More Than Living

How to create an office garden

In the third of our ‘com­munity res­tor­a­tion’ series, Joss Rankin tells us how the girls in her Leeds-​​based office have turned a plot of waste­land into their very own salad and herb garden.

The idea to start grow­ing our own salad and herbs came when we were dis­cuss­ing things we could do to make the most of spring, get out of our office, and enjoy the fresh air. Ours is a small team in a busy office and there is a tempta­tion to stay at your desk without taking a break.

At first we had a crazy idea to get an office pet, but we real­ised that this was not prac­tical (although we do have two chick­ens that live with some friends about 30 miles away and provide us with fresh eggs) and so instead we thought it would be great to grow things.

We tried to get a local coun­cil allot­ment but there were none avail­able, and it seemed to me that a waste-​​land area next to the office would make an ideal plot. Last year, a small mech­an­ics shop and some out­build­ings that stood on the spot were demol­ished with a view to the site being redeveloped. But as the developer has no imme­di­ate plans to build on it, we asked him if we could use a small sec­tion to grow some salads and herbs and he agreed – so long as he got to sample some of the produce!

The site is covered in rubble and it is impossible to dig so we’ve made plant­ers and raised beds from mater­i­als that were already on the site, such as half-​​bricks, stones, pal­lets, tyres and plastic boxes.
So far we’ve planted rocket, radish, red onion, sugar snap peas, cori­ander, pars­ley, thyme, toma­toes, chives, lettuce, straw­ber­ries, chard, mizuna, French beans, sweet peas, beet­root and one chili plant. We’ve also planted flowers such as Cali­for­nian pop­pies, marigolds, salmon pink pelar­goni­ums and purple petunias.

We chose some small herb plants rather than grow­ing them from seed to keep people inter­ested early on, and have already har­ves­ted rocket and radish, which we’ve replanted, and sugar snap peas. The sweet peas will be ready soon, the lettuces and beans are doing well and the mizuna has bolted this week­end. The chili seems to be sulk­ing though.

In Septem­ber we hope to enter some of our pro­duce into local fresh pro­duce com­pet­i­tions – most likely the radish or maybe the beans.

The only prob­lem we’ve encountered is with the water­ing – we have to carry water­ing cans by hand down from the office. We have a rota but it can be tricky when the office is busy, so we’re work­ing on get­ting the land­lord of our office to install a water butt next to the plot.

It is nice to spend ten minutes thin­ning seed­lings and pick­ing a few leaves for a sand­wich, though, and I’d say that we have prob­ably saved money by grow­ing our own – if you don’t count the top soil we had delivered. Bags of leaves and herbs can be pricey in com­par­ison to seeds, and we have def­in­itely had more than our money’s worth from them.

Our plot is grow­ing as more people get inspired to try some­thing new. When the water butt is installed we might even need another bag of top­soil as we plan to plant basil plants, Florence fennel seeds and maybe some more flowers for cut­ting. We will try to keep the salads going into the autumn and maybe plant some things that will grow over winter for early crops.

Joss and her col­leagues work for MCG PR agency.

Parts one and two of this series tell how vil­la­gers in Essex turned an unused field into an orch­ard and wild­flower meadow, and how some old gar­ages in Bed­ford became a com­munity garden.

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• Grow­ing vegetables|What can I sow in September?
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• Flood funds going unclaimed
• Col­lect­ing rain in water butts
• If it’s yellow, let it mel­lowHow often should you flush the toilet?

Ori­gin­ally posted 2009-​​07-​​01 16:04:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

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