‘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.
As a climate-conscious restaurateur, Ussher had been eager to find better ways to manage the food waste produced in built-up areas. When he stumbled upon fermentation composting – a process where scraps that have to be left out of a traditional compost system, such as bones, shells, meat and dairy, can be composted too – he realised he might have found his answer. Now, dotted around the shady, foliage-filled back garden are wheelie bins containing different waste products in various stages of decomposition. From oyster shells to chicken carcasses to cheese, Ussher collects food waste from nearby restaurants, separates elements by hand, then puts each one in the right conditions for fermentation.
Unlike traditional composting, fermentation composting takes place anaerobically, in a closed container without the presence of oxygen. Microbes, bacteria or fungi (in the form of a spray) are added to kickstart the decomposition process. After a few weeks, the contents look the same but are, biologically speaking, entirely different. This material is then buried in the ground for four weeks or added to an ordinary compost heap until fully decomposed and ready for use.
“I’m not inventing anything; I’m harnessing processes,’’ Ussher tells me as he opens a tub containing what he’s been working on recently. What’s inside was formerly chicken bones but after the work of a specific fungus, it miraculously looks and smells like powdered beef stock. He has been adding this substance to his wormeries and using the resulting worm compost to make a nutritious feed for his plants. The success of it is clear to see: his herbs and vegetables often end up on the menu at one of the high-end restaurants he collects waste from. It’s an impressive example of a closed-loop system – and it’s just the start for the project, now known as City Soil Lab.
The series of small-scale experiments is soon to be expanding into a Tower Hamlets Council-backed scheme to see whether nutrient-dense organic matter produced from fermented waste could be the answer to enriching soil across London. Ussher is designing a blueprint for composting projects that other London boroughs – perhaps other cities – could replicate. While his approach isn’t especially accessible yet (the inputs aren’t cheap and you need the space to fully compost your fermented material), Ussher’s aim is to create a model that can be tailored to the waste needs of any area.
Once the pilot project is up and running, City Soil Lab’s compost is destined to nourish three nearby gardens, and will lead to improved local biodiversity. The hope is that composted material could also be sent to rural farming enterprises to help improve depleted soils.
“It’s exciting: there’s so much untapped potential all across cities in the UK,” says Ussher. If he really can create a waste management system capable of turning any food waste into valuable soil fertility, he might be the kind of sustainability champion our cities desperately need.
