the site to educate kids and adults about sustainable food growing and waste reduction. Because the various sites will be redeveloped at some point in the years leading up to 2020, the idea of the skip garden came about as a way to create totally mobile food growing spaces. When a site needs to be vacated, the skips can simply be transported to a new site. The trees and plants in the skips will eventually be moved to rooftop food gardens as new buildings are completed.

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Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones.

The House of Commons event was attended by nearly 100 MPs, top civil servants and farming and food industry leaders

By Farming Editor
Here’s Devon
Oct 25, 2010

More people from cities and towns need to be brought into farming, the Government was told yesterday.

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, the Devon-based self-titled Black Farmer, emphasised the importance of training new entrants to farming and the food supply industries to MPs in London.

Speaking at a reception at the House of Commons alongside Farming Minister James Paice, he spoke about the need to bring in new entrants from urban backgrounds.

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“Our cover feature this issue looks at the increasing popularity of community growing and city farms, and asks what it would take to make urban agriculture an integral part of the future urban landscape.”

Landscape, the Journal of the Landscape Institute

Introductory paragraph:

“After the failure of millions of dollars worth of schemes to rejuvenate the motor industry in Detroit, government and business leaders are starting to see the prospect of a second chance as residents find hope in returning to the arable land that spawned the city. Cuba reacted similarly following the collapse of trade relations with the Soviet bloc in 1989–90 and, by 2002, had 14,000 hectares of city farms. They are extreme cases yet typical of the way that the urban agriculture movement is emerging at a grassroots level across the US and globally.

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Russian Dacha.

The case studies investigate: St. Petersburg dachas, America’s Milwaukee Growing Power farm and Havana permaculture.

By Ailbhe Gerrard
Version Sept. 23, 2010
Innovation and Sustainable Development in Agriculture and Food
Montpellier, France
June 28-30, 2010

Abstract

Diversity of urban agriculture (UA) in Britain could reduce food security impacts if a crisis occured in industrial food production systems. Industrial agriculture (IA) both causes and suffers from a lack of resilience: environmental, financial and structural. In Britain, the allotment system, previously an important form of UA, now grossly insufficient to replace the output of industrial agriculture, particularly in London. With these points identified, the relationship between diversity and resilience takes on a new clarity. Systems theory shows that diversity in any system is key to resilience.

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Children’s writer Michael Morpurgo and his wife Clare founded farms for city children in 1976 at Nethercott, deep in Devon river country. They now operate three working farms: Treginnis Isaf on the Pembrokeshire coast opened twenty years ago and Wick Court in Gloucestershire opened in 1997. They aim to expand the horizons of children from towns and cities all over the country by offering them a week in the countryside living together on one of their farms. Illustration by Brian Gallagher.

Once upon a life

By Michael Morpurgo
The Observer
11 July, 2010

Michael Morpurgo and his wife were determined to change the lives of inner-city children by giving them an experience they’d never forget. The poet and author recalls how they started their first kids’ farm in Devon – and how one of the visiting children inspired his greatest literary work.

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Harvesting organic produce, Peru. Photo by Urban Harvest.

New Agriculturist reports

Written by Paul Osborn
New Agriculturist
Sept. 10, 2010

Excerpt:

In the last decade, urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) have resurged in the North: in most European cities, waiting lists for allotments have grown, and city farms and school farms blossomed. However, most UPA still blends the frugal and the recreational, with a few financially viable urban farms getting by through the mutual benefits of employing special-needs patients in ‘care-farming’. However after a recent launch conference of the Greater Liverpool Food Alliance (GLFA) in north-west England, urban agriculture is being seen as a tool of resilience for crisis-hit Western economies.

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Experimental Agriculture Zones Along the fringes of the belt, micro-farming areas. These are serviced by ‘land-scanners’, a plug-and-play operated gantry farming system which enables ‘knowledge-intensive’ farming: mixed-cropping, rotation farming, and even mechanical tools such as weeding. In effect: they become laboratories for the principles of permaculture to be applied on a larger scale (acres per farmer).

Future farming along motorways

By Alastair Parvin

Excerpt:

Although to most of us they are invisible, we are all dependent on a few highly-complex, energy-intensive systems which ensure the continuous supply of food to cities. The increasing concentration of those systems and the first effects of global peak oil production will mean we can no longer afford to take them for granted. Rather than settle for the price-hikes inherent in the ‘local production’ solution, Server speculates upon whether we can redefine what is actually meant by the term ‘local’.

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On display at Clarence House was Prince Charles’ vegetable patch, where he grows five rows of carrots, leeks, cauliflowers, courgettes, peas, lettuce, rocket, celery and runner beans. The produce is used in fresh side-dishes for his dinner guests. Photo by motoergy.

Princely plot 62 feet long by 26 feet wide, Charles’ personal allotment.

By Farah Nayeri
Bloomberg
Sep 14, 2010

Excerpt:

The Prince of Wales is inviting the public to view the vegetable patch in his backyard, where organic carrots and celery grow in tidy rows.

The royal plot, a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace, yielded much for Charles and his guests last year: parsnips, carrots, beetroot, and four kinds of potato.

Through Sept. 19, the heir to the British throne is hosting “A Garden Party to Make a Difference” — a save-the-planet open house. On the lawn of his Clarence House residence and of adjoining buildings are booths run by nonprofit companies and corporations alike, all in the name of eco-friendliness.

