ROOF TOP VEG PLOT

Eat my Garden!

 

 

Why do professional gardeners look down their noses as this type of garden design?

The gardening profession, as opposed to the amateurs, is composed of two very different creatures, those who grow and those who plant.  Even today there still seems to be a barrier between the horticulturalists and the designers.  This split is cultural, ingrained and, in my view, counter-productive.  

This realisation was most strongly driven home to me the other day, when I attended the open day of a famous horticultural college that shall remain nameless.  I wandered into the design studio to be confronted by rows of small garden designs that were frighteningly reminiscent of Chelsea.  The same symmetries, the same plants, the same old themes.  Even though these were all urban scale domestic gardens, I was shocked to see a complete lack of edible plants, let alone natives. None of these gardens had compost heaps, or bee hotels, or cover for birds. 

St George de Bocherville France. A medieval example of the monastic garden

I lingered by a series of small front garden designs. Each student had dutifully designated a 5x3m barren spot on which the car was to be parked.  No one had considered softening this car-scar with low growing herbs which might have given up their scent to the pressure of a tire.  No-one had considered encroaching on this space with overhanging shrubs or robust planting that would spring back when the four by four (the only car on the road to actually take up a 5x3m parking space) was replaced by something smaller.  My Smart car has a footprint of 1.5x2.5m.  Was parking part of the brief? None of the students seemed to have considered banishing the car back to the kerbside. Designing a car park is a very dull exercise.  

When I talked to the design tutor who was hovering, and asked about veg-growing, he registered amazement that someone might want to mix decorative elements with edibles.  He conceded that edible perennials might just make a design, but advised me (in a very patronising way) that a designer should just mark out the boundary of the vegetable plot, leaving choice of crops to the owner.  

Perhaps that is why Britain's most sparkling and innovative gardens have been designed by knowledgeable amateurs.  Think of Vita Sackville West breaking all the rules of plant spacing or Derek Jarman making a shingle garden from native weeds and flotsam.  Jean Cocteau designed an admirable edible garden in the 50's, taking inspoiration from nearby Fontainbleau and from Le Potager du Roi in Versailles.  

Fruit allé Jean Cocteau's garden in Normandy

These segregations, between horticulture and design, between exotic and local, between weed and garden plant and between decorative and edible, box-up our thinking in such constricting ways.

No wonder all the student designs looked like a pale imitation of a Chelsea garden.  To me they didn’t look ‘real’.  They were neither something I would want to pay for spend time maintaining and they certainly weren’t the sort of garden that I dream about.  The grass would have needed far too much manicuring, the rills would not have looked good with frog spawn in them.  I doubt if a bird, or a bee would have bothered with most of them. 

In my own garden the edible must also be beautiful.  My organic ambitions mean that native plants and old fashioned plants hold sway over the exotic. Why?   Because native plants grow better than exotics. Many of my crops are in fact weeds, like elder, mâché, mustard and watercress.  The peas, beans, lettuces and carrots are their close relatives.  This approach means that the plants can flourish, without resort to too much cossetting.  And around these natives, regardless of the fact that I am bang in the centre of London, flourish a population of insects and moths, butterflies, bees and ladybirds, spiders and flies that either pollinate the crops, or predate on other pests.  

Peas, beans, sweet peas and morning glory all vie for space on the trellises in the rooftopvegplot. July 2013

And it really is possible, even in a tiny garden, to start to influence the local fauna. As I write this I can hear the most delicious birdsong outside.  Perhaps my efforts to attract the little birds are starting to pay off?

I didn't realise I was doing anything remarkable, when I started to design colour combinations in the veg beds.   It never occurred to me that I might be the only person grouping crops by season rather than plant family, so that they would all look beautiful at the same time.  My ploy to increase harvests, by planting climbers doesn't seem at all weird to me.  But clearly to the design tutor I spoke to this week, I am perusing a lonely and intellectually bankrupt path.  My gardens have no box, no coloured gravels, no stone sculptures, no arid water features.  

