It can be done:)

When the two of us behind this project relocated from Essex to Keynsham just over two years ago, we went from having a house with a garden to living in a ground floor flat. What we used to be able to achieve with self sufficiency in home grown vegetables for almost three months in a year from the back garden of our old house is now impossible to do living in a flat. Which is one of the reasons why we got involved with the Keynsham Community Veg Plot in the Park.

We're aware that in the region we cover, particularly in Bristol and Bath, a fair few people do live in flats. Should living in a flat mean giving up on growing anything in the way of edible vegetables? Obviously, some flats are built in such a way that it's impossible to find any outdoor space that can be utilised for growing. However, there are flats that have balconies. While a balcony may appear to be a very small space to attempt to grow any kind of edible produce, with a bit of ingenuity and work, it can be done.

So, if you live in a flat but are lucky enough to have a balcony, we hope the two pieces below will give you the necessary inspiration to get going and start to make a difference:

Growing back to our roots | Shahnaz Ahsan | October 19, 2022

When I moved to London after graduating, my mum came to visit — or, more accurately, to inspect the flat I was sharing with my best friend. It was on the top floor of a small block of flats in Mile End, east London, where Bangladeshis make up around 35% of the population. After deeming the kitchen satisfactory and the living room neat and clean, even though I had apparently neglected to dust the skirting boards, she went over to the window and looked out at the high-rise blocks opposite.

“You can tell which flats are occupied by amrar manush,” she said, using the Bangla for “our people”. To prove her point, she pointed at the balconies where neat arrangements of pots and grow bags stood, beans climbed up bamboo poles and trellises were covered in clinging vines that would soon bear gourds.

“It doesn’t matter how little land we have,” she added proudly. ‘You’ll always see that we’ve grown something on it.”

You can read the rest of this piece here.

The Balcony of Bangladesh - in London! | Vertical Veg

Imagine growing up in a tropical climate like that of Bangladesh. Your family has a strong history of food growing and you have enough land to supply all your fruit and vegetables. Seeds are bursting to sprout and grow at almost anytime of year.

Then imagine moving to a small flat in London with no outdoor space except a small concrete balcony. What’s more this space is exposed to the cold and all the elements of our fine British weather. Seeds need to be coaxed and nurtured into life.

You can read the rest of this piece here.

The point we're making is that even if you're in a flat, providing you have a balcony, you can grow some of the food you want. It's a learning curve but one that will be rewarded. In these troubled times, anything that can be done to boost food security is worth doing. One resident growing food on a balcony may well seem to be an individualistic solution. When many residents in a block are growing their own food it starts to become a communal effort. When that's combined with guerilla gardening odd plots around the estate, it becomes something bigger - namely starting to collectively take back control of the food supply.