JULY dining out
Last week we ate my first crop of courgettes, grilled and mixed into a pasta salad with basil sauce. It was a bright green dish and it was good. I’d just got back from two weeks adventuring round southern France and northern Italy by train, and it was wonderful to be welcomed by four small but handsome vegetables, calling out to be eaten. Deep post holiday blues were eased by views of a roof that is looking jungle-ish at last. The garden survived two weeks of heat wave without an owner because my extremely kind flatmate agreed to babysit, armed with a watering can and bribed with biscuits.
The food on holiday was obviously excellent – cheese, olives, peaches and pesto to die for. The tomatoes were especially brilliant, those huge crazy looking ones, that come in all shades of red, green, yellow and purple. Some neatly striped, others bulbous and epic. Market days were some of the best of the trip. I’m now anticipating my own toms ripening much more keenly. The plants are giants now, and sporting many berry sized green tomatoes that swell slightly every day. In other vegetable news, I have flowers on my runners and a few tiny beans can be spied among the stalks. Salad leaves and herbs are on my menu daily. I am especially enjoying re-discovering the power of the chive.
I thought I’d have potatoes by now and have done some rooting around in my sack container. So far I’ve only pulled out five baby spuds and found some undeveloped ones. I’m worried I’ve nursed these plants for months and have failed to even grow enough for one meal. A novice potato farmer, I now think I planted too many in a rather small space. The plants above the soil’s surface were large and luscious, monsters even, and looked very happy. They flowered and I assumed my crop would soon be ready to harvest. I’ve stopped my rooting and am now waiting… I’m not sure for what. Perhaps I’ll have another dig around next week.
At the moment I have lots of bee and butterfly visitors to make me feel better about the lack of spuds. Both are enjoying the lavender flowers most. Evenings are still long and gloriously warm at the moment. When I’m out on the roof after dark, moths dance around the lights. I haven’t seen my dishevelled blackbird for a while though, which is a concern.
I do have a timid young squirrel that’s started visiting. His knees positively knock if I catch him in the act of eating my sorrel, a salad leaf that he seems to love. I accidentally surprised him the other day, initiating the most athletic, and perhaps dangerous, flying squirrel leap I’ve ever seen. He launched himself off the roof, hit the top of the downstairs neighbours’ privet hedge and then bounced right into the middle of the next-door-neighbour-but-one’s garden. He landed on his feet and looked shell shocked; I looked guilty.
I’m conducting an experiment in growing upside down vegetables. I read about people doing this in the New York Times and thought it sounded fun. Apparently you can grow any climbing vegetable upside down and the reason to do it is to save space and to protect them from pests. Upside down plants are harder for squirrels, slugs and snails to reach. I’m growing two tomato plants this way in old lemonade bottles.
You can see their roots working their way up the clear sided containers and the plants have twisted themselves up to grow. They are still rather small but they seem to be doing OK. They’ve certainly proved immune to pests so far. They look good, I like having toms hanging the wrong way round from the fence and the drainpipe.
The final highlights of July that I must mention are flowers. As well as bee friendly lavender, the tomato and beans are looking lovely in bloom and the courgette flowers are nothing short of exotic. I love their huge orange petals that twist into fat, veined cones and spring open into eye achingly fluorescent stars. Edith the rose has had some pretty pink flowers and I’ve had a few mystery blooms too, from plants that are probably called weeds by most but that are more than welcome in my garden.
I helped out with gardening club again yesterday, on the Somerford Estate in Dalston. It was a busy session, maybe because it’s the school holidays now. We spent the whole time watering, it was great fun. We set up an efficient hydration system using six watering cans and several mini gardeners. Watering continues to be the main job on the roof too. Tonight we’ll eat out there – in summer it is as much a dining room as a garden. A dining room woven with leaves. And then, when we’ve eaten our fill, I’ll water the plants by the light of the moon.
JULY ten pictures of today
JUNE garlic & flowers
Yesterday I harvested my garlic. The bulbs had been swelling over the winter, and I’d nibbled at the strong leaves they sent up over spring, but I needed their container for some tomato and bean plants so it was time to dig them up. I tugged them out of the ground, shook off the soil, then spread them over the roof to dry in the sun. Later I packed them into a tight box and tucked them into a cool, dark cupboard. Every time I open it now there’s a faint garlic aroma.
I messed up when I planted them last year, sowing two entire bulbs whole, rather than individual cloves. Easily swayed by anything faintly exotic, I bought Italian garlic and so couldn’t understand a word of the planting instructions. The mistake means I’ve pulled up loads of garlic but the bulbs are all rather mini. Pretty though – neat bundles of cloves covered with a translucent papery white skin and veined with bright pink, smelling exactly as garlic should. I have so many little bulbs I’m thinking of pickling some and making my own antipasti.
