For almost a decade, Maria, her colleagues Lisa, Saga, Sara, and Per, and their four-legged team leader Maggan have transformed an old horse paddock into a thriving cultivation landscape. Here they grow vegetables, flowers, and herbs for Svenska Brasserier, the restaurant group behind some of Stockholm’s most renowned establishments, including Gondolen, Sturehof, Riche, Teatergrillen, AIRA, and of course, Ulriksdals Värdshus.

The result is a living cultivation that supplies the kitchens with fresh produce and homegrown cut flowers, a close collaboration between growers and chefs, where the season determines what ends up on the plate.

You’re approaching a decade of growing here at Ulriksdals Värdshus. How did it all begin?

Almost nine years ago, I was asked if we could take care of the old horse paddock here. The answer was an obvious yes, and we immediately decided to start growing vegetables.
We began simply, plowed up a small patch of land and got started. Since then, the cultivation has grown year by year. In the beginning, we didn’t grow any flowers except for green manure crops. But we soon realized that even those could be used by the restaurants. So, we quickly replaced all the purchased cut flowers with our own.

Do you have an early memory of growing something, perhaps from childhood?

I’ve always worked with seeds. I love sowing and seeing what comes up. We were just talking the other day about The Secret Garden, a book many have read as children, finding a forgotten garden, cleaning it up, and watching something magical come to life. That’s probably where my interest began, early on.

You grow many flowers alongside the vegetables. Is there a connection there?

Yes, exactly, that’s the whole point. We grow flowers primarily for natural pest control. The goal is to attract as many insects as possible to create balance so that the harmful ones don’t take over and eat our vegetables.

That’s why we plant flowers among the vegetables; they always coexist side by side.

PS: It feels like you have to let go of control when it comes to gardening and growing.

MH: Yes and also remember that we share the space. It’s not just about me; it’s about other plants and animals too.
That’s really how a garden works. You can’t control everything yourself; you have to cooperate with nature a little. Then things can turn out beautifully.

PS: How many different crops do you grow each year? Are they all from seed?

MH: Yes, pretty much everything. The only thing we buy is lemon verbena cuttings, it’s tricky to grow from seed. Otherwise, we sow everything ourselves: around 70,000–80,000 plug plants and between 160 and 200 different varieties.

PS: So that can mean several types of lettuce within the same category?

MH: Exactly.

How would you describe a typical day during harvest season?

MH: It varies a lot throughout the year, and that’s what makes the work so exciting. But during harvest season, we start at 7 a.m. out in the field. We have lists with orders from the restaurants, and we harvest according to those. Then everything is gathered at the washing station, rinsed, and packed.

Depending on how much time is left, we continue with weeding, transplanting, or sowing. We’ve just sown the last seeds for the year, but the work continues in different forms throughout the season.

PS: So right now, the focus is fully on harvesting?

MH: Yes, exactly. Earlier in the summer, it’s more about weeding, that’s essential for a good harvest later on.

How do you view the future of this type of cultivation and sustainability?

I think places like ours will become increasingly important. Many of us have grown distant from food production, and fewer and fewer people have any real connection to where their food actually comes from. Here, we get to meet the people who buy our produce and talk about what affects the harvest, a hailstorm, a rainy summer.
This close connection between the producer and the consumer, I believe, that’s the future. But it also requires us to think long-term and work in rhythm with nature.

PS: And the chefs you collaborate with, are they involved from the start, in the planning of what to grow?

MH: That’s always our ambition, that they share ideas and wishes. But we work on different timescales. For us, a year feels short, especially with all the planning. For chefs, a week is a long horizon.

So more and more, we’ve started basing things on what we actually have and the experience we’ve built. We look at what worked last year and at societal trends. Chefs are very responsive to trends, and right now there’s a clear pull toward traditional and nostalgic produce, more robust ingredients like root vegetables, zucchini, and preserved tomatoes. So sometimes it’s about being a trend spotter rather than just following requests.

We also encourage chefs to start from what’s available rather than wish for fresh raspberries in January, to see the season as the real menu.

PS: And when the weather changes, hail, heavy rain, that must affect the menus too?

MH: Yes, absolutely. And wewant it to. That’s part of our role. Many people have lost touch with where food comes from, and if you don’t know the producer, it’s hard to understand the variations. We’re completely dependent on the weather, it controls almost everything, whether you grow grain or zucchini.

The more we can talk to the restaurants about each season, the easier it gets when something doesn’t go as planned. Then the reaction isn’t “oh no,” but “okay, what did go well then?”.

Because something always does.It’s about seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty. You have to stay flexible, or rather, you don’t have a choice.

Do you have a special food memory from what you’ve harvested?

Yes, visiting the restaurants and seeing our produce on the plate. That’s something truly special. You can tell from many dishes that the chefs have real respect for the ingredients and a desire to highlight what’s been grown with care. I think that relationship between the cook and the grower adds something extra to the food.

One example is the zucchini flower at Sturehof, it’s been a bestseller for years and is truly beautiful.

Do you have a favorite vegetable, plant, or flower that’s especially fun to grow?

There are so many fun ones. But I’m particularly fond of the sprouting broccoli we grow here. It’s delicious and very rewarding because you can harvest it over a long period. It comes and goes, loves wet and cool weather, then pauses when it’s hot and comes back later. That’s probably my favorite.

I also like sweet pointed peppers, they don’t always yield the biggest harvest and can be a bit tricky, but they’re great fun to work with.

How do you get the best soil for growing such beautiful vegetables?

It’s about working with the soil in many ways. That’s the foundation of everything we do, constantly improving soil quality and structure. With intensive cultivation like ours, we need a lot of nutrients. We have clay soil here, so structure is also important.

We use two-year green manure cycles, growing plants like clover and grass purely to enrich the soil. We cut and return them to the soil, while weeds are suppressed.

We also work with compost that rests for a year and is turned a few times, using manure from a nearby stable. It becomes a local and sustainable loop that keeps the soil alive and strong.

People often romanticize gardening, that it’s cozy and lovely, which of course it can be. But it’s also physical and demanding work. How do you see that balance, and what keeps you going?

MH: Yes, growing is definitely physical work. You can use machines to some extent, but ultimately, it’s your body doing the job, and you’re outdoors all the time, something many aren’t used to anymore.But there’s also something wonderful about it. You have time to think, to reflect while you work. I can walk through a field and solve world problems in my head. It’s incredibly rewarding.

For me, cultivation is something I just can’t stop doing. It comes up whether I want it to or not. It’s either my job or my entire private life, right now, it happens to be both.

I can’t imagine working with anything that feels more relevant than this, especially in uncertain times. It feels meaningful to be able to say: I grow food. It feels right.

Of course, you have to find ways not to wear yourself out and be aware of your limits. But there’s something beautiful about moving your body and being outdoors every day.