In 1673 the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London opened a garden for their apprentices on the banks of the Thames. It's still there, bar the riverside stripe swept away for the Chelsea Embankment, and is now home to over 4500 medicinal, edible and otherwise useful plants. You can visit London's oldest botanic garden any day except Saturday, but the joy of this special after-hours Open House was getting in for free. In this case it probably is worth £13.50, so that was a real bonus.
The four acre walled garden is crammed with specimens, and has a microclimate that helps avoid nasty frosts. Close to the entrance is a cluster of Edwardian greenhouses with a connecting tropical corridor along the back, also a display of delphiniums doing far better than mine. The whole place is segmented by function or origin, so plants that might make you better are in the northern corner and those from the mid-Atlantic islands fill a border along the eastern wall. Some are properly poisonous and labelled with a skull and crossbones, others still brim with late summer colour. In no other garden have I seen a sign saying Please do not climb on our Grade 2 Listed Rockery.
This is a great time of year to stare at fruit, the gleaming orb-like pomegranates currently a particular treat. Over in the edible beds the bountiful selection of vegetables could easily grace the winners table at a village produce show, and that's without including the mighty gourds hanging from the cucumber pergola. Meanwhile the Dicotyledon Order Beds are now past their best, each laid out according to Bentham and Hooker's Victorian taxonomy, and the gingko hasn't quite turned yet. Some of the tropical trees are truly magnificent, the girthy Chilean palm in particular, while a dozen parakeets have already made the central yew their own.
The garden proved a marvellous place to potter round, densely packed with botanical interest and all individually labelled in case you want to have a go at home. If you fancy a look they're doing a second after hours Open House freebie on Friday, when the weather should be a lot better, but if you're of a horticultural bent the Chelsea Physic Garden's worth considering any time.
There are still eight weeks to Remembrance Sunday so you probably aren't thinking about poppies right now. But they don't just magically appear at the end of October, they're manufactured all year round and where that happens is The Poppy Factory on the Petersham Road below Richmond Hill. Just look for the poppy-themed pedestrian crossing.
There been a poppy factory in Richmond since 1926, the annual sale having proved so popular that much larger premises were needed. The site of a former brewery was taken over and an assembly line established, a big improvement on the previous shirt collar factory down the Old Kent Road. All the workers were disabled armed forces veterans, greatly appreciative of gainful employment, a focus which continues to this day while fulfilling the annual contract for the Royal British Legion.
The current Art Deco factory building was completed in 1933, and joined up more recently to a visitor centre and cafe space out front. Group visits are encouraged and occasional open days held, but for Open House anyone could walk in off the street (Tuesday only) and get deeper into the factory than anyone normally gets. [3d tour]
Just inside the door is a reception desk and gift shop with far nicer mementoes than you might find elsewhere. Think mugs, jugs and garden ornaments, not plastic tags that dangle off the zip on your anorak. There's also a presentation area with seats for 30-odd, although the 'video' appeared to be a succession of informative slides so I didn't sit down and watch all the way through.
Then the wreaths start. The Richmond factory majors in wreath-making, assembling over 75,000 a year, including those for military organisations and the wreaths the Royal family lay at the Cenotaph each year. Several examples cover the walls, including a Caribbean version, a Devonshire Regiment roundel and the snazzy half-laurel version laid by the former Queen. Normally you have to watch them being made on a little tablet underneath, but yesterday we were allowed through in groups of five to see the real thing.
It's a proper factory floor with desks, workstations, desktop mascots and a fridge where employees keep their different milks. A lot of what's going on involves putting things in boxes, so for example one gent was busy counting wooden Remembrance crosses and packing the requisite number away. A noisy machine out back punches out polyester and paper petals, also the individual 6 million petals that fall from the ceiling of the Royal Albert Hall on Remembrance Eve. But the majority activity is the creation of wreaths by assembling large flowers and inserting them into a holey black ring. This happens at multiple desks, with the two most senior staff charged with assembling the royal versions. Finished wreaths are packed into pizza-style boxes then labelled according to destination, which yesterday included the French and Canadian embassies.
Upstairs is the warehouse, now smaller than it used to be after Tesco donated spare shelving which has allowed the administrative area to expand into the excess. The Poppy Factory year runs from October to October, for hopefully obvious reasons, so at present they're nearing the end of production for 2024/25. The most surprising corner (and the only part of the factory we were permitted to photograph) is a fake Tomb of The Unknown Soldier placed vertically on a lobby wall. Staff maintain a perfect rim of red poppies at all times so that if the real thing at Westminster Abbey is ever damaged, Richmond's spare can immediately be switched into place.