I’m working from home these days which means a lot more time on the roof. Recently I’ve watched goldfinches dancing in my jasmine and tobacco flowers and become firm friends with London’s most dishevelled blackbird. He perches on the fence that runs round the garden, preening a coat that will never look anything but messy. He’s greying, has bald patches and his feathers poke in all the wrong directions. Sometimes he yodels and sometimes he shouts. He might stop by to eat a worm or a bug, other times he just sits and spies on all the other birds that are around and about. Every time I see him a smile cracks across my face.
There’s a bit of lull produce wise on the roof at the moment. I’m waiting. I have some tiny courgettes and the potatoes have flowers. The tomato plants are starting to get larger and the few beans that are still alive are finally at a stage when they should be safe from snails. I have a few salad leaves and herbs, but I’m waiting for more to get big enough to eat. The leaves had a setback in the shape of a digging squirrel, which means my wait is going to be longer than I’d hoped. All is on track but there’s not much to harvest as yet.
I found myself on the roof of the Bootstrap building in Hackney last week, which has been transformed into the Dalston Roof Park and will be hosting gigs, parties and film nights this summer. There’s a bar, a barbeque and oodles of veg. I can’t wait to go back there on a balmy evening and be entertained among the lettuces.
When you walk out onto the roof park for the first time you can’t help but be overexcited. It’s surrounded by London views and chimney stacks, and is filled with many lush looking plants of the edible kind. In comparison to my roof, Bootstrap’s is a well stocked Eden, but perhaps an imperfect one. It has a temporary feel to it that makes it more like an installation than a well rooted garden that will carpet the roof in green for years to come. They’ve used astroturf for that effect. I loved it though, it must be a joy to work in the building and be able to lunch there every day.
After exploring this sparkling new garden that’s been shipped in and onto a roof, I headed up Stoke Newington Road to Somerford Grove, a low rise housing estate where residents have been growing masses of salad and vegetables for a year now in their shared spaces. Not as glamorous as the Bootstrap garden but much more inspiring. It was gardening club day and I was helping out, planting and watering with the local kids. It was a fun afternoon, hot and dominated by water fights. The children absolutely love growing things and tasting the fruits of their labours. They flock to gardening club every week, more than happy to get muddy and wet.
The transformation of Somerford Grove is impressive. With a little friendly nudging, local people have rolled up their sleeves and are growing much delicious salad, fruit and vegetables in their communal areas (and in their private gardens too). Young and old are getting thoroughly soil stained in pursuit of perfect plants. Friendships have blossomed and flowers have bloomed. Once something of a concrete desert, and pretty unfriendly, the estate is now full of life – both of the people and the plant variety.
Also last week, I went to a screening of a heartbreaking documentary called The Garden, which is all about a 13 acre block of land in South Central Los Angeles. This square of land, surrounded on all sides by wide busy roads and ugly grey buildings, was given to the local community after race riots in the late 1980s and turned into verdant allotments. Almost 300 different, predominately Latino families embraced farming the land and feeding themselves with home grown fruit and veg.
It’s a documentary so of course there had to be some threat to this idyll and indeed there was. Some shady back room deals meant the land was privately rather than publicly owned and the private owner decided he wanted it back. All kinds of wrangling ensued but finally it looked like the farmers would be able to keep the land, although they had to raise an eye watering $16.3million in just five weeks to buy it.
Was there a happy ending? I won’t spoil the film as it’s really worth watching but the ending wasn’t simple, in fact it was baffling. It made me think many things, but one thought was how emotional gardening can be, how nurturing a plot of land invests some of your soul into it and the threat of losing that space is devastating. Some people really don’t understand that though. The owner of the land had no concept of its value as a garden and a green food space, he thought only in terms of cash and nursed a destructive sense of his right to do what he liked with his land, even if that was to let it turn to dust.
Back to my garden, again meagre in comparison to the feats achieved in South Central LA, and this hot hot heat means watering is once again the main job if I’m ever to get any veg to pick. The best thing about June has been the giant purple alium flower that has looked fantastic for weeks and brought me much cheer. It’s going to seed now but still looks dramatic – stars bursting in a perfect sphere on the top of a willowy stalk that bends under the exploding bloom’s weight.
I’ve been writing a book! It’s structured round one year on the roof, but also adventures out into London’s wild spaces and looks at the creatures that call this city home. It’s not out until next spring but I hand it over to my publisher in just a few days, which is nerve wracking but ultimately will be a great relief. I’m planning a little trip away as a treat for finishing, which means I’m also nerve wracked about leaving the garden to fend for itself during a heat wave. I will have to bribe my flatmate to babysit with promises of tomatoes and courgettes to come, and perhaps some chocolate in the meantime.