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Our first salad leaves, red mountain spinach, rocket, edible flowers, herbs, peas, radishes and courgettes are on sale since 4th July 2010.

Supermarket Farms Yield Produce for Shoppers, Environment

By Matt Fuchs
Fuchs Foodie Journal
Aug. 24, 2010

Excerpt:

According to Andrew Thornton of Budgens supermarket in the Crouch End area of North London. “Because of the cost of an acre of land in an urban environment, field-to-farm is not something that is viable,” Thornton says.

So, instead of food from the backyard, he opted for Food from the Sky – the name of his project to convert the roof of his supermarket into an organic vegetable garden. Thornton and business partner Azul Thome, head of Positive Earth Project, needed only six weeks to complete construction.

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The main focus is the trees. Apple, pear, quince, apricot, cherry, blueberry, blackberry, strawberry

By Emma Townshend
The Independent
August 22, 2010

Excerpt:

Trundling along to buy a lunchtime sandwich the other day, admiring the floral bedding in my local park in Ealing, I spotted a little sign: “Pop-up Kitchen garden”. Now, we’ve heard of pop-up shops, restaurants and art galleries, but a pop-up vegetable garden? Exploring a little further, I found that a set of kitchen garden beds, neatly edged in wood, had materialised out of nowhere. It was a gorgeous surprise.

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They share skills and share their problems

Christine Ottery
The Ecologist
30th July, 2010

Excerpt:

Estate community gardens are springing up in our cities – here’s how to transform a derelict urban space into a food growing hub

Urban agriculture is starting to take seed on social housing estates. Residents and volunteers are sprouting their fruit and veg on raised beds and in polytunnels on roof terraces, disused basketball courts and other derelict spots.
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New RHS report says school gardening boosts child development; teaches life skills and makes kids healthier and happier

28th June 2010

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHA) is today urging school gardening to be high on the education agenda and recognised as a key teaching tool.

New research by the RHS Gardening in Schools – A vital tool for children’s learning published today shows for the first time, the enormous impact gardening plays in a child’s wellbeing, learning and development.

Dr Simon Thornton Wood, Director of Science and Learning, RHS, said, “As the new coalition government considers a new approach to the primary curriculum, we hope they acknowledge the striking conclusions of our research and that gardens enable a creative, flexible approach to teaching that has significant benefits.

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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.

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King’s Cross beekeeper Orlando Clarke Photograph: Suki Dhanda for the Observer

From quail in the East End to honey bees in King’s Cross, Carole Cadwalladr goes in search of all the ingredients for a meal sourced as close as possible to her London home

By Carole Cadwalladr
The Observer
20 June 2010

Excerpt:

It’s an exhausting and not very environmentally friendly business tracking down London’s urban farmers. I criss-cross the city spending what seems like the entire bank holiday stuck in traffic, wondering why this had ever seemed like a good idea.

Which is also pretty much what Oliver Rowe, the chef at London restaurant Konstam, says when I tell him I’m writing about urban agriculture, and am planning to source a meal from within the M25. “Somebody told me you’d rung,” he says. “And I thought, that’s what we do every day.” It’s true, localism is one of food’s most fashionable buzzwords these days, alongside seasonality and provenance, and Konstam prides itself on sourcing 80%of its ingredients from the Greater London area.

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Urban Orchard

During the London Festival of Architecture and beyond, the site of 100 Union Street in SE1 will be transformed into an urban orchard and community garden.

85 trees make up the orchard as well as a whole host of wayward plants. The garden will last from 19 June – 19 August after which the garden will be dismantled and all the plants and trees will go out into Bankside to green this space and thus contribute to the Bankside Urban Forest vision.

It is envisaged that 4 to 5 orchards will be replanted on estates and other local community spaces to act as a lasting legacy of the 2010 London Festival of Architecture.

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Inspiration from her garden

By Jaine Rose

We have a small suburban garden in the town of Stroud in Gloucestershire, U.K. There is a growing movement of people, of which we are part, who are inspired to find different ways of slowing down, working from home, living creatively and simply, and building community resilience in the face of changing times.

My garden is small, but is crammed full of fruit trees and bushes, a tiny greenhouse, raised beds, and bursting permaculture in every nook and cranny!. At the end of the garden I have a small beach-hut where I work from, and a little deck to sit on, housing a Witchazel, an Oak, a Rowan and various herbs in pots. Any spare vegetables or fruit is handed out to neighbours, or can be sold at our local farmers market.

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Honnington Farm, Bourne Mill, Vauxhall Lane, Tonbridge, KENT

The New Allotment Company Ltd

Ecologist
5th January, 2010

Excerpt:

Private enterprise will increase the number of available allotment plots, but they will cost much more than their council subsidised cousins. A private company has started renting out its first allotment sites as it bids to make 10,000 plots of land available to the public by 2012.

The New Allotment Company Ltd opened its first site of 300 allotments on the outskirts of Tonbridge, Kent, this week. It expects to open more sites in the Midlands and South East by Summer 2010.

Individual plots of approximately 1000 square foot will cost £150 a year to rent. Tenants will be offered a 3-year contract with the option to leave after the first year.

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