In a space that measures only 5 × 2.5 m (16 × 8 ft), outside her kitchen window, high up on a London rooftop, Penelope Bennett cultivates a kitchen garden that includes artichokes, aubergines, beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, alpine strawberries, raspberries, a cornucopia of herbs, 31 kinds of potato and six different fruit trees, among them a fig that fruits with spectacular abundance.
Window-Box Allotment acts as a guide to make an outdoor space, however tiny, equally prolific.
Penelope Bennett is a writer who has no formal training as a gardener but has acquired her considerable skills through trial and error. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Times, the Financial Times, the Observer, the New Statesman, Harpers & Queen, the Atlantic Monthly and Mademoiselle. Her collection of short stories, Endangered Happiness, was nominated for the David Higham prize for Fiction.