Meet London's urban farmers

How urban farmers are sowing the seeds for London’s green revolution

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With winding grapevines, blushing tomatoes, and an above average temperature, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were on a Mediterranean getaway.

But this is Wendy Shillam’s rooftop, an urban oasis five storeys high in the heart of Fitzrovia, west London. In summer when more than 20 crops grow, it’s a haven from the congested West End streets beneath.

Wendy, a retired architect, says she redesigned her 4m x 5m rooftop in a “fit of enthusiasm” and began growing vegetables.

This February she planted tomatoes, and by summer Wendy needn’t bother with the green grocers. Her bounty of crops includes artichokes, strawberries, elephant garlic, and giant purple fennel.

Surrounded by Victorian chimney tops and overlooked by the cylindrical BT Tower, Wendy has squeezed opportunity from every inch of space. There’s a greenhouse, raised beds, a duck-egg blue writing shed, patio furniture – and the tail-wagging company of pet dog Rosie.

March hails the official start of spring, but Wendy’s prime location means she can forget traditional planting rules.

The urban heat island effect in metropolitan areas like Central London, where there is a high population and building density, means the city is warmer than its rural surroundings.

Since the temperature is “always two degrees higher than the outskirts”, frosts rarely disrupt the garden.

Whilst this increases the risk of pests that can survive winter, Wendy says she can grow seasonal produce that wouldn’t survive on London’s fringes, meaning few meals go by where “some element doesn’t come from the roof”.

Wendy puts her success down to growing traditional produce rather than “exotic cucamelons”.

She says: “My advice is to grow things as close to weeds as possible. I grow elderberries, a common weed across London’s parks.”

While urban gardening is in fashion, the grow-your-own movement isn’t new to London. During the World Wars when allotment growing was in its heyday, according to the National Allotment Society there were over 1.5 million allotment plots in the UK. The Dig for Victory campaign of the Second World War even saw the Tower of London’s dry moat converted into vegetable patches.

But since then, the quintessentially British pastime has been given the boot in London. The Greater London Authority (GLA)’s Environment Committee reported that between 1996 and 2006, the capital lost over 1,500 allotment plots across the 20 boroughs for which data was available.

In 1996, according to the GLA, there were 22,319 allotment plots across 20 London boroughs. But London Unlocked’s follow-up investigation reveals that this figure has since fallen by a further 12 per cent to 19,727 plots.

London remains the only UK region where councils have no legal obligation to provide allotments. Just four months ago the fight of allotment growers in Watford, North London ended in defeat after they lost their high court battle to protect the site from redevelopment by Watford Borough Council.

Our investigation also discovered that in the past decade alone, the capital has lost over 1,000 allotment plots across 20 Boroughs. The GLA’s Environment Committee refused to comment on this decline.

Although local allotment provision is falling, Oscar Rodriguez of design consultancy firm Architecture and Food hopes the future of food growing lies in transforming London’s rooftops, but on a larger scale than gardening enthusiasts like Wendy have.

Oscar estimates there are 1,649 hectares of flat roof above existing buildings and residential property in London that could be converted into commercial grade greenhouses.

London’s population is set to reach 8.84 million this year, a rise of almost 15 per cent in ten years. In the next decade, it’s expected to rise by nine per cent to 9.67 million. So could urban farming ease the strain of a swelling population by providing a significant amount of food?

Dr. Michael Hardman, geography lecturer and urban agriculture researcher at the University of Salford, says that although community growing and urban farming have similar functions in terms of food production and education, they are distinctly different.

“Allotments and community gardens are more for leisure, whereas urban farming is larger scale, and with an economic and community focus. Urban farming might help urban people access fresh produce, and help food security, but it isn’t going to feed our cities.”

“We’ve seen a massive rise in more innovative, entrepreneurial activities, particularly the use of aquaponics and hydroponics to grow higher yields in small urban spaces,” he says.

Information Box: Hydroponics, growing plants in water without soil, is already underway in the UK’s first underground farm, located in the tunnels of disused Second World War air raid shelters beneath Clapham’s streets.

Retailer IKEA is also rolling the hypothetical wheelbarrow with the launch of its indoor hydroponic gardening range. For £75, urbanites with limited space can buy a growing kit and sprout plants like pak choi and lemon basil.

