Building a new food system from chef Jackson Bennett’s backyard
Bloom’s executive chef Jackson Bennett wants to break down the major supermarket chains’ fresh food dominance by rebuilding a network of small-scale market gardeners and delivering locally grown food to your door.
Words and pictures: Johnny von Einem
City Mag
Nov 11, 2021
Excerpt:
It started with wanting to grow basil while he was working at an Italian restaurant, because “you couldn’t get any good garnishes from fruit and veg suppliers”. To his instincts, the produce from suppliers lacked the “top note of the basil”.
Every year he would plant a batch, and “you’d fail and you’d just do it again,” he says.
Later, he planted out his work’s car park, filling in the small sections between the bitumen reserved for trees with corn and pea plants.
As Jackson’s career in kitchens progressed, his passion for growing grew in tandem.
By the time he got to Peter Rabbit, in 2018, following a stint at Hentley Farm, the chef took on the task of making the Hindley Street café’s garden oasis edible, planting out a micro-herb garden on top of the shipping container venue.
Jackson’s interest has continued to shift toward growing, to the point he has decided to step back from the Bloom kitchen to launch Urban Grow Boi – a multifaceted gardening business that includes seed sales, edible garden consulting, and a food box delivery concept running as a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program.
