Feature: Vertical veg is on the way up
Published: 9 December, 2010
by JAMIE WELHAM
THE old adage “good things come to those who wait” has been put to the test by the paleontological time scale it takes to get an allotment in central London.
Now one man who realised he might be in the ground himself before being able to till the soil in one of Camden’s 195 plots – at the time of writing an estimated wait of 40 years – is giving hope to urban gardeners everywhere.
Mark Ridsdill-Smith, 44, has managed to adapt his Tufnell Park veranda and window ledges into an aerial allotment to grow enough vegetables to stock a grocers.
And he is turning over more than just carrots; having just passed the £700 mark in estimated earnings from the gardening phenonenon he is calling “vertical veg” which he hopes to take across Camden to make a dent in the allotment waiting list.
“We had lived here for about 15 years, and had been on the waiting list for something like six or seven, when it struck me it was never going to happen. I had just been made redundant and set about working out how I could grow stuff without a garden,” says Mr Ridsdill-Smith, a former charity fundraiser living in Chetwynd Road.
He grows tomatoes, runner beans, courgettes, strawberries, herbs and even potatoes. It may have started off as a hobby to fill the days, but now he is running workshops and hopes to teach courses in urban gardening next year.
“When I started I thought we would just grow the odd bit of rocket,” he says. “It’s had a few incarnations and we made a few mistakes, but now we’re completely sustainable. It just shows what you can do. There are a load of people like us, who can’t afford a garden, and will be waiting years for an allotment. There is a real appetite for this kind of thing at the moment, so hopefully I can run it a business down the line. We are going to take it slowly at first and I want to keep it in the area.”
• Details of classes and tips for growing a vertical garden at: www.verticalveg.org.uk
Above: Mark Ridsdill-Smith in his Chetwynd Road ‘allotment’