“I love that we’re right above Ann Summers,” says Sam Buckley, chef and owner of Stockport restaurant Where The Light Gets In, as he hikes up the winding car park steps. “It just caps it off.” He’s showing me the garden that he’s made on top of the Merseyway shopping centre. It’s called The Landing, because it’s in the flight path. Shoppers mill around the pedestrianised streets below, quite unaware of it.
It runs the whole length of one of the outdoor floors of the multi-storey car park, around 80 metres, and provides the restaurant with a glut of produce all through the year, exotic Asian herbs and vegetables they couldn’t buy anywhere else, as well as fruit trees and all sorts of other magical conjurings. The council offered him the space just as lockdown hit, so it was the perfect project to get stuck into while the restaurant was under its enforced closure.
But it’s not just about keeping his larder stocked. “I’ve always been interested in rooftops,” he says. “And it’s a big trend at the moment for chefs now to have their own gardens. That feels a bit selfish to me. It’s great that you’re growing vegetables for your restaurant, but it’s a green space, and there’s more to be had out of them.
