In April 2006 I bought a dilapidated 1920s local authority house in Writtle, Essex. With the help of my two sons Django and Aidan and friends John and Tim, we commenced a three-year experiment. We wanted to see if we could design and build an eco-retrofit, extension and permaculture garden from the plot. The aim was to create a prototype home that could demonstrate the possibility that a huge proportion of existing UK housing stock could be retrofitted to meet A or B Energy Performance Certificate ratings.

On perhaps the sunniest day in British history, Horton Community Farm gave a presentation of their work in Bradford while introducing their new project, Grow Your Own Curry.

This project was inspired by work in Mallorca, where a group of motivated forward-thinkers ‘grew a pizza’ from scratch in one month. As our climate is a little moodier than Mallorca, the cut to curry seemed, for Horton Community Farm, like a more realistic mission. And where better to do it than in Bradford, the ‘curry capital’? It's even possible to grow our own lentils here in a favourable summer.