Grow your own food: concept for Ikea by Tom Dixon could popularise urban farming
- Exhibited in London at the Chelsea Flower Show, Gardening Will Save the World uses space-maximising technology to bring food growing to people without gardens
- Headed to Ikea in 2021, modular system of growing trays needs no soil or watering. Saving the planet while feeding the world has never looked so easy
Britain, 1941, and food supplies are in jeopardy as the second world war rages. Rationing bites hard and the government encourages people everywhere to Dig for Victory – to grow their own vegetables in allotments, gardens and parks.
Today’s enemy may be climatic catastrophe rather than megalomania, but as far as food is concerned the menace is just as great. The world’s population stands at about seven billion and is heading for nine billion by 2045; meanwhile, agricultural land is being ripped up for development, fisheries are shrinking and extreme weather is destroying crops.
If you’re in Hong Kong, throw into this cheery equation your choice of colourful food scandals from China – cat meat, fake beef, cardboard buns, contaminated turbot – and consider that the city imports about 90 per cent of its sustenance from the People’s Republic, and the menu looks terrifyingly unappetising.
So what’s the answer? Plant for Victory or, to give it its actual name, Gardening Will Save the World, an exhibit unique among the euphorbias and cornflowers at this year’s Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show, London, which ended on Saturday.
