3-22 IAN City Farms

 Look up in the sky…, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a garden?  That’s right, some folks in London are growing their veggies for the market right on top of one.  Hi, I’m David Sparks, and in a moment I’ll tell you about how people in England are giving new meaning to One Stop Shop. A Supermarket Is Growing Food On Its Roof . Of all the things you might reasonably expect to be doing on a blustery March day, standing on the roof of a supermarket and dragging a rake through a bag of decaying vegetables is probably not one of them. On top of Thornton’s Budgens supermarket in Crouch End, North London, volunteers have transformed a flat expanse of concrete into a flourishing potted garden and vegetable patch.The project, called Food from the Sky, is an unusual exercise in the principles of permaculture and sustainable gardening. It opened last May, when a crane lifted 10 tons of compost and 300 green recycling boxes on to the roof. Now the garden is producing enough vegetables to sell in the aisles downstairs every Friday.On a quick tour of the garden, you see everything from peas and potatoes to kale and purple sprouting broccoli – alongside tiny strawberry and raspberry plants, and a composting area. Here, fruit and vegetables left unsold each day are mulched, along with woody branches and soil, by the 20 local people who volunteer in the garden.Owners say the conditions are perfect for the plants: the warmth from the supermarket’s heating and lighting systems comes up through the roof, sparing the seeds the worst of the frosts – and there are no slugs or snails, while marauding pigeons are deterred by CDs hanging from the perimeter fence.