Food for thought at flower show as capital growth exhibits

Capital growth, launched in 2008 by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and Rosie Boycott, chair of London Food, is tasked to achieve 2,012 new food growing spaces in London by 2012.

Already the project is supporting a range of diverse community growing projects that reflect the interests and passions of the various groups involved.

In order to publicise the initiative and create greater awareness of ways in which communities can get involved, Capital Growth put on an exhibition at this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Co-ordinated by Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, the display featured six townhouses, the idea being to demonstrate how, with careful thought and planning, the properties’ balconies could be used to grow a surprisingly wide range of fruit and vegetables.

Capital Growth then approached Katrin Bohn and Andre Viljoen - joint authors of Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities - to take on two of the balconies. Hadlow had previously co-operated with Katrin and Andre in the production of the ‘Urban Agriculture Curtain’ that was part of the London Yields Urban Agriculture exhibition held at London’s Building Centre earlier this year. It was therefore no surprise that they wanted to involve the college again. Then Ida Fabrizio, project officer for Sustain, jumped on the bandwagon and persuaded the college to provide fruit, vegetables and herbs - in various sizes and stages of growth - for the other four balconies.

Notice was short - very short - with just four weeks’ growing time. Fortunately, the college’s pepper production, which featured in an earlier FPJ editorial, yielded four lots of peppers. As it happens, the purloined peppers were growing in four different hydro substrates - excellent for demonstrating different growing mediums. Final-year students were cajoled into growing seedlings and young plants. Part-time students also turned up trumps, enthusiastically offering some of their own home-grown produce for use on the show balconies.

On June 20 - little more than two weeks before the Hampton Court show - Ida, Andre and a small group of volunteers from Sustain visited the college for a workshop. But the BBC wanted to film this part of the Capital Growth story, with the result that more time was spent taking and re-taking shots than productively potting up. Anyway, the college managed to show sufficient plant material for what were now five balconies because, with a little gentle persuasion from Ida, the Capital Growth Community Herbalists agreed to set up the sixth balcony. By another twist of fate, the leader of the herbalists turned out to be a Hadlow student from the Medicinal Horticulture BSc course.

On the eve of the delivery to Hampton Court, Ida returned to the college to make the final selection of plants. Somehow or another - possibly because the college has had long experience in the logistics involved in moving materials for show constructions - all the plants, hardware and ‘freecycle’ containers were squeezed into just two vans. As Stefan Jordan, the horticulture lecturer running the project, remarked: “Yet another practical application of sustainability!”

By now the academic year had ended at Hadlow and so student availability was reduced. Nevertheless, a student volunteer, Jordan and Ida, plus a small group of other volunteers, spent all day on July 4 - just two days before the show’s opening on July 6 - setting up the hydro balconies and the other four themed balconies.

As well as The Hydroponics Balconies in which Hadlow was involved, the exhibition featured The Props Balcony, which was inspired by Arcola Theatre’s roof garden in Stoke Newington and featured props from their last show. The Freecycled Balcony was assembled from materials foraged just two weeks prior to the show. The Town and Country Balcony was custom designed by Mark Fossick, who initiated the Carrara Wharf Capital Growth project. The Medicinal Herbs Balcony was designed by the Community Herbalists, who teach community groups.

Not too far away on the showground, ex-Hadlow student Wendy Allen was making last-minute adjustments to her garden, The Rain Chain, which featured in the show’s first Small Sustainable Gardens area. Sponsored jointly by Hadlow and Westgate Joinery, the garden went on to win a gold medal and the added accolade of being judged best overall sustainable garden. The garden featured in BBC and other television reports of the show and presenters declared it to be one of their favourite gardens.

The Capital Growth exhibit didn’t achieve a gold medal, but it did receive huge acclamation from visitors, especially schoolchildren who particularly loved The Freecycle Balcony and were suitably amazed and impressed by the peppers.

The balconies created a lot of interest and demonstrated how, with a bit of thought, very small spaces in locations hitherto considered unlikely can be utilised to grow a surprising quantity and variety of fresh produce. Although devised with the specific intention of alerting Londoners, the Capital Growth stand at Hampton Court no doubt gave out-of-London visitors food for thought - pardon the pun.