The secret mall gardens of Cleveland

By Lisa Selin Davis
Grist
17 March, 2010

The shopping mall is not dead. In Cleveland, in fact, it’s growing green: cucumbers, lettuce, herbs and even flowers.

In the former Galleria at Erieview mall, a project called Gardens Under Glass is taking root, part of a grand plan to transform malls into greenhouses. It’s just one of many Cleveland-based projects, suggesting that this rust belt city might have a few sustainabilty tricks to teach urban centers everywhere.

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Urban Agriculture in Vancouver

Interviews with former city councillor Peter Ladner, a fellow at the SFU Centre for Dialogue, and Janine de la Salle, the director of food systems planning at the Vancouver office of HB Lanarc.
Business in Vancouver
March 3, 2010

Excerpt:

The new City of Vancouver administration raised some eyebrows last spring when one of its first moves was to tear up a swath of lawn at city hall and replace it with a vegetable patch. For many this was easily dismissed as a symbolic gesture: farmer Robertson staking his claim.

Not so easy to dismiss are the dozens of garden plots that have sprung up all over the city or the fact that developers and urban planners now have entire departments devoted to planning patches of city farmland.

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Andrew Wolfe keeps beehives on his roof at his Freedom Farm. His Seminole yard has ducks, chickens, tilapia, a greenhouse, a garden and citrus. Wolfe even grows mint in a platform suspended over his tilapia pond. It’s a symbiotic relationship because the herbs filter the pond water.

Seeds of urban farming sprout in bay area

By Jessica Vander Velde,
St Petersburg Times ?March 14, 2010

Excerpt:

A year ago, Andrew Wolfe had a typical yard: a half-acre of grass and a tree.

Now it’s less lawn, more farm.

His Seminole yard houses 16 ducks, 16 chickens, 400 tilapia and seven beehives. He built a greenhouse, started a garden and planted four citrus trees — all near a busy street with restaurants, shops and a Baptist church.

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We explore new themes like school lunch reform, aquaponics and urban gardening

Food Forward explores alternatives to our current industrial food system through the lives and passions of a vanguard of innovators; educators, scientists, farmers and chefs across America–food rebels who are fundamentally changing the way we eat.

We shot this self-funded pilot episode trailer on Biodynamics in the summer of 2009 at Cynthia Sandberg’s Love Apple Farm in Ben Lomond, CA.

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