JUNE scruff bird
Every day now, London’s most dishevelled blackbird visits. Sometimes for a good yodel, sometimes to eat a bug, sometimes just to have a little sit. He shares the space with a fat wood pigeon, an athletic squirrel and an impoverished writer.
JUNE growths
On the roof at the mo there’s a giant star ball of purple alium flowers, enormous potatoes outgrowing their hessian sack home, tomatoes in steamy bottles and a very tiny purple tree spinach plant. In other news, it turns out squirrels like eating strawberries (unripe is fine) and lettuce. Humph.
MAY mud
Well it’s very warm today, positively balmy in fact but, despite hints at summer, I’m feeling a little sad because the last of my runner beans, which were doing so well, died last night. The final victim of an ongoing snail attack that has seen my plants picked off one by one. Interesting that snails behave like this, not embarking upon an all out assault with mass casualties all at once, but instead a slow killing off. Oh well. I have planted more seeds and am hopeful these ones will make it.
On a happier note, I have masses of flowers on the strawberry plants in the hanging basket. My tickets for Wimbledon arrived yesterday (my flatmate and I got lucky in the ballot this year), so perhaps we will be able to take a picnic of home grown strawbs with us to the tennis. Crop wise, it’s all about salad at the moment. I’ve been enjoying eating strong tasting leaves from my garlic plants, as well as much mint, chervil, rocket and parsley. I have this lovely mystery leaf growing in one of my salad boxes. I’ve no idea what it is but it has a tart and tangy taste that studs the eater’s eyes with tears.
This year I’m trying to grow root vegetables. I have carrots in a deep container that I think perhaps used to be a waste paper bin and potatoes growing in a lined hessian sack. Both are thriving and I’m really pleased. I’m especially excited about the potatoes and loving the ongoing process of topping them up with soil only for them to burst out again. As well as thinking regularly and often about juicy strawberries fresh from my basket, I’m also solidly daydreaming about my own perfect potato salad. Elsewhere on the roof (and also my bedroom), the toms and squashes are doing well, as is my single sugar pea.
With all of this growing has come a deep love of getting soily and, more recently, a keen interest in compost. I’ve been committed to all things organic and peat free from the off, but have always bought compost rather than made my own. This is out of necessity more than anything, as space in my roof garden is seriously limited. It’s not practical to compost up there. However, I do recycle all my food and green waste because, lucky me, my local council collect it from my doorstep. But where does it go? What happens after I clip shut the lid of my brown box and leave it out for collection?
One of my amazing friends, whose love of soil is far deeper than mine, managed to get us golden tickets for a tour of a north London compost making factory. It sits on the edge of the River Lee beyond Walthamstow, a vast industrial sprawl of a place, but one that isn’t too far a cycle from home. We arrive, admittedly a little late after getting a tiny bit lost, and embark upon a tour around the site, clad in high vis vests and day-glo orange hard hats. Lorries from all over north London head here, full to the brim with food and garden waste. They tip their organic loads into a warehouse where it passes through a shredder and is screened for things that won’t rot, like plastic and metal.
It’s then piled into large metal sheds where it naturally gets hot and steamy, reaching temperatures of 60 degrees Celsius. The piles of compost dance with flies, are pecked over by birds and give off great curling clouds of steam. Air is blown through the soil, powered with energy made in the onsite incinerator, which burns waste that was destined for landfill. It is moved into different sheds, allowing for the compost to get mixed and further screened. A gradual rotting process that would take about a year in your garden, takes about 12 weeks here. I was expecting the place to stink but actually it isn’t that bad.
The London Waste Eco Park says it receives 35,000 tonnes of organic waste each year from the seven north London boroughs it serves, resulting in 12,000 tonnes of compost. The compost is made available to community growing projects as well as to farms and parks. Local people can buy bags of it and often councils will arrange for residents to get their hands on it for free. It’s made from our waste after all. I’m definitely going to be keeping my eye out for free compost offers from now on. Find out more at www.londonwaste.co.uk
When I haven’t been off on soily adventures, roof gardening or daydreaming about strawberries and potatoes this month, I’ve been making a short animated film about growing your own lunch for Wildlife Watch UK. It’s aimed at kids and is a little bit shaky, but hopefully enjoyable! You can watch it in the player below. It’s a sort of humble homage in paper to the bean and the bee, which might inspire kids to dig.
