Category — Roof Garden

In planting the garden, the hotel also wishes to sow seeds of change, creating Montréal’s first downtown hotel rooftop garden.

By Quebecgetaways,
September 9, 2011

Excerpt:

It isn’t possible to visit this secret garden. But guests at the hotel can already taste the difference in their plates. Since the month of May, the garden has already provided different kinds of eggplant, plum tomatoes, beets, peppers, Swiss chard, endive, radishes, zucchini, Montréal melons and several kinds of mint and basil for amazing results!

This urban garden gets perfect sun for growing food. The hotel has opted for a container culture technique developed by experts from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

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YWCA Evanston/North Shore.

The YWCA said the program will help empower local women.

By Jessica Rudis
Evanston Patch
Jan 27, 2012

Excerpt:

Colorado based CoBank recently announced that it will contribute $34,000 over the next three years to help the YWCA Evanston/North Shore to support an expansion of their urban farming initiative.

The urban farm started in the spring of 2009, when the YWCA built a small raised bed vegetable and herb garden to grow fresh produce for Mary Lou’s Place, their domestic violence shelter for women and children.

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A Food project in Chicago, IL

Our vision is to show how rooftop farming is a vital part of the urban agriculture movement to create a sustainable and equitable food system. Join us by helping us grow fruits & vegetables, organically & sustainably on the roof. The rewards for your pledges include options to visit us for a tour, cool gear, fresh produce, and even come by to volunteer on the rooftop!

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Viraj is a LEED® Accredited Professional and received a B.A. from Colgate University

Viraj Puri is co-founder and CEO of Gotham Greens, a New York City based company dedicated to growing the highest quality vegetables and culinary herbs for local restaurants and retailers. Gotham Greens’ premium quality produce is grown in sterile rooftop greenhouses in Brooklyn, NY, using clean, renewable energy. His written work has appeared in several books and publications including, “100% Renewable — Energy Autonomy in Action” and the un Academic Journal.

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Photo by: photo: Victoria Taylor and Katie Mathieu.

A look at the life-cycle of a rooftop vegetable farm for a Canadian restaurant—complete with hydroponic planters, a hoop house—including the harvest of beautiful vegetables.

By Victoria Taylor and Katie Mathieu
Garden Design
Jan 4, 2012

Excerpts:

In the spring of 2010, Parks & Rec, a rooftop vegetable garden, was established on the roof of downtown Toronto restaurant Parts & Labour. It was designed and operated as a for-profit roof farm by the two of us, landscape architect Victoria Taylor, OALA, and trained chef and permaculturalist Katie Mathieu.

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309 E. 8th Street, Los Angeles.

An organic green restaurant that utilizes the roof to grow its own vegatables

By Paul Aryeh
309 E. 8th Street
Los Angeles California 90014

Who we are:
We are the owners of a mid-rise building in the heart of the Fashion District of downtown LA. The area is slowly transforming into a very “Green” conscious location. Our building has about 10,000 sq ft of roof top space perfect for an organic farm, and there will be about 1900 sq ft of retail space on the ground floor available soon for a restaurant. This space is terrific for a restaurant, and has the necessary infrastructure to support a kitchen. Our desire is to find the perfect operator that can grow their own vegetables and use the ground floor to prepare, cook and serve all organic products.

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Utilizing unused space to put fresh, organic food on the table. That’s the idea behind a rooftop farm being planted right in the heart of Honolulu. See news video here.

Honolulu’s first urban rooftop farm

January 4, 2012

HONOLULU (AP) — Honolulu’s first urban rooftop farm will be on top of a car dealership.

FarmRoof says the company, along with Kamehameha Schools and others, will begin installing a 38,000-square-foot USDA-certified organic farm on a roof in Kakaako on Wednesday.

The farm is part of landowner Kamehameha Schools’ vision to redevelop Kakaako into a healthy and sustainable urban community.

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Photo by Mark K. Morrison, Landscape Architecture PC.

“Farming is a tough numbers game. It’s a tough sell, but educating children in cities about how food is grown is worth any size project.”

