A couple of weeks ago, we asked you lot for your questions to put to Simon Mills – the sustainable development coordinator for the City of London Corporation.

Ben says:

With a huge unmet demand for food growing space from the population in the area, are the City of London looking into alternative growing space such as Green Rooves?
This ‘demand’ can be referenced by the London Assembly document ‘A Lot to Lose’. I think they are doing stuff but i would like to hear more about it.

Dear Ben, thanks for your interesting question. Green roofs are indeed high of the agenda in the City of London, however, to-date the possibility of growing food on them has not been considered. The reason for our interest in green roofs is twofold-

Firstly we have identified green roofs as a valuable resource for biodiversity in our Biodiversity Action Plan, and have produced guidance notes for notes developers on both Green Roofs and Vertical Habitats- see http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/living_environment/sustainability/biodiversity.htm for details.

Secondly we have identified how important green roofs are to combat the impacts of climate change- basically they act a giant sponges, soaking up excess rainfall and releasing it slowly, so as not to overwhelm the sewers. See http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/living_environment/sustainability/climate_change/ for details of our climate change adaptation strategy.

With respect to meeting food demand within the City, we are very limited to what is possible within the square mile, however, we do run workshops for our resident on container gardening for food, which have been very successful.