Category — United States

Harris & Ewing Collection (Library of Congress) between 1910 and 1920
See larger image here.

Sheridan School War Gardens. Trespassers, Destroyers and Thieves. Beware $100. fine. One year imprisonment. Dogs are subject to the law. Keep them off.

By Dave M. Matthews
CNN June 29, 2009

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — On a plot of soil, nestled against the backdrop of skyscrapers in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, a group of residents are turning a lack of access to fresh produce into a revival of old traditions and self-empowerment.

HABESHA Gardens is one of many urban gardens sprouting up around the country. Fruits and vegetables are thriving in this community garden located in an economically depressed area of the city known as Mechanicsville.

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Casa Frela Gallery presents The Fruitful Wound, photographs by Dennis Santella. The exhibition runs from July 18th through August 22nd, 2009 in Manhattan, New York.

The Fruitful Wound

For a full year, Dennis Santella has been searching out and photographing gardens and green places across Harlem using a special panoramic camera manufactured by Siciliano Camera Works of Brooklyn. His large richly detailed gelatin silver prints draw on the improvised beauty of Harlem’s open spaces — from cultivated areas such as community gardens, to empty lots, and neglected border areas where plants struggle to survive.

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A film by Mark Lewis (2000)

“Through interviews and reenactments, The Natural History of the Chicken investigates the role of the chicken in American life and tells several remarkable stories. A Maine farmer says she found a chicken frozen stiff, but was able to resuscitate it. Colorado natives tell a story of the chicken who lost its head– and went on living.

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Phase 1 plans utilize more than 70 acres of underutilized vacant lands and abandoned properties on Detroit’s lower east side.

World’s Largest Urban Farm Planned for the City of Detroit

Preliminary Plans Call For The Development Of Underutilized Land To Produce Fresh, Local, Natural, Safe Fruits, Vegetables And Trees

Press Release:
 
Detroit, Mich., Mar. 23, 2009 – Preliminary plans for a newly developed urban farm within the City of Detroit will utilize vacant land and abandoned property to create Hantz Farms, the world’s largest urban farm, announced John Hantz, CEO of Hantz Farms, LLC.

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Maya Donelson tends the rooftop garden of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. Photo by Peter DaSilva for The New York Times.

By Marian Burros
New York Times. June 16, 2009

This summer, Tony Tomelden hopes to be making bloody marys at the Pug in Washington, D.C., with tomatoes and chilies grown above the bar, thanks to the city’s incentives for green roofs.

Mr. Tomelden, the Pug’s principal owner, says he’s planting a garden to take advantage of tax subsidies the city offers in his neighborhood if he covers his roof with plants.

“If I can do something in my corner for the environment, that seemed a reasonable thing to do,” he said. “Plus I can save money on the tomatoes.”

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Click here for large high-res image.

“What if one block in Texas became the sustainable model for the world?

XERO Project, a proposal for an “X” of greenways and zero-energy building design in downtown Dallas, earned one of three first-place prizes in the Re:Vision Dallas design competition on May 28, 2009.

Urban Agriculture

As a complement to neighboring arts and historic areas, the XERO District is focused on urban agriculture and food. Public orchards, community gardens, private planter boxes, food stalls, and locally supplied restaurants contribute to the district character and buzz.

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“Dead Victory Garden”. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Lithograph by Kenneth Hartwell

George Kenneth Hartwell (1891-1949) was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He was a painter, illustrator and printmaker. He studied at the Art Studies League of New York under George Bellows, Edward Hooper and others. Hartwell was an American Realist who rose to prominence during the Depression.

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Poster advertising Urban Farms & Gardens Tour

By Janet Brown-Moss (excerpt from Urban Grown newsletter)

Food from the City for the City officially kicks off June 18, 2009, with a gathering of Kansas City’s leading practitioners and visionaries to talk about the area’s urban food production and how it is changing city neighborhoods and family diets. Join us at the Downtown KCMO Public Library at 6PM for an inspiring conversation preceded by a reception featuring local food and wine.

A couple days later, head over to the Ruiz Branch Library, KCMO, and learn about “Farm Animals in the City”, a topic that got quite some press recently here in Kansas City. Then check out the just-released documentary Mad City Chickens to be screened on June 23 at All Souls Unitarian Universalists Church. It is a sometimes wacky, sometimes serious look at the people who keep chickens in their urban backyards.

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1943 National Dairy Products Corporation and affiliated companies

“The Earth and I are friends now”

Last year I never thought of the earth except as something to walk on. But in the spring I turned up the sod and planted seed. Summer - grubbing for weeds and watching things grow - I got friendly with the land.

Well, it’s autumn now. The crop wasn’t big - but fair enough. And something good has happened to our family! We’ve weeded and watered and hoped together. And said our table blessing over our own harvest.

It seems to me that my family has come back to some important things. Come back to one another - and to our good soil. Come back to being neighbors with the family whose garden row begins where ours leaves off.

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GreenMarket sustainable food production facility, United Arab Emerates

GreenMarket, UAE

The GreenMarket utilizes BrightFarm Systems pioneering rooftop and facade mounted, sustainable greenhouse designs, to integrate hydroponic food production into civic buildings. The layers of vegetation encased in the walls of the building provide shade for the building interior.

