The house I grew from seed

TV DIRECTOR STEVE BARRON GREW HIS STUNNING HOUSE FROM SEED TO HELP SAVES THE PLANET. CLAREC MORRISROE

AWARD-WINNING director SteStevee Barron has just returned from the red carpet in Cannes after the premiere of his latest work: Around The World in 80 Days. The new series, starring David Tennant, is hotly tipped to be a BBC blockbuster and is already receiving rave reviews. After almost five decades in the music, film and television industry, Steve is no stranger to artistic accolades.

He was the creative visionary behind A-ha’s seminal pop video for Take On Me in 1985. He directed Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and has also worked with Madonna, Paul McCartney and David Bowie. His proudest achievement, however, couldn’t be more removed from the glitzyglit worldorld of shoshow businessbusiness.

In a groundbreaking programme of his own to help the planet, he has actually grown his own house.

It’s a carbon-negative building constructed from hemp which runs completely off-grid. And don’t be fooled by the hippy connotations of the material or the fact it’s built on the site of an old cow shed on a 50-acre farm in the middle of the Cambridgeshire countryside.

For this carbon-munching crib is as state of the art as it is super stylish.

And there’s no panic here about hiking energy bills – the whole place, called Margent Farm, is powered by a combination of wind, solar panels and a bio-mass boiler.

‘It took just 100 days to grow from seed to harvest,’ says Steve, who started the project six years ago when his daughter Gemma gave birth to her first child, Aya.

‘I’d just turned 60 and when my daughter had a daughter, it made me think about the future – her future.

‘I wanted to do something to contribute to the world. My generation has really messed things