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Every Londoner should grow their own "mini-allotment" using window boxes, kitchen walls and even teapots, experts said today.
Designers working with Fifteen, the restaurant founded by Jamie Oliver, are developing tiny "micro allotments" they say could make households more self-sufficient.
The plans, some based on space technology, include "vertical gardens" and cultivation without soil, and could turn entire kitchen walls into vegetable plots. Researchers say the average home has all the items needed to produce food in cramped and awkward spaces.
Today the Evening Standard is launching a campaign to encourage Londoners to grow their own fruit and veg. Self- sufficiency can help the environment, cutting greenhouse gases and landfill waste, as well as providing cheap, healthy food in the midst of the city.
The Standard will also work with Rosie Boycott, the Mayor of London's "food czar", on a project to get a garden into all the capital's 2,300 primary schools.
Rachel Wingfield, the researcher at Central St Martins College behind the MetaboliCity project, said: "We want to persuade every Londoner to grow something of their own, even if it's just a few herbs in a teapot. We are developing options using outside spaces such as balconies and terraces, and inside areas like windowsills, cupboard shelves and even kitchen walls."
So far tomatoes, chillies, climbing beans, marrows, herbs and salad vegetables have been grown successfully.
Miss Wingfield is working at six sites: a City office; St Luke's Church and the Byam Shaw School of Art, both in Islington; Fifteen near Old Street; The Haberdasher Estate in Shoreditch; and her office. She said: "Once we've perfected techniques we will publish instructions online, and work with firms to create low-cost versions for consumers."
As well as freestanding vertical towers of plants, the team is developing a series of "pockets" that can be hung on the wall to grow things in. "We want to make use of whatever space people have, and growing up walls is a good way to do that," said Miss Wingfield.
The plants could be fed with a nutrient-packed liquid delivered by tubes rather than in soil - a method called hydroponics. Ms Wingfield said: "It means growing food vertically. We grow plants on a scaffold, and using hydrophonics we can do that without soil."
The first batch of salads has already been cultivated at Fifteen, and today the restaurant will plant a "salad wall" on which customers will be able to see lunch growing. Teapots containing seedlings will be on every table, and planting boxes will be on windowsills.Chef Richard Blackwell said: "To grow salad leaves and herbs on site is very exciting. Customers will be able to see what's going on."
