Wendy Shillam’s Rooftop Veg Plot

I first heard about Wendy Shillam’s wonderful rooftop garden via the Chelsea Fringe.  It’s a small, but perfectly formed fruit, veg and flower garden, 5 floors up, and just round the corner from Oxford Circus in the heart of our metropolis.

I say perfectly formed, as this bijou veg patch also comes with a fully equipped writing shed,
and a very productive greenhouse.

It’s hugely impressive and utterly delightful.

Each time I visit, I’m wowed by how much veg Wendy grows in her 6 inch raised beds,
and how, over the years, she’s developed strategies for taming the wind on her rooftop to allow her to grow such a wide variety of plants.

This Spring, Wendy is running a number of workshops on growing year round salad leaves, edibles for a healthy diet, yoghurt making using herbs for flavouring and ‘preserving sweet flavours that are a million miles away from shop-bought cocktails and sugary colas’. Booking is now open, and I’m really looking forward to going on the first workshop in March.

And talking of the Chelsea Fringe, the website is now open for signing up events if you’d like to participate! This year it runs from 20th May until the 4th June. Our community veg growing project joined in in 2012 and 2013. It’s massively enjoyable to take part,

and also great to see as many as possible of the hundreds of events that pop up each year (fernery in a toilet from 2013 above).

I can’t wait to see what the Fringe has in store for 2017……(Above-Geoff at the Inner Temple Gardens Dog Show in 2013)