How The Culpeper Is Changing the Way the City Eats
Words by Christina Dean
From an east London rooftop to an urban growing network
If you had to list out three crops you’d think of growing in the UK, I’d wager shiso, agretti and watermelon would be quite far down the list, but these are just some of the plans that grower Jack Jeans is pointing out to me inside a greenhouse round the back of a residential street in Deptford. This unexpected oasis of abundance is the Culpeper Family’s Deptford Little Farm.
Nico Treguer and Gareth Roberts, who run The Culpeper Family (a pub group that includes The Culpeper and The Buxton in Spitalfields and The Duke Organic in Islington) as part of their wider architecture, property, hospitality and agriculture practice R&T, were developing some properties on Scawen Road in Deptford when they found an unused pocket of land behind the mews. With the help of Urban Organic, a business that builds edible gardens for restaurants, businesses, schools and community groups, that land has been transformed into Deptford Little Farm.
The 3500 sq ft plot grows organic produce, including fruit, veg, herbs and cut flowers, for The Culpeper Family, and acts as an educational hub where volunteers and staff members can come and learn about organic growing. “Food is the heart of the whole business and they’re really keen on bringing everyone in on that journey,” explains Urban Organic Director Jack Astbury. “This is a good opportunity to help people learn a bit about growing food.”
Organic urban growing was always part of the plan for Treguer and Roberts, before any pubs came into the picture. The pair had been making plans with Astbury to create a rooftop farm in London that would be used to supply restaurants, and then when The Culpeper site was acquired, a rooftop garden was designed and built there.
As well as supplying the kitchen and bar with vegetables, salads and cocktail garnishes, the 500 sq ft of growing space on the rooftop also encourages biodiversity and contributes to the improvement of urban quality of life. As Peter Weeden, Executive Chef & Head of Sustainability at The Culpeper, explains, “There was always an appetite to intertwine the growing and serving of our food. Having radishes, carrots and fresh herbs right next to where you are eating them is special and brings the experience to life.”
This year the rooftop has been re-planted with a perennial woodland focus so it’s designed to develop over the years. There are birch, hazel, amalancier and crab apple trees up there; berries and grasses in the mid-level; and then wild strawberries, mint, woodruff and calendula lower down. “Transitioning the rooftop to be a woodland glade environment really enhanced that immersive experience and takes pressure off the space to deliver so much of the produce,” says Weeden.
The aim though was always to grow more produce and supply more kitchens than the rooftop could take – and that’s what led to the development of Deptford Little Farm. “We know it’s never gonna grow all the food they need but we want it to make as big an impact as possible, and we’re really focused on everything grown here, 100% of what’s grown is used,” says Astbury. “It may not be 100% of what they need but everything we grow here is used.” He and the Urban Organic team work closely with The Culpeper chefs on planting plans to grow the right produce, and in the right volumes, that can be worked into the menus to supplement what the kitchen gets in from other suppliers. Weeden requested tropea onions, so those seeds went in a bed (which had just been harvested before my visit to the farm); other ingredients, like shiso and agretti, are trialled by the growing team knowing that the chefs will like them; and things like salad crops are always planted because they always get used.
The produce coming out of Deptford Little Farm is as exceptional as it is varied – the not-exhaustive list includes rhubarb, tomatoes, Thai basil, sorrel, Moroccan mint, apples, lemongrass, agretti, turmeric, pears, onions, Jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, beetroot, summer purslane, courgettes, various salad leaves, watermelons (they’d just been planted so it’s tbc on how they turn out), and a range of different flowers. It’s all grown organically using regenerative methods, something that’d be noteworthy if the farm was located out in the countryside but is even more impressive given that it’s done on a plot of land that’s sandwiched between the Thames and Millwall football club.
Deptford Little Farm isn’t just about growing food, it’s about growing it the most sustainable way. Jeans, Urban Organic’s Head Grower, explains the way they use companion planting, both as a space saver and a support system. On one bed, there are bush beans growing across the top of the soil, Thai basil in the middle, and sunflowers (particularly massive ones at that) acting as a canopy – the different heights means the plants are not competing with each other for resources and the beans also add nitrogen to the soil, which helps fertilise it.
A pond was added to the farm recently, made using repurposed materials on site, to help improve biodiversity. It’s already encouraging more pollinators to keep the garden going and the hope is to see frogs and toads appear to help out with pest control (dragonflies are already eating aphids but the amphibians can tackle slugs and snails).
Waste is put to good use too, with rainwater collected for irrigation and food waste from the pub kitchens used as fertiliser. Even waste created by the farm itself is recycled. Jeans points out one particular compost heap in the greenhouse that’s been layered up with last year’s dead tomato stems and manure. The heat generated by the materials breaking down is used to germinate seedlings, so the top layer is planted into – sprouting an impressive crown of courgettes and aubergines – and at the end of the year, it’ll be dug up and spread on the beds as mulch to feed the soil.
Weekly harvests and deliveries keep the pubs topped up with produce from the farm and you can see it littered across the various menus. Over the summer at The Culpeper you could spot Culpeper Farm tomatoes, courgettes, salads, nasturtium, beetroots and more on the plates. The capacity of Deptford Little Farm means that it can’t solely supply the pubs, so Weeden and the team “get the most impact from the growing we do in terms of bringing big, bold flavours in what we grow. When the nasturtiums, lemon verbena and tomatoes start coming in we are always bowled over with the punch. It really helps us to be working with the growers as we understand the seasons better and better and value things differently.”
The Culpeper Family has embedded sustainability across its operations, with Weeden highlighting things like a renewable energy tariff and the paper used for the menus as well as the way the food is prepped and the waste is reused. The choice of suppliers is “one of the most impactful things” they do, choosing to work with companies like The Ethical Butcher, Fin & Flounder, Natoora and The Estate Dairy, who nurture soil health, fish sustainably and rear native breeds ethically.Deptford Little Farm represents a much bigger commitment to sustainability – it’s creating a local food network, working to better the environment and the people that live in it, and as Astbury says, “trying to support cities to be producers of food as well as consumers. It’s important for us that people are connected to food, where their food comes from, and these gardens can really help that. They definitely don’t grow all the food we need but they do have a real positive effect on people who come down. It also really affects people’s buying choices, once they’ve learnt a little bit about how food’s grown, it helps think a bit more about where food comes from”. The farm is a place where land is shared, where resources are shared, where communities are built, where wildlife is provided for, where mental health is supported – and where some pretty killer tomatoes are grown.
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