Green walls, rooftop gardens, and urban farms are aiming to bring nature back into central Paris as the city looks to improve its air quality and create a more sustainable future. In the last few decades, manmade surfaces have taken over green space, leading to urban heat islands and more pollution in the air. It’s left Paris, like many other big cities, with...
By the time Will Nash got to the Hart Community Homes (HCH) in Fullerton, California, he’d temporarily lived—and lost placement—in 19 foster and four group homes. Dealing with intense feelings of abandonment and anger in ways that caused those into whose care he’d been placed to label him “troublesome,” he was bounced from house to house. “You’re...
In Louisville’s Hazelwood neighborhood, where a third of the residents live in poverty, an urban farm has grown from the site of a former low-income housing complex. It took two years for community members to remove truckloads of concrete from the 14 acres where the farm now resides. But come spring, the farm will produce crops that the nonprofit Food Literacy...
Last November, I stood on the stage of the Meeting of the Minds Summit in Sacramento, sandwiched between a panel led by energetic Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and his vision for economic prosperity, and a talk on the future of autonomous delivery vehicles. My talk? To encourage city planners, developers and urban architects to bring agriculture back to cities and...
Help Ian WIN a $10,000 grant for Katie’s Krops! (SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST) “The Giving Garden was created when Ian learned there were children at his school going to bed hungry. Wanting to make a difference for his classmates, Ian decided to take action. He raised funds and solicited volunteers to construct a raised bed garden and small fruit...
The City of Raleigh supports urban agriculture rhetorically in its Strategic Plan. The city has made ad hoc interventions, like providing resources for rain harvesting at Raleigh City Farm and the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle farm. Yet this leaves Raleigh behind other cities, like Atlanta, that implement systematic programs supporting the wide array of urban agriculture....
What was once a gloomy parking lot is now a green oasis in the middle of the German capital, Berlin. The “Prinzessinnengarten” (princesses’ garden) has become one of the best-known urban gardening projects in Europe. Neighborhood city gardening is on trend and in the last few years, pretty plots have been sprouting like mushrooms from the earth. WATCH...
Not long into our conversation at his lab based in Lemoyne, I decide that William Padilla-Brown, of Elizabethtown, is one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. At 24, Padilla-Brown is the founder of his own mushroom cultivation company, MycoSymbiotics. He’s traveled the world, attending schools here in central Pennsylvania, in Taipei, London and elsewhere....
Growing Lots is a working farm tucked into an increasingly dense urban landscape. It used to occupy three sites in South Minneapolis where co-owners by Taya Schulte and Seamus Fitzgerald grew vegetables, operated a community-supported agriculture program, or CSA, and sold produce to local chefs. In 2018 those three sites were reduced to two. Growing Lots lost access...
Most people living in apartments are deprived of the luxury of owning a terrace or garden farm, where they can grow vegetables. Yet, many living in big cities dream of spending their time on a farm after retirement and eat the produce of their own farm. Now, to live that dream you won’t have to leave behind your city life nor live at a farm. Bangalore-based Farmizen...
The garden is one of the keys to solving the two greatest problems facing humankind, namely rapid species extinction and the effects of our changing climate. Gardens, plants, and the ecosystems in which they thrive will act as carbon sinks and filter the air that we breathe. It has never been more important that we realize this and that we protect our garden spaces,...
A recent gathering of scientists on the upper west side of Manhattan enthused about a crucial element in the formation of the surrounding city. The substance talked about in revered tones? Soil. In a fairer world, soil would be receiving reverence from people well beyond the fourth annual NYC Urban Soils Symposium, given that the slender outer layer of the planet...
Americans are gardening in record numbers but what are they most interested in this year? Here are highlights of the seven top 2019 trends in gardening: • The Slow Garden Movement: The same trends that millennials are driving across consumer brands — transparency, sustainability, hand-crafted, experiential, and authenticity — are showing up in gardens and garden...
Incarcerated a total of eight times over 15 years, Darren Chapman sat in a maximum-security prison cell at age 25 and thought of happier times. “I remember[ed] watching my grandfather trade collard greens and carrots with others and interacting with his community,” he says. “My dream as a little boy was to do the same; I wanted to work with others in the same...
If you’ve recently walked down Lawrence Street in RiNo, you have probably have been stopped in your tracks by the sight of a rooftop garden. At the very least, you’ve probably wondered what was going on above Uchi. This beautiful greenhouse space is home to Altius Farms. As one of the largest vertical aeroponic rooftop gardens in the country, Altius currently...
Members of religious orders have always had a need to garden, inspired no doubt by one of the Christian faith’s noted cultivators, Saint Fiacre, a green-fingered holy man who became the patron saint of gardeners. When monks, friars and nuns established their enclaves, they turned to gardens of herbs, wildflowers and vegetables to feed and heal themselves. Other...
Urban soils are particularly prone to contamination. 50 years ago, your yard could have belonged to a farmer, who, perhaps not knowing any better, disposed of old bottles of anti-freeze or contaminated diesel in a hole out behind the tractor garage. Or perhaps the remains of a fallen down outbuilding, long ago coated in lead-based paint, was buried on your property...
More than 400 Long Beach-area volunteers are expected to give back to the community to mark the national MLK Day of Service in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Monday, Jan. 21. The civil rights leader who fought against racism is honored with a federal holiday every January, around the time of his birthday. Some people get the day off from work, but others take...
Part incubator, part greenhouse and part time machine, a cold frame is anything but cold. It’s an empty, bottomless box that protects plants from winter weather. With its hinged lid of glass or rigid plastic, a cold frame captures solar energy and converts it to radiant heat, creating a warm microclimate where plants thrive. Like the windshield of your car on a...
Activist Duron Chavis realized early on he needed to get his hands dirty, and that his work begins in the soil. The 38-year-old is a proponent of urban gardening, an effort he says can address the disconnect African-Americans feel toward growing and accessing food, along with promoting self-sustainability. It’s not just about eating healthy; it’s about being...
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