Posts from — January 2010

Photo by Dezeen.

Landgrab City

By Joseph Grima, Jeffrey Johnson, José Esparza
December 2009 – January 2010
2009 Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism

From the China-lab site:

Landgrab City is an installation commissioned by the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism and located on Shenzhenwan Avenue (Nanshan), a busy shopping district in the city of Shenzhen. Conceived as an experimental investigation into the full extent of Shenzhen’s spatial footprint, the installation is comprised of two parts: an aerial photograph of one of the city’s densest areas, home to approximately 4.5m people, and a plot of cultivated land divided into small lots. This land is a representation, at the same scale as the city itself, of the amount of territory necessary to provide the food consumed by the inhabitants of the portion of city sampled in the map, projected to 2027 (the year China is expected to overtake the US as the world’s leading economy). Each lot represents the extent of a single food group’s footprint: vegetables, cereals, fruit, pasture (for livestock), and so on.

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By The National Trust
2009

Excerpts:

Gardens connect people with food

21 per cent of people have taken up gardening to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

The Trust now cares for 26 working kitchen gardens, from Trengwainton, Cornwall, to Wallington, Northumberland. At the magnificent 2.5 acre kitchen garden at Knightshayes Court in Devon we work with local schools who now come on a regular basis to tend their plots and learn about growing
food.

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Started in 1979, Nottingham urban farm needs help

The Petition

Stonebridge City Farm being pressured by the city council to give up of 10% of the farms land as a condition of renewing the lease for the farm. The council wants the land to be used by the farms neighbours to park cars in front of their houses.

After a “consultation” with 31 neighbours next to the farm it is said that 15 neighbours wanted this parking scheme. Were the 10,000 visitors to the farm last year consulted? It appears not.

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Blue Sea Developments and BrightFarm Systems

The Blue Sea Development Corporation has a reputation for integrating emerging environmental technologies into high quality, affordable housing developments across New York City.

Their new state of the art affordable housing complex planned for the South Bronx, NY, will feature a 10,000 square feet (930 sq meters) fully integrated rooftop farm, designed by BrightFarm Systems.

The greenhouse will use left-over heat from the residential portion of the building and water harvested from the greenhouse roof. The farm will be used to provide fresh, perishable vegetables to a local non-profit food cooperative.

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Rancho Cordova eyes ordinance on pot growing

By Loretta Kalb
The Sacramento Bee
Jan. 10, 2010

When the persistent “skunk” smell of marijuana became too much for Linda Kurtz, she did what she said she had to do.

She went to Rancho Cordova City Hall and asked the City Council to protect her from the smell coming from her neighbor’s backyard marijuana plants.

In so doing, she brought the city to the forefront of the next big issue facing marijuana producers and municipal regulators in California.

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28 Minutes of classic radio humour by two of the greats.

Listen here:

Gracie: You were right George, we’ll just a have a sweet little Victory Garden.

George: Good. We’ll plant some asparagus.

Gracie: And we’ll plant some beets on top of it.

George: On top of it?

Gracie: Ah huh. So when the asparagus start to come up, they’ll tickle the beets on the bottom and they’ll come up sooner.

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Neighborhood Fruit helps people find and share fruit locally, both backyard bounty and abundance on public lands – 10,000 trees nationwide and counting!

Neighborhood Fruit was created to make use of the abundant fruit growing in our urban environments. Currently, the bulk of fruit grown in backyards and in our cities goes to waste, while the fruit we consume is grown in water-intensive orchards far from our homes. We envision a different future, where the bulk of backyard fruit is utilized and shared between neighbors and our diets replete with home-made goodies. Join us in creating a future where the food we eat is truly fresh, seasonal and local!

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Although there is no story to accompany this graphic in the 1941 edition of the comic, it is a wonderful promotional image, which would have reached millions of kids during the war. Superb!

Photo by Steve Ringman. Colin McCrate of Seattle Urban Farm Company checks on a fresh crop of lettuces planted in a raised bed on top of Ballard’s Bastille restaurant. The lids are fitted with shade cloth to prevent the lettuces and arugula from bolting in the rooftop’s unobstructed sunlight. In winter, glass lids will help protect against the cold.

At Seattle’s Bastille, the garden goodies are on the roof

Bastille in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood offers lettuces and other fresh menu items grown right on the restaurant’s roof.

By Valerie Easton
Nov 15 2009
Seattle Times

From all the fuss over Bastille restaurant’s new rooftop vegetable plots, you’d think that gardening on top of a building is a brand new concept. All over the world, people in urban areas take advantage of the sun-drenched space up top to grow food and flowers. Apiarists are even keeping bees on the rooftop of the Opera House and the Eiffel Park Hotel in Paris. But here in Seattle we’re just getting used to urban density, and owners James Weimann and Demming Maclise are out front putting a commercial rooftop to work growing fresh herbs and lettuces for their restaurant.

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Your car – like your Victory Garden – is a national asset these days. So care for it wisely! Spare it excessive wear with stem-to-stern Marfak chassis lubrication.

Photo by E. SKYLAR LITHERLAND. Vincent Dessberg stands at his rooftop hydroponic farm near downtown Sarasota, where he is growing fruits and vegetables. His lettuce is selling at the Sarasota Downtown Farmer’s Market. With about 6,000 plants, this new small farm is by far the most urban in the county.

By Kate Spinner
Herald Tribune
January 4, 2010

SARASOTA – In an industrial park about a mile from Main Street, mechanics repair cars, cleaners launder draperies and Vincent Dessberg grows crops on the roof of his old glass shop.

Dessberg used to fuse glass into colorful windows. But after the economic downturn he turned from the kiln, seeing better opportunity on his 3,000 square-foot roof.