GrowUp Box has taken hydroponics further by combining it with fish farming. The top floor of a car park in Stratford, East London holds the Box – a shipping container with greenhouse atop.

The shipping container has a large fish tank with 100 carp, whose nitrogen-rich waste feeds the 400 plants in the greenhouse, creating a closed-loop aquaponic farm.

Sam Cox, co-founder of GrowUp Box, says the benefits of urban farming aren’t just around food, but also the volunteering, training, and education opportunities provided.

He says: “You can get to know your immediate community and socialise. At the moment we have a real resurgence of food culture, and people are becoming more interested in what goes into the food we consume.”

The company’s commercial counterpart, Unit 84, a warehouse in Beckton, East London is the UK’s first aquaponic farm. Whilst GrowUp Box produces 400kg of salad and 400kg of fish annually, Unit 84 produces 20 tonnes of salad and 4 tonnes of fish.

But Sam says Britain’s urban farming industry is lagging behind international rivals. Europe’s biggest urban farm in The Hague, the Netherlands, nicknamed the “Times Square of Urban Agriculture”, produces 45 tonnes of vegetables and 19 tonnes of fish annually from its home in a former Philips TV and phone factory.

However, Sam believes the movement is only complementary to traditional agriculture, not a replacement. He says: “Traditional methods wouldn’t work in a city environment because of the high land costs and limited ground space.”

“We’re trying to supplement traditional farming by providing the type of crop that is perishable, easily damaged during transportation, and often wasted close to the point of consumption,” he says.

Whilst Wendy and GrowUp Box use rooftops for food growing, many of London’s buildings have pitched Victorian and Georgian roofs, few of which were designed to bear the weight of shipping containers or heavy soil.

Maddie Guerlain of Capital Growth, London’s community food growing network, says that in the future, rooftop gardens and community growing should be architecturally incorporated into affordable housing developments rather than retrofitted.

“These issues are all tied up together. It’s about making London a city that is liveable for all Londoners,” she says.

Capital Growth estimates its 2,000 members alone could be producing 380 tonnes of fruit and vegetables, enough for over 3,000 Londoners per year. The charity says that although 28 of London’s 32 Boroughs include food growing in their planning policy, improvements can still be made.

Information Box- Food growing in planning policy: The London Borough of Newham says community food growing projects will be welcomed to appropriate sites awaiting long-term regeneration. Other boroughs, like Greenwich, have pledged to encourage food growing where appropriate, citing fitness benefits, fresh air, and interaction as “proven to be positive for mental well-being”.

The London Plan is the overall strategy for London, setting out the capital’s environmental, economic, and social development framework. Although food growing is already included, Capital Growth hopes the next version - set for release in 2019 - will encourage all-new housing developments to include food growing space.

Maddie says this inclusion is important because “what’s in the London Plan trickles down into smaller, local government planning policies”.

She says: “The current food system keeps everything behind closed doors and in far-away fields, but urban farming increases exposure to the amount of work, love and attention that food growing requires.

“It can make people realise how much work goes into growing just one tomato, and hopefully helps them revalue food.”

Capital Growth’s largest member is South London’s Sutton Community Farm, a seven-acre farm on the edge of Surrey’s North Downs.

In 2010, the site was unrecognisable – derelict, with a few ramshackle poly-tunnels. With the help of 3,000 volunteers, the patch of weeds has been converted into a thriving farm that produces 13 tonnes of vegetables annually.

Farm manager Charlotte Steel wants to prove their small-scale organic model is viable. She says: “We can’t compete with supermarkets and traders who sell vegetables for £1 a bowl because we’re trying to pay a fair wage and organically grow. We’re trying to challenge the status quo and offer people an alternative.”

The farm is within London’s green belt, which makes up around 15 per cent of all London land and is classified as agricultural farmland, yet less than 10 per cent of green belt land actively produces fruit and vegetables.

Charlotte says: “A community farm is a place where social barriers are broken. There is a resistance against using green belt land as people worry it’ll be turned into housing. But people come to learn about food, get away from the concrete jungle and to make friends.”

Across the capital, individuals and community farmers are growing a green revolution. Even where tarmac is more common than grass blades, Londoners have the opportunity to reconnect with nature.

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