Yesterday Mark Ridsdill Smith and the irrepressible Kate Bradbury came to make a film on the rooftopvegplot, for Mark's fantastic website VerticalVeg. Kate tweets at @Kate_Bradbury and Mark @VerticalVeg. The video will be really interesting, imparting loads of information about attracting wildlife to the garden. Kate blows the myth about shop-bought bug hotels right out of the flower pot and instead told us how to make our own creepy-crawly hidey holes. Mark and Kate made a fabulous solitary bee box, on camera, which they kindly left me. I’ve got to fix it to an east facing wall. We should expect the first inhabitants very soon.
Mark asked me to say why I garden up here. I burbled some sort of a reply, but I thought you all might like to read a more considered response.
Rooftopvegplotting is enjoyable, creative and productive. I don’t spend a lot of money up here. I buy most of my produce as seeds and recycle earth and kitchen waste to make new compost. Over the years I’ve tried to make the space as productive as possible, researching and experimenting into varieties, plant spacing and intercropping techniques. It is my retreat as well as the family garden, so it also has to look beautiful.
There is always more to learn, but now I reckon I can tell you a lot more about urban veg growing than many of the books. For example, only this year I’ve discovered the magical combination of pansies and lettuces. The deep, velvet colour of the purple pansies looks amazing against the spring fresh lettuces. Like every good combination there is a practical advantage. I’ve discovered that pansies keep the slugs from eating the greens. Pansy flowers are good to eat in salads. And the slugs obviously agree.
But there is more to my potagista's fervour than the fun of it. I live right in the heart of central London. I’m surrounded by air conditioning extracts and ventilation systems. There is so much pollution here from traffic, we have to dust every day. Leave a white shelf for half an hour and it will get grimy. That dust is mainly caused by particulate matter from diesel engine exhausts. I’m surrounded by supermarkets selling produce from Chile, Morocco and South Africa. If I want to buy local it is very difficult.
My flat roof is one of thousands around here. If a few more people did as I do, then we could really cut down on the food miles that cast unnecessary CO² into the atmosphere. If people stopped air conditioning their offices, and planted something - anything - on the roof, we could make a fundamental difference to what is termed the urban heat island effect. That is the overheating that comes from too much energy use and too much concrete. My records show that temperatures up here are about 5° warmer than those in the greenbelt, just a few miles away.
When the rain falls on my roof, the flow of water is interrupted by the plants, which absorb it to make our food. When the sun shines the temperature is moderated by plants that absorb light energy and carbon dioxide and pump out oxygen. My rooftopvegplot is not just a micro-farm producing delicious food for our table, it is a wonderful moderator of climate and pollution that, if replicated across London, could radically improve the city’s environment.
When I need fresh veg I have no need to get into a car and steam off to a supermarket. I can just saunter up to the roof to pick my own.
Yes, it’s a pleasure. Yes, we do eat better and more mindfully because of the rooftop plot. And yes, it might be making just a little bit of a difference to a city I love.
I can’t change the world, but I can show how small personal actions, replicated hundreds of times, by hundreds of different people, could make a massive difference. That’s why I’m opening the garden for the Chelsea Fringe this year.