American Society of Landscape Architects
The Dirt
12/16/2011

Excerpt:

Mark Morrison, FASLA, Mark Morrison Landscape Architecture, who did his first green roof in Moscow in the 1970s and works on lots of diverse rooftop spaces (restaurants, hospitals, and community gardens), said the issues relate to policy. “We need policy changes.” He pointed to his Visionaire greenroof project in Battery Park City, where there’s a “strong authority” that didn’t want to see plants on roofs, so he had to make design changes to hide the roof produce. Keith Agoada, Urban-ag, agreed, adding that “commercial farming is often illegal.” Rooftop farmers often need “special use permits” to get around out-dated regulations meant to encourage densification by keeping farmers out of the city. There are also complications with adding greenhouses on roofs, which are “technically another floor,” so farmers need “legal and design workarounds.”

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Vegetables growing on the roof such as eggplant, okra, peas, butternut squash, cherry tomatoes, banana peppers and purple yard long beans.

Breaking Ground Contracting’s living roof is comprised of three main component ecosystems, including native wildflowers, shrubs and an intensive permaculture food and herb garden. The purpose of Breaking Ground’s living roof is an ongoing sustainability statement through support of wildlife biodiversity, affording economic development, offering educational opportunities to a broad range of people and providing a healthy, organic food alternative in the Urban Core.

See their website here.

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Transforming a 3000sq ft. roof into an Urban Rooftop Farm. Georgia’s Place is permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless, mentally ill adults.

Seeds to Feed Rooftop farm in Brooklyn, NY

Seeds to Feed Rooftop farm is a community rooftop garden located at 691 Prospect Place, Brooklyn, NY. The Crown Heights CSA teamed up with Georgia’s Place, a supportive housing facility for formerly homeless adults. Through the expansion of our current rooftop farm this spring we aim to teach residents of Georgia’s Place and the Crown Heights community the art of food cultivation – from seed to harvest.

From their website:

The Power of the Farm

Today two of our residents most devoted to tending the farm pursued Yemi and I during the day because they felt the urge to water, (see preceding picture). With all the glorious sunlight, there was a definite need. As we were heading up to the roof, I was stopped by another resident who wanted to complain about something. She accompanied us in the elevator to the roof, moaning about some perceived slight. Once we got to the roof, she followed us out to the farm, continuing to blither.

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535 Richards Street in downtown Vancouver.

Unit to be installed on the roof levels of the EasyPark parking lot at 535 Richards Street in downtown Vancouver

By Terry Brodie
Globe and Mail
December 12, 2011

Excerpt:

Slated to be Valcent’s first ‘VertiCrop’ system in North America

Vancouver-based Valcent Products Inc. has signed a memorandum of understanding to install its first “VertiCrop” high-density vertical growing system in North America on the top level of a parkade in the city’s downtown core.

The vertical farming system allows leafy green vegetables to be grown all year round in urban environments in much smaller spaces, using much smaller amounts of energy and water while generating higher yields.

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Roof garden presently grows watermelon, rockmelon, tomatoes, eggplant, pumpkin, garlic, kale, rocket, herbs, corn, blueberries, peaches, pear, apple, goji, rhubarb and more, as well as a living wall of strawberry bushes.

Health messages include healthy eating, the importance of physical exercise and the dangers of smoking

By Adam Dwyer
Senior Project Officer – Primary Health Services
GP Plus Health Care Centre Marion

Description of the project:

The clients were involved in the planning of the building, through engagement with the landscape architect commissioned to design the roof garden. The building was designed to include the roof garden due to the success of a previous community health engagement/food garden development with these clients. The community engagement is based around healthy lifestyle choices (food, physical activity, stress/mental health, quit smoking/substance abuse), promoting access to free health services, empowerment and social inclusion. Actively growing food brings a lot of these together.

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The success of their mini-garden has inspired the Fresh from the Roof team to turn this flat roof into an urban field. In total their farm will cover 7,000 square meters, the size of a football pitch. By Frisch vom Dach.

“This is a gap in the market and we want to close it.”