“Nobody needs glass. Everybody needs to eat,” he said.

His lettuce is selling at the Sarasota Downtown Farmer’s Market. Other fruits and vegetables — cauliflower, okra, goji berries — are bound for dinner plates at some of the city’s best restaurants.

With about 6,000 plants, this new small farm is by far the most urban in the county. Crops grow vertically in 180 hydroponic planters that stand about six feet tall.

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The government plans a landbank to pinpoint unused plots where communities can grow their own food. Photograph: David Levene

Ministers consider temporary allotments scheme?Fruit and veg plots part of strategy to cut reliance on imports

By James Meikle
guardian.co.uk,
4 January 2010

The government plans to launch a “grow your own” revolution by encouraging people to set up temporary allotments or community gardens on land awaiting development or other permanent use.

It aims to develop a “meanwhile” lease to formalise such arrangements between landowners and voluntary groups and is considering establishing a “land bank” to broker better links and ensure plots are not left idle.

Ministers believe the move could foster community spirit and skills as well as improve physical and mental health.

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Larger image here.

WWI Home Garden Seed Advertising by Haskell Coffin 1919

Haskell Coffin (1878 – 1941) A versatile illustrator, gracing covers for several magazines, Redbook and The American being two long-term stints. Becoming famous as a portrayer of American beauty, the Coffin girl could be found on note cards, sheet music, calendars, decorative boxes, fashion catalogs. His “Joan of Arc Saved France” WWI poster is well known.

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Urban Bee Rescuers. Photo credit: Janet and Kelly
“We were just beekeeping as a hobby, as gardeners and nature lovers, and soon we could not keep up with the amount of emails from people who wanted us to rescue their bees. So now we are the founders of backyardbees.net.”

Photos collected by The Daily Green and Bee Culture magazine. They salute city beekeepers.

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Produced by: International Water Management Institute
Year: 2005. Language: English with French subtitles

In sub-saharan Africa, where sanitation infrastructure does not keep pace with city growth, the use of polluted water for urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is a common reality. While UPA puts consumers at risk; it also plays an important role in food supply and job creation. The question is how to preserve the benefits while minimizing the risks?

This short video clip gives voice to the people most closely involved, to articulate their own solutions to the challenges they face. This video was produced by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and it’s partners to aid in knowledge sharing.

Sana’a Gardens. Photo by Jeff Lindstrom
Larger image here.

By Amwl Al-Ariqi
Source: Yemen Times (YCPMI)
Date: 28 Dec 2009

Yemen has suffered greatly during the world food crisis, since early 2008, which increased the number of people in poverty. About two million people are depending on the aids given by the World Food Program in Yemen.

The country imports as much as 75 per cent of its food requirements, and hence is vulnerable to shortages in world stocks. Yemen’s poorest households may have no mechanism to cope with astronomical prices, warned international aids agencies in Yemen.

The WFP says that higher prices have already forced six percent of the population of 20 millions according to 2004, below the poverty line.

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The Garden of Happiness

By Erika Tamar (Author), Barbara Lambase (Illustrator)
Harcourt Children’s Books, 1996

From Publishers Weekly:

Tamar, the author of such tough-minded YA novels as Fair Game, turns dewy-eyed in her first picture book, an idealistic tale about a community garden in a rundown part of New York City. A studiously multiethnic coalition of neighbors claims an empty lot, and there Mrs. Willie Mae Washington plants black-eyed peas and greens “like on my daddy’s farm in Alabama”; Mr. Singh raises valore, as he did in Bangladesh; etc. Young Marisol, pining to grow something, too, plants a seed she finds on the sidewalk and waters it faithfully. She is ecstatic when a sunflower finally blossoms and then grief-stricken when, at the end of the season, it dies.

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Fortune asked artist Bryan Christie to imagine how Detroit’s thousands of abandoned residential acres might be transformed into cutting-edge, city-style farms (see illustration above): Solar panels and windmills power vertical growing systems that are efficient, attractive, and tourist-friendly. Greenhouses allow crops to grow year-round. And new development sprouts on the periphery.

Can farming save Detroit?

By David Whitford
December 29, 2009

Excerpt:

DETROIT (Fortune) — John Hantz is a wealthy money manager who lives in an older enclave of Detroit where all the houses are grand and not all of them are falling apart. Once a star stockbroker at American Express, he left 13 years ago to found his own firm. Today Hantz Financial Services has 20 offices in Michigan, Ohio, and Georgia, more than 500 employees, and $1.3 billion in assets under management.

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Dirt! The Movie introduces viewers to dirt’s fascinating history. Four billion years of evolution have created the dirt that recycles our water, gives us food, provides us shelter, and that can be used as a source of medicine, beauty and culture.

Dirt! The Movie proves that times are changing. Brown is the new green. More than 25 renowned global visionaries in countries around the world are discovering new ways of thinking as they come together to repair this natural resource with practical, viable solutions. These participants include Paul Stamets: Mycologist; Andy Lipkis: President, Founder of TreePeople; Vandana Shiva: Physicist, Environmental Activist; Wes Jackson: President, The Land Institute; Majora Carter: Founder, Sustainable South Bronx; Alice Waters: Founder, The Edible Schoolyard; and John Todd: Biologist, Ecological Designer.

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Written and produced by Jennifer Olney.
KGO-TV/DT
December 24, 2009

OAKLAND, CA (KGO) — Mix the troubled economy with the desire to eat healthy food – and what do you get? A backyard turned into a barnyard. Here’s a look at the growing world of urban farming.

The farm is a small backyard behind a pink house.
It’s across the street from an abandoned building, just a few blocks from Downtown Oakland.

There are rabbits living on the front deck, chickens patrolling the side yard and a big vegetable garden growing in the empty lot next door.

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