But I do not think I am alone.  Hundreds of amateur gardeners up and down the country sit in their lounges and living rooms looking out towards well tended kitchen gardens like my own, where climbing roses climb into fruit trees, where sweet peas grow with runner beans and where calendula brighten up the tomatoes.  Yet this style of gardening is considered in some quarters to be unworthy.  I find this attitude strange, especially now some enlightened trained horticulturalists like Joy Larcom and Alys Fowler have championed it.  

As our gardens become smaller, as the ecological movement gathers momentum, as scandal after scandal makes us suspicious of shop bought food, so edible gardens become more the norm.
The horticultural and landscape professions should take note.  The edible movement will not go away.  In fact it is becoming more and more sophisticated.  Skills that were born out of medieval monasteries, honed in the fields and lent sophistication by generations of (mainly female) cottage gardeners are today becoming 'de rigueur'.  

Everyone wants their own French potager, or an Amish yard.   From the French we have learned a certain panache.  But we also learnt to control the abundance. Espalier is a French tradition.  Climbing crops are woven through treillage and subjected to tutélage. This helps to get a better crop, but beauty and elegance are never far away from the potagers mind.  

From the puritans we have learned organic principles, the thrift of seed saving and the value of our heritage.  And the Amish protected their aesthetic as fiercely as their French cousins.  There should be nothing garish or frivolous in their gardens.  

Today an edible garden, in the hands of a skilled gardener can become a little piece of heaven.  Is the picket fence there to keep the rabbits out or to protect a paradise on earth?

The professionals would do well to heed from these grass roots movements.  Between a monk tending his grapevine depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, to a San Francisco hippy cultivating his raw salads and singing about the power of flowers, there is a thousand years of gardening.  But be you prelate or drop-out, the magic of edible gardening draws on something very fundamental in all of us.  The enclosure of a space in order to grow food for the family satisfies the self-sufficiency in us.  I cannot change the world, but I can grow a row of radishes.  And the need to transform the practical into the beautiful is a fundamental human urge.  To be creative is to know that you are alive.  To grow your own crops, beautifully, is to have the wherewithal to satisfy both physical and cultural hungers.  If I’m proved wrong I won’t eat my hat, I’ll eat my garden!

ROOFTOPVEGPLOT GARDEN TOUR MEGABLOG

“Welcome to the rooftopvegplot!”

How many times have I said that over the past few days?  Our Chelsea Fringe open days are now finally over. So exhausted was I that and for a day or two afterwards, I did nothing but lie in a darkened room being dripped chilled white wine intravenously. Apologies to my dear blog readers, for having to wait so long for a line or two.  I’m going to make it up to you though.  This is going to be a mega blog.  I wrote a description of the garden for visitors and I’ve adapted that- with accompanying images – for your delectation and delight.

DIscussing a point of interest with the gals!

I hesitate to call it a walk around the garden as that would take all of thirty seconds.  It’s so small (another thing that surprised people) but as Naomi Schillinger said, “You have everything here.”

I realise now that one of the reasons why it seemed so stressful opening the garden, is that this time of year is sheer hell for all vegplotters.  Everything is coming on, it all needs re-potting, things are growing as if to reach the moon, and if you do nothing about it, when your back is turned they go to seed!  So this is a warts and all tour.  No horror of seeding lettuce will go unnoticed by my camera.  (Actually it’s the chicory and the rocket that are really turning poplar’ish  right now.)

We had a great time with our visitors, all of whom were nice, and all of whom were appreciative of what I’d managed to achieve and keen to hear how I’d done it.  So it was a very affirming event – if tiring.  Everyone seemd to expect that a rooftop garden would not have slugs.  I was sorry that, time and again, I had to disabuse them of that little fantasy.  Yes, we get slugs up here, including (don’t ask me how) carrot root fly!

Let the tour commence!

