Category — Roof Garden

Roberta’s already grows about 20 percent of its needs, in a good week, in a small roof garden in back of the restaurant and in a backyard garden several blocks away.

Michelle Knapik
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Blog
March 10, 2010

Excerpt:

Once inside the unassuming entrance of Roberta’s, if you can cast your gaze past the wood fired stove and pizza gurus, let your olfactory senses take in something beyond the sweet aroma of ricotta pancakes sopping up maple syrup, and put down your mason jar of local beer, you will see, hear and experience the backyard urban oasis – a farming oasis that is. But don’t look out, look up. There is where you will find the first of the rooftop greenhouses.

The hoop greenhouse is built on top of a shipping container that is fitted out as a radio station. The semi vacant lot next door is also being transformed into greenhouse space that will tie into a fledgling compost operation. Look closely as the construction of this greenhouse and you will find yourself peering into salvaged factory windows.

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By designboom

Bacsac was born when french designer Godefroy de Virieu met landscapers Louis de Fleurieu and Virgile Desurmont. Together they searched for an alternative solution to avoid the constraints of creating a roof garden in town (taking into consideration difficulties of transport, excessive weight, etc).

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Hear From Our Founder from AeroFarms on Vimeo.

Meet Ed Harwood, Founder & CEO of Aero Farm Systems

Aerofarms – The future of urban agriculture

From their website:

AeroFarms provides aeroponic technology and comprehensive business expertise to those pioneering the future of urban agriculture. The world’s current food system is unsustainable economically, environmentally and socially. Today’s rural and centralized food production uses a vast amount of resources—land, water, transportation fuel— which will become increasingly scarce and expensive as world populations grow and continue to urbanize. At the same time these resources diminish, demand for food will increase, requiring current food production levels to double by 2050 to support the world’s population. We need a better way.

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Larger image here.

Farmscape woven into the Urban Fabric

By Trevor Boyle and Justin Fong
Email: boyletrevor@yahoo.com

“The site was directly across from a park that during WWII was used for victory gardens, and so that idea was brought into it as well. The elevated ‘walkway’ is used as a growing surface, translating the urban stacked density into a farming notion, instead of the sprawling countryside that’s usually seen.

“Southern facing walls on the buildings are also plant walls on the exterior, with a modular steel frame. The actual fruit/vegetable growing floor space is only around 30% of the total for the building; it’s more about introducing the idea back into mainstream daily life. The square footage is enough to be able to feed 200 people throughout a year, so it’s more about growing for the community around the site than being able to mass produce and feed the whole city, though that would be possible with another iteration.

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Photo by John Lehmann

Vancouver farmer’s rooftop and backyard gardens are being heralded as the next generation of agriculture in the city

Frances Bula
Globe and Mail
Jan. 03, 2010

Take one Saskatchewan farm boy and move him to the big city. Add a Vancouver condo building’s unused rooftop garden and several vacant backyards.

The result is urban farmer Ward Teulon, also known as CityFarmBoy on his website, a 45-year-old former agrologist who has put his farming skills to work in the middle of some of Vancouver’s densest neighbourhoods.

He produces $30,000 worth of vegetables, herbs and fruit a year on 8,000 square feet of land in garden plots around the city.

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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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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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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 Urban Terrace

By Ellen Depoorter
For The Buckminster Fuller Challenge

Population growth is leading to an ever accelerating urbanization. Densely built cities are very effective in providing housing, transport, work and culture since they are shared by a large population. Concentrating population in cities leaves land open for nature: O2 creating and CO2 absorbing plants.

While providing numerous benefits, cities don’t provide food or energy for their population. Energy is mostly carbon based and needs to be transported into the city. Food production as well is based on carbon: chemical fertilizers, pesticides, farm machinery, modern food processing, packaging and transportation. Processed food is also rich in fat and sugar and has less useful nutrients like vitamins and minerals, contributing to an obesity epidemic.

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2007 – Winner of the 2nd International Competition for Sustainable Housing by Knafo Klimor Architects and Town Planners, Israel

Excerpts from Living Steels’ competition design website.

Agro-housing, the winning design for construction in China, blends urban and rural living by creating vertical greenhouse space within high-rise apartments. Designed by Knafo Klimor Architects, the Agro-housing concept allows tenants to produce their own food, reducing commuting needs and providing a green neighbourhood.

Knafo Klimor Architects developed this concept with concern for predictions that 50% of China’s one billion people will live in its cities, a trend mirrored in many developing countries in the world. The architects observe that massive urbanisation displaces communities, dissipating existing traditions and heritage, as well as placing a strain on energy resources and infrastructure.

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By Mr. Brown Thumb of Chicago Garden
See more great urban agriculture stories by Mr. Brown Thumb by following the ‘reading more’ link.

