Growing Life: PROJECTSGrowing Life offers consultancy, design, installation & maintainance services to support community, business, local authorities, schools & colleges with growing projects.
Example case studies
Metabolicity: Research project at Central School of St. Martins, Central London
Guerilla Gardening: Hoxton Square 2007
The Alma: Rainwater irrigation system for pub beer garden, North London
Barny's Place: Window garden for organic food bar, East London
Chop'd: Window garden for fast food salad bar, Green Park, Central London
Paradise Park Community Centre: Nutrient consultant for living walls, Islington, North London
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| MetaboliCity is a design-led urban farming initiative with the aim to create less fragmented and more sustainable cities. The project is part of a research project at Central School of St. Martins, sponsored by the Audi Foundation.
A network of small-scale, distributed Grow-Labs develop solutions to integrate both traditional and hi-tech agricultural techniques into the fabric of the built environment. Some of the experiments include hydroponic, solar powered window farms, vertical green cladding retrofit to facades and organically grown vegetables climbing up street lamps in housing estates.
Growing Life worked on the project as a hydroponics consultant working through various specifications for the multi-site project including Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant in which a bespoke hydroponic unit was designed, based on the GHE Aeroflow system.
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| In early 2007 on the Pitfield Estate in Hoxton, Growing Life was involved with a group of London based Guerilla gardeners in a night time project. The area was a small street with little vegetation, desperately in need of sprucing up. The area was planted out with different flowers around the bottom of the larger trees and a few planted boxes installed along the foot path. The area is overlooked by residents in the tall apartments along both sides of the street and really added a lot of colour to the area. A team of 10 - 15 people worked at various stages of the night with the project completed within 3 hours. People all over the world are involved in guerilla gardening and if you'd like to get involved just google your local area and you'll find plenty of people involved in the movement. These pictures show one of the gardens planted out and a boot full of flowers ready for planting.
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| Growing Life designed and implemented a 500 litre rainwater harvesting & irrigation system for local pub The Alma. Two large water butts take feeds from the roof tops and distribute the water through a gravity fed irrigation system to all outdoor flowers pots, containers and beds allowing the roots to take up water as and when they need it. Food waste from the pub kitchen is recycled composted to provide organic plant food, compost & micro-organism rich soil conditioners.
Great garden results, eco-friendly & minimal maintainance cost.
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| Growing Life was brought a brief by a landscape architect to conceive, implement and support a productive garden window display for Barny's Place restaurant cafe located in the hustle & bustle of Liverpool Street Station, East London.
Barny (...owner of Barny's Place) targets to produce 'a salad a day' from the installation. Inspired by the Eden project, the installation uses the Autopot irrigation system. The window garden is suspended from the ceiling on a pulley system that allows the garden to be raised higher (& closer to grow lamps) or lowered for maintainance & harvesting.
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| Growing Life specified & installed a bespoke hydro-terrace garden window for the client Chop'd, operating a chain of good quality fresh salad bars across London. Growing Life initially maintained the system, with view to training Chop'd in-house managers & staff to maintain the established garden & Growing Life taking a back seat supporting role.
The garden produces herbs - mainly basil - to sprinkle into the top of 'made-to-order' fresh salad boxes, adding an extra fresh aroma & taste to the healthy lunch bite.
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|  Growing Life acted as a consulting advisor to the Council's 'Parks & Green Areas' division for the nutrition, feeding needs & maintenance for the 'growing walls' at Paradise Park Community Centre. The project, managed by Marie Clarke Associates, is the first hydroponic building of its type in the UK.
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