What they don't make here are the small red poppies people pin to their lapels or outer clothing. It's just not practical to have a veteran crew assembling 30 million of these per year, so instead they're put together in an automated factory in Aylesford in Kent. Visitors to the Poppy Factory are still invited to have a go for themselves, first selecting components from boxes labelled Petals, Stalks, Leaves and Buttons. A separate table has all the ingredients for a larger long-stem poppy, where I also had a go. You slot the green cup onto the wire, then add a flat and a crinkly set of petals (once you've found the right hole in the middle), then use a black button to fasten the bloom. I was well chuffed that my attempt passed muster and was placed in the box in the corner, so could end up on any village green anywhere in England later this year.
If you come on a normal tour you get full access to the visitor centre but can only look onto the factory floor from behind a barrier. The first half hour is usually a presentation, then a chance to wander the walls and see some exhibits related to the history of the place, also the aforementioned stab at poppy-making. But it's not an extensive space - the real job takes precedence - so I imagine the cafe fills a substantial share of the remaining hour. The admission price is hefty, which is fair enough given it's a donation to a very worthy cause. And I know it's not really in the spirit of things but thanks to Open House I won't need to buy a poppy this year...
Oh for goodness sake what now, Humble Crumble? I saw this window in Covent Garden and they just sell fruit crumble in little pots and apparently this is what people want these days. At £7.15 a shot! Who are these fools?
I say £7.15 but that's the basic cost, they want you to boost the cost with extras. You start by choosing apple or rhubarb, although the rhubarb sold out early yesterday, that's your basic. Then if you want custard it's 50p extra, or indeed whipped cream and/or blowtorched marshmallow and/or chocolate sauce. Honestly, the extra people'll pay if you promise to blowtorch their food.
They serve it in a tub on a tray to prevent spillage, which is hardly eco-friendly but very important presentation wise, because what most purchasers intend to do with their food is pose with it for social media, perhaps grinning inanely before uploading to TikTok. Food should be filling rather than something to show off to your friends, but that's Gen Z aspirational priorities for you.
You pay out front at the cheapest set-up possible - two tablets beside two contactless terminals - because why hire staff when the customer will do all the work themselves? The company must recognise the drawbacks because the only other things stuck to the wall are two bottles of hand sanitiser, all the better to reassure foreign customers who saw the 'viral sensation' online and flew in to swap hard currency for scant reward.
Apple crumble's one of the easiest desserts to make - even I can do it! - not to mention cheap because sugar, flour and butter substitute aren't exactly expensive. You just knock it up in a dark kitchen somewhere, dole it out at prices high enough to pay for city centre rents and laugh all the way to the bank. The staff are called Crumble Artists, for heaven's sake.
Humble Crumble it may be, but Mugs Tubs would be more appropriate.
Oh for goodness sake what's your problem with Humble Crumble? Everyone loves fruit crumble, it's one of the great British pudding staples, so why not serve it as fast food rather than dull ice cream or stodgy donuts?
£7.15's nothing in the grand scheme of things these days, you'd pay more for a teensy slice of cheesecake in a typical restaurant, plus here you get to personalise your pud the way you want it. They even do vegan options because not everyone appreciates dairy, and if you allow people to select their ingredients they feel they've been creative and everyone walks away happy.
The pots are 100% biodegradable I'll have you know, though not technically recyclable nor much use in your compost if you live in a tiny shared flat. Also they do a raft of artisanal specials which changes each month, so for September it's cherry bakewell and next month it'll probably be pumpkin. This is what you need if you want people to keep coming back, which they plainly do.
I don't know how you've only just noticed Humble Crumble, they started out in 2018 at Maltby Street Market and now have outlets at Camden Market, Spitalfields Market and Borough Market, all the better to catch London's interminable grazing hordes. They even have a kiosk at Bicester Village which tells you everything you need to know about the intended clientele, happy to pay whatever in a currency that's not their own.
20 year-olds are never going to own a house so they get their joy where they can in shared experiences. Far better to be spending under a tenner on fruity carbs than blowing £30 on a trumped up digital experience in a converted warehouse. A warming treat on an autumn day ticks all the boxes, so long as you don't take the more negative Tripadvisor reviews too seriously.
Humble Crumble, I'd humbly suggest, is a dollopy entrepreneurial marvel.
