Urbane's urban garden

From shiso sprouts to muna leaves, herbs seemed to be big on the culinary circuit at the recent Langham Hilton Melbourne Masterclasses. All kinds of exotic greenery featured in a repertoire of recipes from local and international chefs. Attica's Ben Shewry grows more than 11 types of basil alone in the restaurant's kitchen garden.

Chefs at Brisbane restaurant Urbane have slightly less space than Shewry but have come up with an inner-city solution – installing a vertical garden in the alleyway behind the restaurant.

"We have reduced our ordering of herbs to almost nothing," says head chef Alejandro Cancino. "We used to buy micro herbs in these little pots and you'd take them out and throw away the earth and the pot and it felt bad, so we started to look for another way."

At first Cancino said they spoke to nurseries and herb growers to see if they could make an arrangement of rotating herbs with them. "They asked, 'are you a restaurant?' and when we said 'yes', they didn't want to know because they said they'd been burnt by chefs before."

Finally, they found a Gold Coast farmer who exchanges their herbs weekly.

"He grows herbs exclusively for us – we commission him depending on what's on the menu. Then we put them in the garden and exchange them for fresh ones the next week."

The vertical garden, currently four tiers high, is about to double in size. Currently, they have sorrel, nasturtiums, four types of mint (including the moss-like Corsican), four types of basil, sansho and shiso, garlic leaf, amaranth, New Zealand spinach and more.

"Customers really like it, to see the chefs collecting the herbs for the dishes, but it is good for the chefs too, to keep them connected with the earth."

And despite Spencer Laneway being a very publicly accessible space, Cancino says he's not worried about theft. "So far people have been very respectful of the garden," he says.