Shawn Cooney swings open the door of a 320-square-foot industrial shipping container to reveal a futuristic setting: hundreds of edible plants growing in vertical columns, fed by the energy from strings of neon red and blue LED lights. Nutrient-infused water cascades from ceiling spigots down through artificial root systems in the growing towers. The temperature...
The corner of Harrison and Halsted streets doesn’t feel very rural, with traffic buzzing by the busy intersection and the Willis Tower looming in the background. But that will soon change. Students Dorrian Neeley and Lashawn Evans, both in the undergraduate Human Development and Learning program in the College of Education, have developed UIC’s first urban garden...
“Amanda Gerber never meant for this to happen. But there she was one day last week, dressed in a straw hat, jeans and fancy, dirt-caked cowboy boots, tromping out of a raised bed where she had been tearing out spent green bean plants. “It’s a little overwhelming,” said Gerber, a mother of two and co-owner of Nottalotta Acres, a patchwork farm of 10 parcels...
“Each Ant Space is an ecosystem. Play with the life inside. The narrow habitat makes the game one of subtle manipulation. Sculpt the scene only from above. Drop in seeds and water, add more ants and colored sand. Intelligently design a complex balance of creatures and plants. The Ant Space will evolve over years as a co-creation between the life within and...
This retrofitted ex-shipping container in a parking lot in Broadway East is hardly your grandfather’s farm. And in his skinny jeans, black sneakers and recycled-materials T-shirt, J.J. Reidy will remind no one of the guy with the pitchfork and overalls in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” Reidy, 29, is the founder and CEO of Urban Pastoral Collective, a two-year-old...
Autumn and Christian are two of the urban gardening volunteers working in northwest Spokane plots for the group Growing Neighbors. They’ve gone to property owners and asked to borrow little bits of private land in their northwest Spokane neighborhood to grow food. The organization is run by John Edmondson, who invited us to see what Growing Neighbors is doing. To...
“Shantae Johnson and Arthur Shavers both grew up in Portland and both grew up gardening. Johnson’s great-grandmother grew berries for the J.M. Smucker company, and her family grew much of its own food. Shavers helped his grandmother in the garden when he was young. After they met they kept a garden wherever they could – in community garden plots or in the...
Dozens of people gathered at an urban garden on Whyte Avenue Sunday to celebrate the grand opening of the Youth Empowerment and Social Services (YESS) Urban Roots garden. The initiative had been in the works for a few years, said associate executive director Margo Long. The project was accelerated when the group got permission to borrow the land from the City of...
The all-natural, organic, non-GMO plant based diet — often the butt of a joke among Midwestern tables spread with comfort foods — has taken magazine covers and chic cafes by storm. Chad and Nieko Summers are hoping to change that negative mentality locally and help return people’s food choices to their roots, all starting with school children. In 2013, the...
“Chanowk Yisrael runs next door to surprise his neighbors with a bowl of cherries he just harvested with the help of 48 other members of the community. The harvest came from the school across the street, with which he has a Memorandum of Understanding agreement for the use of the garden. Yisrael, his wife Judith and her family, and their nine children are not...
Los Angeles is offering landowners financial incentives to turn their urban property into green spaces. Unfortunately, nobody has applied yet. The program is part of the Urban Agriculture Incentive Zone Act (AB 551), which offers tax cuts to landowners who promise to use their property for urban gardens and agriculture for at least five years. San Francisco was the...
“The fourth annual NoCo Urban Homestead Tour on Saturday allowed visitors to learn more about urban farming and gardening by offering an afternoon of self-guided fun through community member’s homes. “This isn’t your grandma’s garden tour,” said volunteer, Connie Myers. “We are going beyond just perennials and flowers; we...
Efrain Estrada grows so many peppers, eggplants, okra and squash that he sends the extras to his relatives in Puerto Rico. Though Mr. Estrada calls himself a farmer, his bounty sprouts from the unlikeliest of settings: a patch of green wedged among the bodegas and public housing projects of the South Bronx. There, in a community garden where Mr. Estrada is one of...
“After years of working with adolescents who had to be coaxed and cajoled into learning, in this new setting I was surrounded by little children who got excited if you offered them a smile and a handshake. They practically ran into class to find out what Mr. Farmer Steve was up to each day. They expected excitement. Equally exciting for me, I got to be the...
Drew Demler is digging in a box of dirt in the middle of Fair Park. He is harvesting potatoes — big, small, misshapen, one that even looks like a snowman — in a hotter-than-deep-fried parking lot just outside the Cotton Bowl. “I think potatoes and onions are two of the most important crops that we grow,” Demler, farm manager at Big Tex Urban Farms, says as...
GREEN BAY – To Kim Fruin, it was the heavy-handed city trying to shut down her garden. To the city of Green Bay, it was a mostly a miscommunication between Fruin and its inspectors, maybe fueled by overzealousness on the part of some of Fruin’s friends. In any case, what Fruin sowed this planting season, the city hopes to harvest as a whole new set of guidelines...
An innovative inter-departmental collaboration, Urban AgricultureStat, launched in June with a motion passed by Cincinnati City Council. The goal is to expand Cincinnati’s urban agriculture footprint and invest in ways to develop blighted properties for the purpose of urban farming. “Many cities, including Cincinnati, have highly successful urban agriculture...
“These large-scale greenhouses are advanced and expensive, but more and more consumers and businesses are supporting them,” said Nicole Baum, spokeswoman for Gotham Greens, a rooftop farm operator in Brooklyn. The city changed its zoning laws in 2012 to allow rooftop greenhouses certain exemptions from limits on height and floor size on commercial and industrial...
“People garden with different objectives in mind. Some are seeking a serene oasis, a time they can spend alone in nature, even if it is just a tiny plot on their urban lot. Many do not know of the serenity gardening brings until they have one. Some simply want an ornamental garden, pretty landscaping to admire. Some people just want tomatoes and basil for spaghetti...
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