Posts from — August 2009

Photo by Michael Levenston

Can this be our Compost Garden?

Maria takes us on an “Alice Through the Looking Glass” type journey around our demonstration garden using her tiny HD digital camera and her equally tiny teleidoscope.

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Inslee introduces bill to promote Community Gardens

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Today, Congressman Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) introduced the Community Gardens Act of 2009 with Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.)  The bill creates a grant program within the U.S. Department of Agriculture to compensate community groups for up to eighty percent of the costs associated with starting and maintaining a community garden.

 “Locally, the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods maintains almost two thousand community garden plots on 23 acres of land, which serve almost four thousand urban gardeners in the area,” said Inslee. “With this legislation, we can help programs like the ones in Seattle and at 21 Acres in Woodinville, and we can expand opportunities to all American households to share in the numerous benefits of local gardening.”

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Photo: Adrian Vecchio (http://www.adrianvecchio.com).

Grow your own food in your apartment year round

Window Farms are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials.

In February 2009, through a residency at Eyebeam, Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray began to build and test the first Window Farms prototype. Growing food inside NY apartments is a challenge, but within reach. The foundational knowledge base is emerging through working with agricultural, architectural and other specialists, collecting sensor data, and reinterpreting hydroponics research conducted by NASA scientists and marijuana farmers.

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Neighborhood association president Barbara Griffith-Wilson and some high school students are working to plant community gardens and clear vacant lots in Flint. Photo from Planning Comm’rs Journal’s.

Flint to consider ordinance changes to enhance urban agriculture

by Elizabeth Shaw
The Flint Journal
July 07, 2009

Excerpt:

It’s not that Flint officials are opposed to residents growing their own food in backyards or on nearly 2,800 vacant residential lots within the city limits (a list that’s still growing to the tune of about 500 vacant lots per year).

The problem is the laws on the books simply predate the city’s new urban reality.

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Bill Tall takes a break with his dog, Abby. His nursery offers everything from roosters and koi fish to a cackling green parrot and a garden deli. And plants, of course. Photo by Mary Knox Merrill (Christian Science Monitor)

The self-sufficient foodie – How to harvest an omnivore’s meal straight from your urban home.

By Erin Glass,
San Diego News Network
March 16, 2009

Excerpt:

It might be hard for the average grower, but Bill Tall, founder of City Farmer’s Nursery in City Heights, produces about 80 percent of his food. And still, he isn’t satisfied.  Tall is planning for an entire year without groceries.  To walk across his nursery, which connects to the land surrounding his home, is to stumble into a wonderland of gardening ideas.  Though his business allows him three acres of land to produce food on, most of his projects can be geared to a small, backyard environment.  Or even an indoor one.

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Karen Dar Woon teaches people how to can food

“I teach wherever people need to have a class, i.e., community kitchens, and in private homes. I have also taught in cooking stores. My next scheduled class is at Richmond Family Place, in late August. I’ve also had small classes at my home in Yaletown.

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Vancouver’s 6 Acre Living Roof from Dave Budge on Vimeo.

Vancouver’s 6 Acre Living Roof

By Dave Budge (and sister)

“The roof of the Vancouver BC Convention Centre is covered with over 2.5 hectares (6 acres) of native grassland. Usually closed to the public, we were able to get a tour and interview with the landscape architect of the project, Bruce Hemstock.

“This is part 1 of the “Growing Cities” documentary series shot while traveling in the USA and Canada – June 2009. 2 person crew. Canon 5DmkII and Zoom H4n.”

Image by Jonathan LaRocca for Guernica magazine.

by Mark Dowie
Guernica – a magazine of art and politics
August, 2009
Mark Dowie is an investigative historian living in Point Reyes Station, California.

Excerpt:

“There are more visionaries in Detroit than in most Rust-Belt cities, and thus more visions of a community rising from the ashes of a moribund industry to become, if not an urban paradise, something close to it. The most intriguing visionaries in Detroit, at least the ones who drew me to the city, were those who imagine growing food among the ruins—chard and tomatoes on vacant lots (there are over 103,000 in the city, sixty thousand owned by the city), orchards on former school grounds, mushrooms in open basements, fish in abandoned factories, hydroponics in bankrupt department stores,

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