Gardening and the City
GARDENING AND THE CITY
If you’ve visions of Carrie dibbing holes with her Manolo Blahnik's or Samantha picking greenfly off her toms with her Tweezermans, forget it. The city’s Edinburgh, not New York and the trendsetters are the many thousands of flat dwellers who've no access to lawn or flowerbed yet are planting up the contents of a small greengrocers on their balconies. Food on a Balcony?
Says Sebastian Mayfield, co-founder of Food Up Front 'You don’t have to own acres of countryside to grow your own vegetables – anyone can do it using pretty much any old space.”
Mayfield himself has grown spinach, rocket, coriander, tomatoes, carrots and even potatoes on his small balcony. Fellow co-founder Zoe Lujic has grown large quantities of chillies on one sunny windowsill. She’s even hoping to help trailblazers to plant a selection of dwarf varieties of traditional English fruit plants.
Why on Earth Bother?
Many education workers are seriously worried about city childrens’ ignorance of where food comes from. Many kids have never seen a vegetable with mud on it or would know that a pea comes from a pod. Middlesborough council are so worried that they've backed inner-city food production on a massive scale, encouraging city dwellers to grow produce in window boxes, balconies, roundabouts and even skips!
So Where Do I Start?
If you fancy planting the contents of your next dinner party on your New Town balcony, take a look at the links below for some guidance on where to start. And if you want to wow your Mr. Big with your full-on gardening chic why not invest in a gorgeous set of V & A floral gardening tools (available from littlegreenspace.com). So cute you won’t want to get them dirty…..
Not up for growing food on your balcony? How about cooking it? This "Bruce" BBQ grill (that looks like those flower pots hanging off balconies) is just the ticket. Get it from Random Good Stuff.
Useful Links
Matt James’ Top Ten City Gardening Tips
Little Green Space
why not post some pics of lovely window boxes? there's a great top-floor flat corner Broughton St and Barony where the owner puts very smart boxes all the way round.
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