The interior of the building structure is designed to serve as marketplaces, recreation centers, meeting halls, or any function that can benefit from enclosed, naturally lit, shaded, conditioned or semi-conditioned space. In the Abu Dhabi climate, these spaces will be extremely appealing in the summer, but should also be very comfortable at all times of year.

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Renderings by James Halverson of Vancouver based Lux Visual Effects Inc.

The Waterpod

From Time Out New York article
June 4, 2009

“Built atop a refabricated 99′ x 31′ construction barge, the Waterpod is about as DIY as it gets: Living units have been constructed from found or donated materials. Most of the food will be produced onboard; the garden will grow beets, potatoes, corn, raspberry bushes and a variety of greens, and eggs will be available from the six birds in the chicken coop, which also provide fertilizer. All water is acquired through a rainwater-catch system, and bathroom facilities include a dry-compost toilet and a solar-heated shower.

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Richard Lewis, Actor/Comedian, giving a speech at the Urban Farming Food Chain launch.

The Urban Farming Food Chain

“Urban Farming has established the Urban Farming Food Chain™, a vertical farming project. The Food Chain consists of “edible” food-producing wall panels mounted on walls of buildings, growing fresh organic produce. The wall systems of the Food Chain concept are as “links” connecting to each location by intention and design, as well as presenting a new definition for the familiar term, ‘food chain’. Los Angeles is the pilot city for the Urban Farming Food Chain, a project we will replicate in other cities.

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Slightly larger image here.
Advertisement from the Victory Garden era.

Harvest Time, 1943
America makes the best of everything!

Americans are making the best use of their week-ends and vacations by helping bring in the crops. And many are making the best use of Schenley Royal Reserve by saving it for special occasions. All the Schenley distilleries are producing vital alcohol for war purposes only.

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Prepared by Megan Horst
University of Washington, College of Architecture and Urban Planning
July 1, 2008. 74 pages

Introduction

Planners and policy-makers in the United States and around the world are increasingly recognizing the importance of food systems planning. Effective food systems planning at the local and regional levels offers tools to address some of the major challenges faced by modern cities, including high rates of joblessness, poverty, and hunger along with growing environmental problems related to fossil fuel dependency and resource consumption. Urban agriculture, mainly in the form of community gardens, is one of the many food systems planning strategies that different cities have been using to address these kinds of problems.

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For the Greener Good: Vertical Farming from National Building Museum on Vimeo.

Presenter(s): Dickson Despommier, Robin Elmslie Osler, Carolyn Steel, and J. William Thompson
Date Recorded: April 29, 2009
Duration: 01:29:59
Sponsored by: The Home Depot Foundation

Learn about the future of urban food production with Robin Osler, Elmslie Osler Architects; Dickson Despommier, Professor of Public Health, Columbia University; Carolyn Steel, Author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives; and J. William Thompson, FASLA , editor, Landscape Architecture magazine.

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Help Goodness Grow

“At Campbell, we believe quality ingredients are grown from the ground up – and make truly delicious soup. That’s why, for over 70 years we’ve painstakingly cultivated seeds for tomatoes that go into our delicious soup.

“Now you can get seeds we use for growing tomatoes. Your request will help Campbell donate seeds to plants gardens in communities and schools across America. This is all part of our commitment to the National FFA Organization, which is dedicated to developing our future leaders through agricultural education.

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Photo: “Wild Girl” Becky Lerner
Both the white and blue flowers in the photo above are camas. The white one will kill you, but the blue one is food. The native people of the Portland area considered blue camas root a staple. It took three days of cooking in underground fire pits to make it edible. The bulb is said to taste like a sugary, sweet potato.

From May 24 through May 30, local “Wild Girl” Becky Lerner will be eating an entirely wild diet as she forages from sidewalks, parks, wilderness areas and yards in Portland. There will be no dumpster diving or mooching off gardens - Lerner will be surviving on wild edibles only.

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Dragonfly, A Metabolic Farm For Urban Agriculture
New York City 2009
By Vincent Callebaut Architectures

Excerpts from Vincent Callebaut Architectures:

Architecture has to serve a new agriculture and to design for the new social desire for ecologic mutation and food autonomy! The Dragonfly project suggests building a prototype of an urban farm offering a mixed programme of housing, offices and laboratories using ecological engineering, and farming spaces, which are vertically laid out in several floors and partly cultivated by its own inhabitants. This vertical farm utilizes sustainable applications of organic agriculture based on the intensive production varied according to the rhythm of the seasons. This nourishing agriculture is in favour of the reuse of biodegradable waste and the keeping energy and renewable resources for planning of an ecosystemic densification.

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My Handkerchief Garden, 1889
By Barnard, Charles, 1838-1920
New York, Garden Publishing
62 pages

Excerpts below:

At last it was found ; a six-room house with a mere handkerchief of a garden, measuring about one-thirtieth of an acre, or about as big as a city back yard. The soil was a wet, heavy clay, full of stones, and shaded by a number of tall trees growing on the next lot. In March, 1887, we moved to the place, and on the twenty-first we paid twenty-five cents for one ounce of Tennis Ball Lettuce seed. So it was the scrap of a garden began, and thereon does hang the more or less learned remarks that make this book.

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