Garden in the sky
The heavens seem programmed to open whenever I visit a garden that calls for leisurely inspection and study. There was no exception to the rule when I visited the private bank, Coutts, to explore the new Skyline Garden, 30 metres above street level, on the roof of its headquarters building on the Strand. In London.
Executive Chef Peter Fiori gallantly held aloft a large umbrella and gave me an enthusiastic guided tour while I struggled with a rapidly disintegrating notebook in the torrential rain. The idea for this unusual kitchen garden was his. The kitchen, where nine chefs prepare delicious food for up to 500 Coutts guests a day, looks out over this formerly bleak and unused space.
The horticulturalist Richard Vine, who introduced fine diners to micro leaves, helped develop the idea, and brought in The Clink Charity too. This charity runs highly successful training for offenders, providing them with skills and qualifications in horticulture, carpentry and bee-keeping, significantly reducing re-offending rates.
The project got underway in March this year. Prisoners at HMP High Down provided 350 metres of raised beds, and Peter and his chefs carried up three tonnes of soil in the lift and on their shoulders, all in one day.
By mid-April the first seedlings were coming through. The garden takes the form of rows each side of a central walkway above the William IV Street and the Adelaide Street elevations, while the roof rises in the centre, providing valuable shelter. There are wonderful views of the National Gallery and St Martin-in-the-Fields. The chefs, who share watering duties, have all embraced the project, which has been good for recruitment.
A total of 9,000 organic plants have been grown this season, including vegetables, fruit, herbs and edible flowers. Seventy kilos of strawberries have been harvested over the summer. There are sages and thymes, lavender, lemon verbena to flavour crème brûlée, and garlic chives – the flowers are used for their aroma and for decoration. There have been five varieties of potato, including ‘Pink Fir Apple’, ‘Charlotte’ and ‘Mayan Gold’. Baby fennel is served with fish, and lovage is grown to flavour champ, the Irish dish of mashed potatoes and scallions.
As we walked along, Peter picked some of his favourite herbs for me to taste, including Sweet Cicely, which has a lovely aniseed taste, and is good with scallops. I also liked the sharp-tasting pink petals of the begonia ‘Fizz’, which he uses in salads. The aim is to pick three hours before food is served, and to incorporate something from the garden in every dish.
The plants are glossy with health. Only the broad beans failed, attacked by whitefly, and the pigeons have consumed most of the Tuscan black kale, cavolo nero (they don’t seem to like the gorgeous red variety). Bees swiftly found the lavender as soon as it was planted.
When I got home, I changed out of the wettest of my clothes and set off for the allotment, where aubergines and tomatoes needed watering in the greenhouse. As the rain lashed down I munched on a handful of raspberries for consolation, and then picked a vast butterhead lettuce, the delicately flavoured Grosse Blonde Paresseuse.
A gigantic orange slug, the fearsome Arion ater rufus, clung to an outer leaf. I discarded this and other leaves that had been extensively nibbled, and took the lid off the compost bin to hurl them in. A startled vole dived for cover.
I am very fond of voles, even though I suspect them of polishing off most of the peas I keep sowing without result. It occurs to me that there is a lot to be said for vegetablegrowing in the sky. There are no slugs or voles in the Coutts Skyline Garden, although the occasional duck alights, bemused by the sight of such a heavenly habitat.
Contact Sarah at sarah.langtonlockton@lady.co.uk
A rare and spectacular sight has greeted recent visitors to Cambridge Botanic Garden. Emmenopterys henryi (it doesn’t have a common name), described by the plant hunter Ernest ‘Chinese’ Wilson as ‘one of the most strikingly beautiful trees of the Chinese forests’, has flowered for the first time since it was planted 30 years ago.
It is a mystery why it has chosen to flower now, during a year of chaotic weather, including a cold, wet summer. The flowers form in clusters, and each one is starshaped, fragrant and surrounded by large, white elliptic bracts that catch the slightest breeze. Emmenopterys henryi belongs to the coffee family, Rubiaceae. It was introduced to the UK by Ernest Wilson in 1907, and named in honour of the Irish plant hunter Augustine Henry, who first found the tree in central China in 1887.