You climb five flights of concrete stairs from the street level, and then another flight of blue painted timber steps, past shelves of seed trays and potting stuff to get to the vegplot door. Open it and the first thing you will see is the BT Tower - our very own garden ornament.  It lights up and rotates at night.  

Introduction
This rooftop has always been a roof terrace, and was probably made like this so that workers in the tailor’s workrooms below could make an exit over the rooftops, if fire broke out.  That fire exit is long since abandoned, though you can still see the step ladder leading to next door.  The basic topping is pavement grade asphalt – a very rugged waterproof layer.

When I started gardening up here, I set myself the challenge of growing as much as possible from seed; using a closed system, where all waste, weeds and spent-soil is recycled, via a very large insulated compost bin.  The majority of annual vegetables are grown in 150mm deep timber beds, raised off the ground on top of recycled pallets. Deep rooted plants and perennial fruit are grown in large pots.  The whole garden is designed on a 600mm grid.  We recently installed a more robust greenhouse, after a plastic version was irreparably damaged in last year’s storms.

Crop Rotation
Each of the beds has a slightly different microclimate, which dictates what is grown there.  I don’t practice any form of strict rotation, but I do try to move things around each year.  I like to experiment.  For example, where lettuces grew last year in the spring bed, this year we have Castelfranco chicory and Swiss chard.

The four raised beds are roughly divided to accommodate crops covering four growing seasons.  There is a spring bed for early greens, an early summer bed for solstice crops and a late summer bed for squash and herbs. I will plant late season crops in the autumn bed, hoping to keep them going up until Christmas.  This year I have tried to plant each bed to a colour scheme.

Winter veg are also grown in the greenhouse, once summer crops like tomatoes are over.

The Autumn Bed
Colour scheme: Black and white

What you see here is the end of last year’s autumn planting and the beginning of next year’s.  Broad beans, Aguadulce Claudia were planted in November 2013 along with garlic, Early Purple Wight.   Bronze fennel stays in the bed all year round.  The stems, seeds, bulbs and fronds can all be used in cooking.    Runner beans, Desiree have a white, rather than a purple bean. This variety can be eaten fresh or saved for winter preserving.   In between these mainstays, I have placed a catch crop of giant red mustard.  This provides big, peppery leaves for salads or stir fry.  They are just about to go to seed, so will be pulled out soon and replaced with tomatoes, blue Bayou, an almost black variety that is late cropping and will be ready to harvest when the other tomatoes are over. If there is room, I will plant a couple of black and white striped autumn squashes and some white Swiss chard, Lucillus, which is large and prolific.  Its thick stems are robust enough to withstand light frosts.

The black and white theme is continued in the potted Sambuccus Nigra (the elder bush) that I am fan training against this very favoured south facing wall.

The Spring Bed
Colour scheme: Lime and purple

This bed is mainly given over to chicory and other leaf crops, that I use through the springtime.  A hyssop ‘hedge’ runs along the front of the bed, to protect the seedlings from high winds.  This year I have interspersed the leaf crops with purple pansies.  These have flowered consistently from February until now.  I planted them to sweeten my salads. Pansy petals are delicious. But in fact, the slugs had quite a meal in the earlier part of the year. It is only now that I am beginning to harvest flowers for our own use.  The pleasant side effect has been that slugs have not shown as much interest in the adjacent chicory.  At the back a small Valerian plant has sweet smelling pinkish white flowers.  The leaves and root contain a powerful sedative.   

