“City Harvest is a business which uses urban space in Victoria, BC — yards or vacant land — to produce hand-tended, sustainably produced vegetables to market.”

“City Harvest is also responsible for a pending bylaw amendment in its home municipality of Oak Bay where agriculture – defined as the production and subsequent sale of produce – has been illegal. The municipality’s council has ratified the amendment which now welcomes urban agriculture, and the bylaw will be changed upon a public hearing on the issue in the near future.”

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“There is definitely a buzz and an interest,” observes City Farmer’s Michael Levenston. “We are busy seven days a week; our classes are full, our phone is ringing. There is certainly a great interest generated in city farming and urban agriculture.”

“Someone here said, ‘This is trendy,’ and trendy can be a good thing,” adds Levenston. “There may be a new generation of food gardeners, and I think that’s very exciting.”

Salt Spring Seeds owner Dan Jason is equally stoked to be riding the home-grown wave. Jason has completely sold out his stock of “Zero Mile Diet” seed kits — a collection of bean, grain, and other seeds tailored to help this region’s people grow most of their own food. “Enormous changes are afoot,” he says.

Read the article in The Tyee here.

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“I don’t allow my cups and saucers in the front garden.”
Video clip from the British TV Show The Good Life.

The real Good Life: An entire village turns against supermarkets and grows its own food
By LUKE SALKELD
The Daily Mail 14th April 2008

“The Hampshire village is now home to hundreds of real life versions of the characters played by Felicity Kendall and Richard Briers, who lived off the land in the 1970s BBC comedy. They work on a rota system and raise their own chickens and pigs and grow potatoes, garlic, onions, chillis and green vegetables on eight acres of rented land.

Of the 164 families who live in Martin, 101 have signed up as members of Future Farms for an annual £2 fee, although the produce can be sold to anyone who wants to buy it. The “community allotment” sells 45 types of vegetables and 100 chickens a week, and is run by a committee which includes a radiologist, a computer programmer and a former probation officer.”

(more…)

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See the rest of these photos in New York Times slideshow here.

By TRACIE McMILLAN
New York Times May 7, 2008

“For years, New Yorkers have grown basil, tomatoes and greens in window boxes, backyard plots and community gardens. But more and more New Yorkers like the Wilkses are raising fruits and vegetables, and not just to feed their families but to sell to people on their block.

“The Wilkses now cultivate plots at four sites in East New York, paying as little as $2 a bed (usually 4 feet by 8 feet) in addition to modest membership fees. Last year the couple sold $3,116 in produce at a market run by the community group East New York Farms, more than any of their neighbors.

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By Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins (Assistant Professor)
In Urban Ecosystems Volume 6, Numbers 1-2 / March, 2002

Abstract: “The division between rural and urban sectors of the landscape in many parts of the world is increasingly blurred. House-lot or homegardens offer a perspective on understanding rural-urban linkages since they are frequently a landscape feature in both settings and the exchanges of their products link the two. House-lot gardens are an under-researched component of the agricultural repertoires of smallholders in many parts of the world. Urban house-lot gardens in particular, have until recently not received much attention despite their critical importance to urban livelihoods.

(more…)

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Preet is our Punjabi host.

Hong speaks Mandarin

And Patrick, Cantonese, in these scripted videos.

Many Vancouver residents want to compost but cannot speak English, so we’ve made three instructional videos, which are available on the Web.

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Alethea Marie Harper, May 2007
Award-Winning Master’s Thesis, 160 pages
Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
University of California, Berkeley

“West Oakland is a community with limited access to healthy food. My work for People’s Grocery, a local nonprofit, will help the neighborhood and the nearby agricultural community work together to repair the local food system. Local production, self-sufficiency, and restoration of knowledge and local bonds are emphasized throughout. This project exemplifies how analysis and planning can combine pragmatism with idealism, creating a realizable vision for a thriving neighborhood and a robust local food system.

(more…)

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DESIGN BRIEF
Presented by: Southlands Community Planning Team
Delta BC, Canada. April 2008. 40 pages
A charrette will be led by Andrés Duany, a founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism and one of the premiere planners worldwide.

Agricultural Urbanism (AU) is an approach to integrating growth and development with preserving agricultural resources and enhancing elements of the food system. The cornerstone of AU is creating an urban environment that activates and sustains urban agriculture with important elements such as educational programs, small-scale processing opportunities and a farmers’ market or other local sales conduits. AU offers an alternative to the practice of separating places where people live and where agricultural activities occur. Central to the concept of AU is the idea of integration not separation, transitions not buffers.

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Peace and urban agriculture - from the City Farmer nomination letter:

· They cultivate calmness and tranquility at their location and within their programming – as much as they cultivate vegetables, herbs and fruits.

· They train people in how to do urban agriculture, with the idea of promoting economic and environmental sustainability – important aspects of peace-building.

· They educate about food security – a potential source of tension internationally.

· In addition to supporting urban agriculture, they advocate for the importance of a sound rural agricultural base, which is vital to good development.

· Inclusiveness is an important part of their philosophy – they are committed to working with a diverse group of people, whether economically, ethnoculturally, socially or in terms of physical or mental challenges.

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Video in Hebrew shows the community garden’s beginnings in 2005.

Bustan Brody today by Michael Green in
Green Prophet - Forecasts on Israel’s Environment April 17, 2008

“The centre-piece for the Bustan, which translates to ‘orchard’ in both Hebrew and Arabic, are its many fruit trees, which Zavidov says are the ‘backbone’ of the garden’s ecosystem. Priority is given to native species including pomegranate, fig, almond and arava (willow) which, along with the sights and smells of the vegetable patch and herb bushes, owe much of their fertility to the steaming heaps of compost in the far corner, which turn kitchen waste and garden clippings into soil (with the help of bacteria, heat and a few worms).

Link to “How Does Your (Community) Garden Grow?”

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