fifteen grows its own

Published byJamieoliver.com | June 10, 2009 | In News | No Comments »

Story by Wendy Richmond

Fifteen is participating in a ground-breaking design research project with Central Saints Martins College of Art & Design,

/>Growing your own at Fifteen</div> <p>exploring how to grow food in urban environments. Fifteen the only restaurant taking part in the experiment titled MetaboliCity, named after a vision of a city that metabolizes its resources and waste.</p> <p>Fifteen is one of six sites in London that is trialing the innovative scheme and its specially designed, site-specific “urban grow-kits”. We are growing a range of salad leaves and herbs in two types of kit in the Trattoria, with the aim of actually serving our home-grown produce to our customers in the restaurant. We will be using hydroponic techniques and more traditional hand-watering as part of the experiment and hope to have our first crops ready by the summer.</p> <p>A small group of green-fingered staff at Fifteen are involved in the project which is being run by Loop.ph, a London-based design and research studio, in conjunction with Central Saint Martins and funded by the Audi Design Foundation. The project will be a feature at the London Design Festival in September.</p> <p>We’ve been talking to Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design and they mentioned the project and that they were looking for some unusual sites. We’re the only restaurant taking part in the experiment and it was really motivational for us to see whether we could grow something of our own that we could eventually serve to our guests. There’s quite a few of us here who’ve got green fingers so it’s been a great project to be involved with.<br /> If this project is successful, it will be possible to supply lettuce leaves and herbs to Fifteen on an ongoing basis. We’re starting with a trial at the moment, just to see whether it’s feasible in the sites we’ve identified, but the eventual aim is to get those greens onto our plates. It’s a small-scale project though because as anyone who’s been to our restaurant in London will know – we’re a bit short of space! </p> <p>The apprentices will learn about the project as well. We’ve got another phase happening in a couple of weeks when some hydroponic shelving will be installed in the Trattoria. Once that’s up and running we’ll be able to show them the whole thing in action. </p> <p>Wendy is the Communications Manager for <a href=Fifteen London

More on MetaboliCity

View a short video on the project

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