The Trellises

All the beds are linked by a series of blue trellises, the colour is chosen as a reminder of ancient woad-based wood preservatives.  Trellises extend the space that we have for crops, as well as adding to the wind shelter.  They provide extra shade at the height of summer.  This year the central arch has French Beans, Cosse Violette, purple sweet peas and Ipoema climbing through it.  The late summer bed, has Zuccini tromboncino.  I’ve tried getting several types of courgette to climb, but so far none have been very successful.  The ‘trombone’ is not a true courgette. It has paler flowers and very elongated fruits. While nearly all summer squash are cultivars of Cucurbita pepo, tromboncino is a cultivar of Cucurbita moschata.  Also unique is the vining growth habit, similar to many winter squashes. If picked young, they can be used just like ordinary courgettes and are supposed to have an excellent flavour.  If left on the vine, they can grow to over a meter long and frankly look a bit rude!  Spencer sweet peas that have survived from last year share this trellis and fix nitrogen to feed the roots of the courgette.

The Late Summer Bed
Colour scheme: Pale yellow, lavender and white, evolving into brighter colours as autumn arrives.

On one side of the trellis you can see the mini herb garden, with chives, lavender, silver thyme and purple sage all doing well.  In between there are lettuces, a row of carrots and Russian kale (that will go right through to winter.)   The chicken wire beneath the lettuces and kale delineates a square foot and helps me plant out more exactly.  Four lettuces per square foot, without thinning at an early stage, is the maximum that can be left if I want heads to form.  (There is cut-and-come-again elsewhere in the bed.)  This year I’ve left the wire in place to see if it deters slugs.  It does seem to!
On the other side of the trellis I’m growing catch crops of rocket, radish and lettuces in between longer term crops like Chantenay carrots (the only ones that grow stumpy enough for such shallow beds), marrowfat peas and old fashioned sweet peas for cutting.  A row of cottage garden flowers will mature as the summer goes by.

The Solstice Bed
Colour scheme: Mainly white

This bed receives the least sunshine, so I grow crops here that mature in the middle of the summer, when the light levels are at their highest.  The main crop is Mr Prew’s exceedingly tall peas, an Alderman-style variety that I acquired from a seed swop and now save and re-sow each year.  Climbing Ipoema, morning glory, will clamber up the trellis.  Purple mizuna sits below this, in the shade.  In the corner you will see a Japanese wineberry, Rubus phoenicolasius, clambering up a chicken wire tube.  This is a vertical compost heap.  I put woody waste in here, as I’m clearing the garden. It will rot down into a carbon rich tonic that is gradually delivered by the rain, directly into the raised bed.  It doubles as a bug hotel!

A big block of parsley grows all year round in a damp spot under the garden tap, self-seeding later in the summer.  I grow parsley in pots as well, to cover winter use and summer excesses.

The Pots
A variety of containers are used to grow fruit, flowers and some crops that do not do well in shallow beds.  Each year these crops change.  I have grown potatoes, courgette and main-crop carrots this way.  This year I am trying ruby chard, which tends to remain rather small in the raised beds. It is part of the beet family and has a long tap root.

A row of edible flowers are trained along the balustrade in a favoured part of the garden.  They provide colour, a shelter belt and scent all summer long and attract bees. 

Greenhouse

At this time of year, the greenhouse is full with tomatoes, strawberries, cucumbers and both sweet and chilli peppers.  Companion planting of basil, marigolds, antirrhinum and nasturtium, keep pests under control.  There are three varieties of tomatoes, all of which are grown as indeterminate vines: early – gardener’s delight, semi early - harbinger and late - blue Bayou that will eventually go outside. Gardener’s delight is very vigorous, so this year I have experimented by letting one side shoot grow up in some of the pots, creating two main vines per plant.  I plant tomatoes into bottomless pots of compost, raised above a tray of terracotta balls.  I water daily into the terracotta trays, where the drinking roots extend and feed weekly into the pot soil, where the fine feeding roots gather.  Spurs are cut and stuck in the ground or a spare pot to form a new plant.

A fan heater keeps frosts at bay during the winter. I augment the heat during early spring, when the house is full of seedlings, ensuring a minimum 10°C.  Propagators provide bottom heat to seedlings right through the spring and ensure quick germination.  In the sultry, warm days of August, I can use the fan to move stale air around, which is supposed to help guard against blight. However, my new Elite greenhouse is well ventilated, with a rooflight and a door at either end.

