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Vegetables for London
Tuesday 21 April 2009
THE rooftops and open areas around some of the capital’s most famous attractions could soon be sprouting crops of vegetables under plans drawn up by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London.
His advisers hope to convert unused plots of land around the Tower of London, Marble Arch and on the roof of the Hayward gallery into public vegetable patches as a model of sustainable living.
Johnson will lead the way by planting runner beans in the shadow of City Hall.
The planned plots are part of a growing movement to encourage the country to grow its own food. The National Trust’s Grow Your Own campaign, launched last month, encourages landowners to lend spare plots – from derelict building sites to supermarket car parks — to families to grow fruit and vegetables.
The trust has already pledged 1,000 plots from its own holdings and Network Rail and British Waterways, which runs the canal network, have also promised land.
Campaigners are planning a nationwide public picnic called the Big Lunch on July 19 to share home-grown food.
In London, Rosie Boycott, Johnson’s food adviser, is to carry out a feasibility study into creating a giant vegetable patch on top of the Hayward, a modern-art gallery that forms part of the Southbank arts centre.
The split-level concrete roof could then be converted into 350sq ft of allotments with views of Westminster and St Paul’s Cathedral.
The booming English wine industry is already profiting from the warming climate and Boycott is in talks with Thames Water to bring vineyards into the capital by planting on the banks of the city’s reservoirs.
Boycott, a former editor of The Independent, has so far identified more than 300 plots since Johnson began the Capital Growth initiative last November. The aim is to create 2,012 spaces in time for the 2012 Olympics.
British Waterways has provided land beside canals in east London and has donated retired working boats for use as floating vegetable gardens.
Boycott says the goal is to establish a home-grown food industry to provide an alternative to supermarkets, with a network of street markets selling local produce.
As well as recruiting Londoners to cultivate hundreds of small scraps of inner-city wasteland, Boycott hopes to open a network of mini-farms in the suburbs. Transport for London plans to release land beside overground Tube tracks and several boroughs are considering planting orchards in cemeteries.
Boycott also hopes to plant fruit trees in the grassed-over moat of the Tower of London, and plots may be created on a busy roundabout beside Marble Arch.
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