Sharon Amos on an ingenious way to grow veg in a fourth-floor flat
AFTER years of self-sufficiency in his Sussex garden, Alastair Sedgwick was reluctant to give up growing vegetables when he and his wife moved to a fourth-floor flat in a London square in 1991. Ever resourceful - a result, he maintains, of his experience as a commando in the war - Alastair looked around for a space to cultivate. He finally hit upon the gutter.
To be fair, it is no ordinary gutter - certainly not the average channel of flimsy plastic bracketed under the eaves. It is a grand city gutter that adorns the roofscape of Montagu Square, W1, which was built in 1815 for officers returning from Waterloo. The gutter is 11in wide and 60ft long, lead-lined and flanked by a balustrade.
"It's a little precarious, I can tell you that," says Alastair, an energetic 82-year-old. "My wife is perpetually concerned about me falling off. But then I grow radishes, which she adores."
At first he grew vegetables in flower pots placed directly in the gutter, but the compost spilled out and blocked the drains of the flat downstairs. So in deference to his neighbours, he devised a better system. Now he grows runner beans, broad beans and tomatoes in troughs raised on bricks to allow the rainwater to flow through the gutter without obstruction. The radishes grow in pots lined up on top of the balustrade, along with pots of flowers. Strawberries are kept in shallower containers.
"It's my philosophy that people in London would be a lot happier if they could watch things grow - and then be able to eat them, too," Alastair says. "Growing herbs in a window box is simple. My method goes some way beyond that."
The gutter garden is split in two by a lift shaft, so Alastair must use two access routes: either through a door from the kitchen that leads on to the fire escape, or by scrambling out of the windows. "It's not that easy at my age. I call it gardening with altitude."
The main pests are the London pigeons. "They have a go at the strawberries when they're ripe. Sometimes they nest in the gutter." And watering is considerably more problematic than on a traditional vegetable plot. "I've rigged up an irrigation system from the bathroom tap but sometimes it floods," he says.
Most things in this garden-in-a-gutter are grown from seed. "Plants start life in the bathroom, which is my potting shed," says Alastair, who practices sequential sowing to extend his cropping season. "I've got four yards of broad beans growing - some are as high as 4ft and ready to harvest. I tried potatoes but they took up too much space, although I did get about 6lb 6oz from growing them in flower pots."
So next time you're cutting through the back streets north
of Marble Arch, don't call the emergency services if you
spot a man teetering on the roof - it's only Alastair
gardening in the gutter.
-- Anonymous, June 28, 2001