Lebon Compost Trunk
An old school trunk, with ventilation holes underneath and to the sides, converts kitchen and garden waste into a rich compost.  There is approx. 25mm of expanded polyurethane insulation around the sides.  The mixtures are raised off the bottom by 150mm of twigs and sticks.  This does not kill all seeds, but because of the closed system that I operate, most weeds are in fact volunteer veg.  Kitchen waste rots down very quickly.  The heap is alive with worms, woodlice, centipedes, nematodes and a few slugs.  All do their work in breaking down the waste to form a rich growing mix.  We drink a lot of coffee.  The grounds help deter slugs.  The eggshells help keep the compost slightly alkaline. They don’t break down in the heap, but the broken shells deter slugs on the soil and as they break down, over several years, they release lime to the raised beds, keeping them sweet.  Experiments in America have shown that crushed egg shells provide a more beneficial lime release than the occasional administration of horticultural lime. 

Close to the compost heap you can see a tea bucket.  This is filled with nettles gleaned from the park.  It will rot down into a nitrogen rich tonic very quickly. 

If anyone missed the Chelsea Fringe and would like to see the rooftopvegplot, I am always happy to shown them round and to answer any questions.  Please join me for a cup of tea in our studio below the garden.   

Wendy  Shillam      @rooftopvegplot               www.rooftpovegplot.com

The Calm Before the Storm

Tomatoes standing to attention in the greenhouse, awaiting visitors inspections. Can you spot the fruit?

This is the big week; the week that we’ve been working towards since February.  This is the week that we open for the Chelsea Fringe.  We chose to show for three afternoons, Thursday 5^th, Friday 6^th and Saturday 7^th June from 1.00 – 6.00pm.

Mike spent all weekend clearing the potting shed.  My rooftopvegplot is unusual in that you have to walk through the potting shed to get into the garden.  So old canes where cleared out, pots were stacked and tools polished.  I’ve primped and pruned the plot so that there won’t be a lettuce leaf out of place by Thursday. 

The seriously tidy potting shed

Allowing people into the veg plot is rather different to opening a flower garden.  It feels as personal as if I’m revealing my underwear drawer to the public.  It’s an important part of our lives, it is there to be beautiful, but utility has to win sometimes.  Will people understand that?  Will they forgive that gap, which was yesterday’s lunch?

All this soul searching is of course far too late.  The garden does look good, even though I say so myself. And we haven’t sacrificed eating for show.  Though I have to admit, that I’ve held off harvesting the broad beans, which are just on the point of becoming succulent fat pods.

Broad beans, Aguadulce CLaudia

Chelsea Fringe have been amazing. It is all run by a dedicated and voluntary team.  We have to pay a modest fee to enter, but nothing like the real costs. Today I realised that the fringe website wasn’t working.  You could not access the details of our event!  Frantic phone calls can’t be made – they have no telephone. So I had to send off an email and hope that someone would read it at the other end. Thankfully they were reading their mail and the glitch was repaired within minutes.  Bravo! Chelsea Fringe.  But these last minute moments of anxiety do nothing for the heart rate.

On Wednesday the 4^th June, I’m booked in to speak on the Robert Elms show on BBC London at lunchtime. (Do listen!) We have already had a number of journalists beating a path to our door. And there have been a few surprise spin-offs, like the lingerie shoot the other day!   I need to keep reminding myself why I did it.  I wanted to tell people how you can grow veg in central London and encourage more rooftop gardens.  I care about the urban environment and wanted to show that it could be productively greened. 

I have no idea whether we will be inundated with visitors, or whether no-one will visit us over the next three days.  Is this the calm before the storm, or will all that preparation actually be a storm before the calm?  I don’t mind either way.  At least we got to tidy the potting shed and we shall still have this delightful garden to ourselves on the other 362 days of the year.

That deck chair has got my name on it!