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London wears its herbal history with pride. Woven across the city are street names like Saffron Hill, a whole bunch of Rosemary Avenues, Gardens and Roads, Garlichill Road in Epsom, and Lavender, not just in Battersea, but all over town.

It was the Romans who originally brought herbs to Britain, and although most of the plants were used to a Mediterranean climate they soon adapted to growing here. But it was the area commemorated by Lavender Road in Sutton, and Lavender Close in Carshalton which, in the early 1900s, earned the title of ‘lavender capital of the world’. Lavender covered thousands of acres in Surrey before World War I caused much of the land to be converted to grow much-needed food, and the introduction of cheap French lavender captured the English market. Then in the 1930s came the spread of suburbia and the fields became one big building site for London commuters.
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On a domestic scale, for centuries no large house was without its own herb garden, designed to be both ornamental and practical, an instant source of culinary, medicinal and aromatic requirements. Although many London homes these days might not stretch beyond a window box or a lavender bush, popular formal herb gardens can be visited at Kew, the Geffrye Musuem, Battersea Park, Chelsea Physic Garden and Greenwich Park.

Chelsea Physic Garden

In culinary terms, today’s herb revival is taking place around the M25 to the east and west of the city. At Kingcup Farm near Uxbridge, west London, Peter and Joan Clarke farm 126 acres, much of it turned over to herbs and salad stuffs which arrive, via a wholesaler, at Spitalfields and New Covent Garden markets, as well as London’s restaurants and farmers’ markets. ‘The herb market is growing fast,’ says Peter Clarke. ‘We grow the whole range from basil to borage. One of the restaurants we supply puts the little blue flowers from borage into an ice cube, which is how they can charge so much for your gin and tonic.’

Clarke notes increasing interest in traditional English herbs that had fallen out of fashion. ‘Flat parsley has taken over from the English curled variety, because it is better in sauces and can be used in salads. And wild herbs like mallow, chickweed and nettles have become very popular because people are becoming more interested in local food. You eat the leaves of mallow, which are slightly bitter, in salad. You can also make soup from it, which is called melokhia, a national dish of Egypt. Chickweed is also used in salad. It’s crunchy, like eating mustard and cress. Nettles are best made into a soup. We do 300g packets, which will make enough soup for four people.’

Premier Herbs, one of London's main suppliers

On the other side of town and fast becoming the largest local supplier is Premier Herbs, an organic grower based on a seven-and-a-half acre site near the M25 in North Weald, Essex. They sell 30,000 pots of herbs a week that are sold into London’s wholesale markets as well as Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Asda.

‘Fresh herbs is an expanding market,’ says co-owner Alex Griffiths, who bought the site two years ago. ‘We had a stand at the organic show at Olympia recently and a lot of chefs turned up and said they used our herbs. Basil is the most popular, its fragrance is particularly good in the potted form, but it’s quite difficult to grow outdoors in England. It doesn’t like being below 11 degrees. We grow most of our herbs under glass, and use coir rather than peat. All the time we’re testing different varieties. The herbs take 30-40 days to grow for sale in the summer, but a lot longer in the winter when you need to provide heat and light.’ Griffiths also grows a lot of herbs at home for his own use, boasting: ‘I’ve got 20 different varieties of mint.’

The Queen's Garden at Kew

Such is the current rise in demand that Oliver Rowe, head chef and proprietor of Konstam at the Prince Albert, who aims to source most of his ingredients from within the M25 has found it hard to get hold of the quantities of fresh herbs he needs. ‘You can buy cut herbs, but they are harder to get hold of in bulk,’ he tells Time Out. ‘Not long ago we took part in a community service volunteers’ day at the Calthorpe Street project, which is around the corner from us in King’s Cross, and dug an area where we planted a whole load of herbs, especially lovage, which we now use. I didn’t know how to use it before I threw it into a cuttlefish dish, but it worked. It is especially good with fish. Nobody had ever mentioned it to me before.

‘We use a phenomenal amount of herbs; north Africans make entire salads from them and we now serve a lot of herb salads with starters, using dill, flat and curly parsley, chives or tarragon. When I can get them I also like to use borage and rocket flowers to add colour.’ Rowe advises not to store herbs in the freezer, instead use them fresh or keep them in a bag in the fridge.

Meanwhile, over in Sutton, lavender is back in bloom. A proposal last December by Sutton Council to build a new school on the site of Stanley Park allotments (including a three-acre site known as the lavender fields) was withdrawn in April following a mass protest by voluntary organisation Carshalton Lavender. Chairman Alistair Cruikshank explains: ‘The lavender field was re-planted in 1996 because a lot of the allotments were derelict. The field was planted with cuttings most of which we scrounged. Many of the people who gave them to us claimed that they were from the original lavender that had always been grown in the area. It was planted by inmates from a local prison.’

The group holds two pick-your-own days on the last weekend in July every year. Members of the public can pick bunches for £1-£2 or a bucket for £5. ‘We have a lot of stalls related to lavender products, and a distillery unit to show how lavender is crushed to extract its oil.’ Though no longer a commercial operation, it preserves this traditional corner of London’s herb history.

‘We get visitors from all over the world, especially American tourists, and also people from Norfolk, where a lot of lavender is commercially grown. The pick-your-own weekend provides the funds for us to look after the lavender for the rest of the year, although we do harvest what little is left by machine once the weekend is over.’

To get in touch with Carshalton Lavender, call 020 8669 6692.