By Jess Smee
Spiegel Online
Dec 5, 2011

Excerpt:

It is hardly a logical spot for a farm, but three Berliners have earmarked a massive former factory roof for an unusual urban agriculture venture. The sustainable set-up will produce both vegetables and fish for local residents and could be a model for future city farms as the world continues to urbanize.

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FarmRoof in O’ahu

By Laura Poirier
Green
Nov/Dec 2011

Excerpt:

Since each farm is community based, two important factors need to be met to get started: there has to be a business or organization willing to use their roof to grow food, and their must be a community demand for the weekly crop. FarmRoof’s first CSA in Waimanalo, on top of Sweet Home Waimanalo market and cafe, was so well received that every membership available for that particular location was swept up almost immediately. Using roofs owned by Kamehmeha Schools, their next CSA location, Kaka’ako, sprouted this fall, growing a combination of high-nutrient lettuces, kales mustards and herbs. Memberships for 2012 are still available to become part of this CSA location. From there, FarmRoof has plans to spread into Kailua and Waikiki.

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Illustration by John Roman.

Can Dickson Despommier’s radical vision for urban agriculture take root in the United States

By David J. Craig
Columbia Magazine
Fall 2011

Excerpts:

Planning officials from a dozen American cities, including Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Newark, and Jersey City, have asked Despommier to advise them on how to create vertical farms. But the only major U.S. projects to have moved past the discussion stage are the one in Seattle, which is operated by the young company Civesca, and the farm in Chicago, run by the start-up 312 Aquaponics.

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Wendy Taylor has transformed an empty urban space into a farm that is now attracting bees, birds and butterflies. Photo by Charli Charles Denison.

Sky’s the limit for rooftop farming

By Barbara Cole
Sunday Tribune
November 21, 2011

Excerpt:

Durban, South Africa – Delegates to the massive Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17) in Durban are going to learn all about rooftop farming – and they will not have too far too travel either.

Just across the road from the International Convention Centre, where the global conference is being held, there are cabbages, onions and spinach growing next to the taxi rank in Monty Naicker (Pine) Street.

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Must See video! Mike

“One day all AFHCO buildings will have rooftop gardens producing different vegies and herbs.”

Lebo Mashego
AFHCO
Urban Development Manager
Johannesburg, South Africa

Excerpt from AFCO website:

In 2009 Afhco approached the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) to partner in establishing a pilot Rooftop Vegetable Garden. Through their Community Social Initiative (CSI) programme, the grant was given and Afhco’s Urban Development Manager, Lebo Mashego went to work on the project. A concept design was developed for a sustainable garden constructed solely from recycled materials, in the form of old tyres for planters and wooden pallets for the planters to stand on. A worm garden was also planned, to ensure a constant supply of compost and fertiliser.

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Learn how to farm in Hong Kong on the rooftop of an old factory building

By Hiufu Wong
CNN Go
15 November, 2011

Excerpt:

Project Grow is a city garden located on the rooftop of a building in one of Hong Kong’s underdog neighborhoods — To Kwa Wan.

Before the 1960s, To Kwa Wan was mainly a light-industries area overshadowed by the adjacent neighborhoods of Hung Hom and Kowloon City. Today, the community is mainly made up of elderly and new immigrants living in affordable but fast deteriorating property.

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DYRK Nørrebro – First rooftop garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo by Nathali Lehmann Schumann.

By Nathali Lehmann Schumann
Prepared for AgroTech. This report is the outcome of a 13-week internship, as part of the study ‘Bachelor’s Degree in Global Nutrition and Health’ – Metropolitan University College Copenhagen
August 2011

Excerpts from Abstract:

A literature review, four semi-structured interviews, meetings, and a single field visit were conducted in order to investigate the current situation of the phenomenon urban rooftop agriculture(URA) including benefits and challenges. How URA is and can be implemented in order to promote a sustainable food system were also examined.

Examples from Copenhagen, London, New York and Vancouver are included.

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Vertigo Farming – Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm

World Challenge 2011 is a competition organised by BBC World News Limited (“BBC World News”) and Newsweek, aimed at finding projects or small businesses from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grassroots level

The winning project will receive a US$20,000 grant, while two runners up will each receive US$10,000 to help develop their initiatives.

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