Excerpt:

The last place you expect to see a vegetable garden is behind tall fences topped off with razor wire, but at the Cook County Jail there is a 13 thousand square-foot vegetable garden grown by inmates. This vegetable garden is a joint effort by The Cook County Sheriff’s Department of Community Supervision and Intervention and The University of Illinois Extension. The inmates who work the garden are non-violent offenders serving time under county sentencing guidelines for cases involving drugs or a DUI.

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Larger image here.

The artist, Diz Jeppe, comments on what inspired her to create this work.

This is – obviously – a Soviet influenced poster. Stylistically, it was inspired by a Soviet Art and Architecture history course, but the artwork is from an original drawing of mine. As far as I can tell, rooftop gardens didn’t exist in early Soviet years, but had they been there they might have helped supplement the needs of the urban population during crippling food shortages.

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BRITISH COLUMBIA
Marketwire
November 13, 2009

“Real estate – the one thing we’re not making any more of,” reports Time Magazine. “That might be good news for landlords but not for the world’s farmers, who have finite cropland to feed a growing global population. The answer: build up by farming vertically. Valcent is pioneering a hydroponic-farming system that grows plants in rotating rows, one on top of another. The rotation gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients they need, while the vertical stacking enables the use of far less water than conventional farming. But best of all, by growing upward instead of outward, vertical farming can expand food supplies without using more land.”

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GOING VERTICAL. Brad Zizmor, left, had edible walls installed on the deck of his Manhattan apartment with the help of Kari Elwell Katzander, a landscape designer, and two workers. Photo by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times. See more photos here.

The Rooftop Garden Climbs Down a Wall

By KEN BELSON
New York Times
November 18, 2009

IN most ways, the Barthelmes Manufacturing Company is a typical sheet metal fabricator. Five days a week, machines here stamp out thousands of computer cases, electrical patch panels and other items for companies like United Technologies.

Yet a growing part of the company’s business is being devoted to something decidedly unindustrial: edible walls — metal panels filled with soil and seeds and hung vertically.

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Larger image here.

No information about this garden. Perhaps a children’s hospital. (Mike)

Eco Pod: Pre Cycled Modular Bioreactor For Downtown Crossing

Taking advantage of the stalled Filene’s construction site at Downtown Crossing, Eco Pod is a proposal to immediately stimulate the economy, and the ecology, of downtown Boston. Eco Pod (Gen1) is a temporary vertical algae bio reactor and new public Commons, built with custom prefabricated modules. The pods will serve as bio fuel sources and as micro incubators for flexible research and development programs. As an open and reconfigurable structure, the voids between pods form a network of vertical public parks/botanical gardens housing unique plant species a new Uncommon for the Commons.

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Photo by Willi Galloway on the roof of the new Bastille Restaurant in Seattle.

by Willi Galloway
DigginFood
“West Coast Editor of Organic Gardening magazine and the Garden Expert on eHow.com.”

This is a must-see new rooftop food garden. See the excellent story on Willi Galloway’s website. (Mike)

“A couple of weeks ago I found myself standing on the roof of Bastille—an exquisite new restaurant in Seattle’s historic Ballard neighborhood. A blue sky was overhead, a sea of salad greens were at my feet, and the smell of freshly fried frites was in the air.

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Photo of fire escape gardener. “When I was planning my fire escape garden I planted cherry tomatoes thinking the plant would be small and perfect for the small space — not so much.”

by Mike Lieberman (Canarsiebk)

My goal of having this site is to inspire you to start gardening and growing your own food. If I’m doing it, why can’t you?

Don’t have the space? Check out my fire escape garden. Not much room there, but I’m getting it done.

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From Brooklyn Supper blog. Photo by Elizabeth Stark ©2008-2009. All rights reserved. See larger image here at Brooklyn Supper.

This is a roof of a warehouse in Greenpoint, which is now covered with 200,000 pounds of soil, 1,000 earthworms, and an abundance of vegetables, herbs, and flowers.

By Wendy Goodman
New York Magazine
June 21, 2009

“There are 1,000 worms in here,” Annie Novak says, cracking the lid on a box filled with scraps of newspaper and small squirmy things. The earthworms are about to be relocated to the soil spread across this warehouse roof 50 feet above the Greenpoint sidewalk, where, Novak hopes, they’ll get to work aerating the soil. Urban gardens are nothing new, but the scale, location, and imagination of Rooftop Farms—the name of this project—is stunning.

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By Dickson D. Despommier
Op-Ed Contributor
New York Times
August 23, 2009

If climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist. This means that the majority of people could soon be without enough food or water. But there is a solution that is surprisingly within reach: Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming.

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