APRIL adventures
I know it’s dull to talk about the weather but wow, it has been lovely of late. The roof has regained its official sun trap status and I’ve been finding every excuse possible to be out there. There are many rays to catch and much new growth to admire. My tiny rowan and hazel trees are covered in leaves, the honeysuckle and bay are in bud, the strawberry plants have flowers, the rosemary and rocket are also blooming and there are plenty of salad leaves to eat. My beans are getting tall, the toms are looking sturdy and I’ve now planted out my carrots and potatoes. The daffodils are still looking pretty and my favourite blackbird continues to visit regularly and often.
I’ve had a few brilliant outdoors experiences recently, made even better by the fact it is spring and London is looking especially lovely with it. It seems like the blossom this year is heavier than ever. Yesterday I was outside all day working on my new wildlife filming job, admiring handsome herons and magnificent jays in Regent’s Park, watching swallow acrobatics and swarms of swans on the Thames out west at Kingston and spying on a vixen and her tiny two week old cubs in a back garden in Wimbledon.
Last week, working on the same project, I found myself on the roof of Tower 42, the former NatWest Tower and the tallest building in the City square mile. I went up the skyscraper with a bunch of birdwatchers, now known as the Tower 42 Bird Study Group. We met in the morning, on ground level, outside a towering building that’s home to smart offices and an expensive restaurant. Glass revolving doors sweep smartly clad people in and out. We clustered out front then entered via the less glamorous back doors. We took a lift up 41 floors. My ears popped. We walked up a couple of flights of stone stairs. Then up some tightly twisting metal steps. Then through a room full of roaring machines and strange smells. Finally we clambered up two metal ladders and through two trap doors. The last trap door propelled us out onto the roof.
The vastness of London stretched away from us on all sides, densely packed with buildings of all sizes and styles. The snaking shape of the river was obvious where it’s usually hidden, tall buildings that on ground level seem so sturdy looked like fragile architects’ models. Iconic structures looked familiar yet totally different viewed from above.
The roof is not designed for people really, it’s all metal girders, pipes and huge, noisy fans. Quite a difficult environment to negotiate and definitely not an obvious place from which to watch birds. But actually it’s perfect. We’d been up there barely 10 minutes when we saw a peregrine falcon swooping in from the west, over St Paul’s Cathedral. A magnificent hunter that can achieve speeds close to 200mph in the right conditions, this particular one had decided upon a feral pigeon breakfast. It caught one of London’s many and took it to Tower Bridge – a rather picturesque place to dine and a choice that made us coo with delight. A telescope was fixed firmly upon its meal making and we all took turns to admire the breakfasting bird.
We saw a fair few falcons during the hour I was on the roof, heartening since this bird was on the brink of extinction only a few years ago. We watched one sitting quietly and contentedly on one of the imposing Barbican towers. Apparently peregrines love its cliff like qualities. We also saw a sparrowhawk winging past us to the west. My eyes were mostly drawn southwards, where the landmarks associated with the Thames sat looking strangely tiny, but it was also exciting to look north – to find Holloway and pretend I could see the roof winking knowingly at me through the cloudy haze.
The final experience to share, which has a more foody theme, can be called my adventure to Hawkwood. A couple of weeks back I cycled all the way to Chingford, which is practically Essex, along the River Lea, a neat band of water which flows through a landscape that’s a mixture of marshland and light industry. Curvy white swans glided elegantly through glassy water rimmed with tall reeds and rippling with the reflections of warehouses, pylons and waste processing plants. Cranes framed the river edges. Mallard ducklings bobbed alongside the odd rusting can and seething plastic bag. Butterflies danced, the sun shone, geese nibbled at the cycle path.
Our destination was a place called Hawkwood, a new food growing project set in beautiful grounds on the edges of London and the edges of the forest. It’s a place where the air echoes with the hammering of woodpeckers knocking on wood and amazingly no traffic noise. The site was once a tree and flower nursery, supplying local parks with plant life. It ran out of money and stood empty for years, before a group of keen organic gardeners took over the site and set up a food growing co-operative.
The project is young but full of energy and ambition. They sell their produce at a local market and run a veg box scheme. They have funding for three years but want to be self financing and able to run independently soon. A range of permaculture courses are planned to spread the gardening bug throughout the borough of Waltham Forest and beyond. It’s all very inspiring.
Hawkwood is attracting a lovely bunch of volunteers who want to spend their free time getting soily and sharing ideas. In the morning I was in the wonderfully warm glasshouse, preparing some raised beds for a crop of climbing cucumbers. After a long shared lunch, I was outside getting a bit more physical, hammering old scaffold planks into bed shapes and hauling compost and straw. The conversation was good and the weather sunny.
