Clapham: not really known for its agriculture. It could be said that, if the words ‘underground’ and ‘farm’ were mentioned to Inferno nightclub and Revolution Bar’s regulars on a Saturday night, they’d have a very different idea to the hydroponic salad farm thirty-three metres below their feet.
But who knows? Maybe they’d like it. The candy floss-pink lights and neon-blue irrigation tubes look more synonymous with a casual rave than traditional farming. But then, at this WW2 air raid shelter turned salad and herb farm, hardly anything is considered traditional. ‘Our tunnel had 8,000 people down there during the war,’ says Growing Underground co-founder Steven Dring. ‘Designed so that, should they be bombed in, they’d be able to survive for three months by themselves.’
Right now, the only thing surviving here – and flourishing, at that – are pea shoots, mustard, coriander, amaranth, radish, celery, rocket, and parsley. Pretty well, too, when Steven and his team have ultimate control over the environment of their crop. ‘We had a polytunnel built for us,’ says Steven, ‘which gives a constant temperature all year round. It’s an ambient temperature of 14ºC, and when we put some LED lights in there, it takes the temperature to the right level.’
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Growing Underground: farming of the future rooted in history