Brooklyn Grange – New York

Brooklyn Grange will be a 1 acre rooftop farm situated in New York City. Such a commercially-viable rooftop farm has yet to be realized in this country. We will use simple green roof infrastructure to install over 1 million pounds of soil on the roof of an industrial building on which we will grow vegetables nine months of the year. Being in the country’s largest city, the farm will create a new system of providing local communities with access to fresh, seasonal produce. We plan to expand quickly in the first few years, covering multiple acres of New York City’s unused rooftops with vegetables. The business has many environmental and community benefits, and allows our city dwelling customers to know their farmer, learn where their food comes from, and become involved.

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A blend of over 25 varieties of lettuces, brassicas, fava greens, herbs, wild greens and edible flowers

Chloe Roth
San Francisco Chronicle
April 29, 2010

Excerpt:

Can two people earn a living wage growing and selling produce within the city of San Francisco? This is the question that Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway set out to answer when they launched Little City Gardens in the Mission District of San Francisco. Armed with a commitment to urban gardening, a business plan and high hopes, but free of any pretensions that the answer to their question would be a resounding “yes,” Budner and Galloway are taking Little City Gardens to the next level. That is, with a little help from the global community.
“…How does your garden grow?”

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Girls Inc of NYC on Rooftop Farm from Mary Matthews on Vimeo.

Girls Inc. of NYC

Girls Inc. of NYC members from the Urban Assembly Institute answered the President’s call to service by volunteering at Rooftop Farms in Brooklyn, NY. The girls helped clean, plant and compost, and learned that they can help the environment by growing and eating local produce…even in New York City.

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Good Food Garden at the Arroyo Head Start center

August 2009

In 2009, McCarthy helped Weight Watchers kick off Lose For Good by participating in a ceremony where the company donated a “Good Food Garden” to the Arroyo Head Start center in Altadena, CA, run by the Center for Community and Family Services, Inc. The Arroyo Head Start center serves underprivileged children in the community and until now did not have funding to build a sustainable garden for the kids to use for educational and nutritional purposes.

This community garden, designed and installed by Teich Garden Systems will bring healthy and fresh food to a community in need. Jenny McCarthy and David Kirchhoff broke ground in the garden and actually planted along side the young students.

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K-State’s National ‘Brownfields’ Research Funded by EPA

By Staff of Kansas City infoZine
April 29, 2010

Excerpt:

Manhattan, KS – infoZine – Spring is in the air and urban gardens are sprouting up all over the country.

“Increasingly, urban agriculture is being done on a community basis, rather than an individual basis,” said Kansas State University assistant professor of agronomy, Ganga Hettiarachchi. “There are now more than 18,000 community gardens in the U.S. and Canada,” she said, citing American Community Gardening Association data.

Some of those gardens are on once-vacant lots and land where buildings once sat. Such locations are convenient for city-dwellers and make productive use of land that otherwise might be weedy, trash-strewn lots. There is a potential downside, however.

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Sara St. Vincent and Ander Gates work on their garden at their East Vancouver home. City initiatives have urged homeowners to avoid pesticides, leave their grass clippings on the lawn and plant vegetables and flowers. Photo by Brett Beadle for the Globe and Mail

Vancouver lawn-loving homeowner says neighbours’ ambitious vegetable plot is an eyesore eating away at his bungalow’s property value

Jane Armstrong
Globe and Mail
Apr. 28, 2010

Excerpt:

When Sara St. Vincent looks at the tangle of yellow kale flowers swaying in her front yard, she sees a nutritious vegetable, soon to be part of her dinner plate. What her neighbour, Ken Dyck, sees are unsightly weeds, eating away at his property values.

A messy urban conflict has erupted on a quiet east Vancouver street, pitting a lawn-loving homeowner against a group of young counterculture renters who’ve turned their front and backyards into vegetable crops.

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Good urban agriculture legislation brings a harvest of nutritional, aesthetic, social and cultural improvements.

Pressure and creativity are loosening old rules that kept farming in the country.

By Krista Hozyash
Rodale Institute

Krista Hozyash recently served as a communications intern at the Rodale Institute. She received her Masters of Environmental Management from Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and plans to aid communities with conservation and sustainability initiatives.

Excerpt:

The crow of roosters in New York City neighborhoods is an increasingly familiar sound, as is the chatter of gardeners working in community plots on rooftops and abandoned lots. NYC and other metro areas around the nation are engaging with the organic agriculture movement to establish local food systems that address concerns of food deserts, childhood obesity and inequality of access to fresh, healthy, whole foods.

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Angel Morgan P-Patch Community Garden in Seattle. Photo by Collin Dunn

Seattle radio interview with three experts

Steve Scher
KUOW Radio 94.9FM
04/28/2010

This year has been declared the year of urban agriculture in Seattle. Is urban agriculture more than just growing food in P–Patches and backyard gardens? What is local government doing to support food production within the city? Some urban areas in Asia produce more than 60 percent of their food within city limits. Could Seattle be that fertile? Is urban agriculture the way of the future, or simply a hobby for people who have backyards?

Guests:

Darrin Nordahl is the city designer at the Davenport Design Center in Davenport, Iowa. He has taught planning at the University of California at Berkeley, and is the is the city designer at the Davenport Design Center in Davenport, Iowa.

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Photo by Shannon Sturgis. See larger image here.

Woolly Pockets in schools

Last Thursday, Earth Day, Woolly Pockets installed a giant (40’X8’) “Living Green Wall” of edible plants and lush Native New York plant species on the Southern plaza of Union Square in New York City. The project was in conjunction with New York Restoration project for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.

Starting in the morning, Miguel from Woolly Pockets and a team from New York Restoration Project planted the 400 Woolly Pockets and hung them on this remarkable wall. Miguel did this to help kick off the NYC Grows festival, but more importantly to spread the word about his Woolly Pocket School Program (there are over 20 in LA already and he wants to start building them in New York soon).

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