On the long ride home my legs ached from all the exertion, I barely made it up a steep hill near home, but I felt great. The water ran a muddy brown when I showered back at the flat. Post wash, I felt refreshed but also deliciously tired, in the way you only do when you’ve been out all day long, breathing fresh air and flexing muscles and limbs that are normally pretty sedentary.
Back to now and to the roof and today I’m going use it as an outdoors dining room. I’m making lunch and dinner for friends. We can sit out there and watch the bees dancing round flowers as we eat and then make the most of the full moon tonight. Perfect.
APRIL tangling vines
This Easter weekend daffs that look like fried eggs are blooming and my sproutlets get ever taller. The now towering runners are learning about the great outdoors, toughening up their bean stalks for a permanent move out to the roof. Yellow squash, courgette, carrot, tomato and sugar pea sprouts are all looking sweet and strong. My bedroom is more plant nursery than sleeping quarters at the moment, my sleep woven with tangling vines and the smell of earth.
MARCH excuses & distractions
February’s chilly gardening blues have been replaced with March gardening joy. The sun has been shining on the roof all week, bathing it in warmth and painting it purple and yellow. Pots of crocuses and daffodils have brought the space back to life. I had a snatched picnic lunch out there for the first time in months the other day. To be lounging briefly in my golden hanging garden again – minus hat, scarf, gloves and the ‘it’s not really that cold’ mantra of denial – was both glorious and a relief. Phew that spring has arrived at long last, that green growths are bursting up all over the place and heavy winter coats can finally be replaced with spring jackets.
London and her Londoners have been much more cheerful since the weather improved. Evenings are lighter again and sunny mornings are beginning to ring with birdsong. It’s hard not to feel heartened. I’ve been finding all manner of elaborate excuses to spend as much time as possible in the park. Regent’s Park and Kensington Gardens, both just minutes from the hell that is Oxford Street, have had an extraordinary magnetism for me of late. Both are speckled with bright spring flowers but both are also hosting some impressive wildlife at the moment, of the feathered variety.
An island in the boating lake at Regent’s Park is home to London’s most central heronry, with a selection of tall, still leafless trees holding huge nests where the pterodactyl-like birds are sitting on eggs. Everyday an old lady visits the lake bearing sprats for the herons’ lunch. They know her well and flock to her side to savour her fishy treats.
Further west in bijou Kensington Gardens, which borders huge Hyde Park, a tawny owl couple have just had four owlets. The birds are easy to spot in the old oak and plane trees, sleeping out during the day and hunting by night. The baby birds are chubby balls of grey fluff, with dark eyes, tiny beaks and long talons. Although still very young and vulnerable, they’re already good climbers and can fly from tree to tree.
Who would have thought central London could boast flocks of herons feeding together in a chaotic squabble (they’re normally solitary feeders), or a pair of tawny owls nurturing a new family, with all handsome members clearly visible during the day?
Last Sunday, the day the weather changed and everything improved in fact, I went tree planting in Hackney. Cycling has become a pleasure again and I zipped east with the wind in my hair and the sun in my eyes. I met three inspiring people who are on various growing missions, one of which is on a low rise housing estate. Last year residents grew vegetables in raised beds, and so far this year local people have got together and planted over thirty fruit trees, turning their communal space into something of an orchard. In a few years time it will literally be dripping with fruit. I went to help plant the final trees – a few varieties of apple, plus pear, mulberry and plum. Digging huge holes, I especially enjoyed the many fat worms we came across on our journey down into the clayey soil.
The estate sits in what feels like a special corner of the city, at the top of a road where everyone seems to know each other, where fruitful front gardens are nurtured for all to enjoy and there’s a rich supply of free compost from a communal heap. The energy and enthusiasm of the people running the tree planting session was infectious and the experience had a sort of magic about it, which has got into my veins and made me silly excited. There’s nothing quite like bonding with interesting new people over a confusion of soil and food growing ambitions.
So back in my corner of London, I’ve planted seeds and they’ve grown. The sproutlings are now about three weeks old and some, the runner beans, are already rather large. As well as towering baby runners, I have tomato, carrot, courgette, yellow squash, sugar and sweet pea plants. Oh so exciting. My bedroom is returning to its jungle-like state of last year and I’m really enjoying it. Every morning and evening there’s an inspection to see how much they’ve grown. Sometimes inspections are mere minutes apart, when I’m feeling particularly keen or perhaps slightly overwrought. There’s nothing like the progress from seed to sprout to keep a person thoroughly distracted.
MARCH sproutlets
I planted and they grew. Tomato, carrot, sugar pea and runner bean sprouts so far. And rooftop daffodils mean it’s officially spring. Officially official.
