‘Let’s start in the front garden!” With the delirious energy of a zany scientist showing off his lab, Anthony Ussher, 42, takes me around the compartmentalised space that makes up the garden of James Brine House, a four-storey block of flats in east London. He pushes the fluffy seeds of a salsify plant into my hand while talking me through the street-facing section of the garden. What started as a few paving slabs salvaged from a skip is now a thriving, pocket-sized courtyard filled with unusual, edible plants. Ussher introduces me to fruits I’ve not met before, such as Nepalese raspberries and the aronia berries he infuses syrups with. “This is my favourite flower in the world,” he says, pointing to the devil’s-bit scabious growing next to some wild ginger.
This space emerged during the Covid lockdowns, Ussher says, when he and his neighbour, Helenka, healed their once tricky relationship over a love of plants. Ussher had previously run – and lived above – a fried-chicken restaurant on the spot where much of this garden now stands. When the pandemic forced him to close, the neighbours took down the fence that divided their land to create a larger, shared space that spans the courtyard, as well as a roof terrace and shady back garden. As they sowed and planted edible and medicinal plants to create a shared kitchen garden (from which seeds, plant cuttings and compost are gifted to locals) Ussher developed the burgeoning obsession that’s come to define the project: compost.
