See a strawberry and you might delight in the gleam of its ruby red skin, its evocative perfume or its delicate balance of tartness and sweetness. James Wong on the other hand, will be getting excited about its anthocyanins, volatile molecules and fragrant esthers. And while most of us are really only thinking “Yum!” when […]

Raymond Blanc was an obvious candidate for creating a new potager at The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew – a year-long adventure that will be on BBC2 this month as a four-part series with an accompanying book.

After a mild Christmas and the warmest year on record, it’s no wonder we’re all confused. Will spring come early? Should we still brace ourselves for a cold snap? When should seeds be sown to get a flying start? These are all questions this article will strive to answer, plus you’ll find a handy planting plan for the months ahead.

Short on growing space? London-based gardener and freelance journalist Lucy Purdy explores the art of growing food on a single square metre with author and vegetable gardening enthusiast ,Lolo Houbein.

Lucy Purdy, freelance journalist and keen food grower, delves into the fascinating, miniature world of seeds

J G Ballard wrote that the “suburbs dream of violence”, describing town and city dwellers counting down the days until the “nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world”. While poets, artists and storytellers have long been fascinated by this dynamic of stultifying yet addictive city life, guerrilla gardeners, Lucy Purdy discovers, are turning to the soil to grapple with ecological and social disintegration.

Where horses once thundered past, kicking up earth during the dark chivalry of a jousting contest, now sit plump pumpkins with burnt orange skins, beneath the late summer sun. They take their place alongside peas, salad crops and herbs in a spot only a stone’s throw from the banks of the River Thames. This is the Hampton Court Palace Kitchen Garden, newly restored and packed with heritage varieties - a thrill to the senses and a slice of history to boot.

For anyone who loves to grow their own ingredients, star billing must go to your salads – surely the easiest of high quality harvests. In a previous article, we suggested some less familiar leaves and flowers to liven up your salad bowl – including mustards, nasturtiums and purslanes. So here’s round two – another batch of easy-to-grow leaves that will lift your salad mixes to the next level.

Nestled between John Lewis and Next in the heart of Exeter, an unassuming-looking office block is host to a surprising urban crop - gourmet mushrooms. What is more, they are being grown from the city’s waste coffee grounds, gleaned from the likes of Starbucks and Costa Coffee. Using vacant office space and vertical growing to produce a protein-rich crop could be a solution to the food challenges of tomorrow, discovers Lucy Purdy when she meets those at the Fungi Futures CIC.

Just 33 metres beneath London’s streets, under Clapham’s cocktail bars and relentless traffic, a subterranean farm is taking root. Using the latest hydroponic systems and LED technology, micro-salads are being grown in a network of forgotten air raid shelter tunnels, the leaves destined for the plates of the capital’s top restaurants. Not convinced about your food being grown underground? The entrepreneurial duo behind Growing Underground believe it’s a sign of things to come -the “agricultural revolution” of the future.