The Cambridge University Botanic Garden is open daily from 10am. For more visitor information, call 01223- 336265 or visit www.botanic.cam.ac.uk
Boltonia asteroides var. latisquama is a tall perennial, attractive to bees and butterflies. It has gorgeous daisylike, deep purplepink or white flowers in late summer and autumn, providing interest in the border late in the year. It is also a wonderful cut flower. £5.99: www.cathsgardenplants.co.uk
Executive Chef Peter Fiori gallantly held aloft a large umbrella and gave me an enthusiastic guided tour while I struggled with a rapidly disintegrating notebook in the torrential rain. The idea for this unusual kitchen garden was his. The kitchen, where nine chefs prepare delicious food for up to 500 Coutts guests a day, looks out over this formerly bleak and unused space.
The horticulturalist Richard Vine, who introduced fine diners to micro leaves, helped develop the idea, and brought in The Clink Charity too. This charity runs highly successful training for offenders, providing them with skills and qualifications in horticulture, carpentry and bee-keeping, significantly reducing re-offending rates.
The project got underway in March this year. Prisoners at HMP High Down provided 350 metres of raised beds, and Peter and his chefs carried up three tonnes of soil in the lift and on their shoulders, all in one day.
By mid-April the first seedlings were coming through. The garden takes the form of rows each side of a central walkway above the William IV Street and the Adelaide Street elevations, while the roof rises in the centre, providing valuable shelter. There are wonderful views of the National Gallery and St Martin-in-the-Fields. The chefs, who share watering duties, have all embraced the project, which has been good for recruitment.
A total of 9,000 organic plants have been grown this season, including vegetables, fruit, herbs and edible flowers. Seventy kilos of strawberries have been harvested over the summer. There are sages and thymes, lavender, lemon verbena to flavour crème brûlée, and garlic chives – the flowers are used for their aroma and for decoration. There have been five varieties of potato, including ‘Pink Fir Apple’, ‘Charlotte’ and ‘Mayan Gold’. Baby fennel is served with fish, and lovage is grown to flavour champ, the Irish dish of mashed potatoes and scallions.
As we walked along, Peter picked some of his favourite herbs for me to taste, including Sweet Cicely, which has a lovely aniseed taste, and is good with scallops. I also liked the sharp-tasting pink petals of the begonia ‘Fizz’, which he uses in salads. The aim is to pick three hours before food is served, and to incorporate something from the garden in every dish.
The plants are glossy with health. Only the broad beans failed, attacked by whitefly, and the pigeons have consumed most of the Tuscan black kale, cavolo nero (they don’t seem to like the gorgeous red variety). Bees swiftly found the lavender as soon as it was planted.
When I got home, I changed out of the wettest of my clothes and set off for the allotment, where aubergines and tomatoes needed watering in the greenhouse. As the rain lashed down I munched on a handful of raspberries for consolation, and then picked a vast butterhead lettuce, the delicately flavoured Grosse Blonde Paresseuse.
A gigantic orange slug, the fearsome Arion ater rufus, clung to an outer leaf. I discarded this and other leaves that had been extensively nibbled, and took the lid off the compost bin to hurl them in. A startled vole dived for cover.
I am very fond of voles, even though I suspect them of polishing off most of the peas I keep sowing without result. It occurs to me that there is a lot to be said for vegetablegrowing in the sky. There are no slugs or voles in the Coutts Skyline Garden, although the occasional duck alights, bemused by the sight of such a heavenly habitat.
Contact Sarah at sarah.langtonlockton@lady.co.uk
A flowering first
A rare and spectacular sight has greeted recent visitors to Cambridge Botanic Garden. Emmenopterys henryi (it doesn’t have a common name), described by the plant hunter Ernest ‘Chinese’ Wilson as ‘one of the most strikingly beautiful trees of the Chinese forests’, has flowered for the first time since it was planted 30 years ago.
It is a mystery why it has chosen to flower now, during a year of chaotic weather, including a cold, wet summer. The flowers form in clusters, and each one is starshaped, fragrant and surrounded by large, white elliptic bracts that catch the slightest breeze. Emmenopterys henryi belongs to the coffee family, Rubiaceae. It was introduced to the UK by Ernest Wilson in 1907, and named in honour of the Irish plant hunter Augustine Henry, who first found the tree in central China in 1887.
The Cambridge University Botanic Garden is open daily from 10am. For more visitor information, call 01223- 336265 or visit www.botanic.cam.ac.uk
Plant of the week
Boltonia asteroides var. latisquama is a tall perennial, attractive to bees and butterflies. It has gorgeous daisylike, deep purplepink or white flowers in late summer and autumn, providing interest in the border late in the year. It is also a wonderful cut flower. £5.99: www.cathsgardenplants.co.uk