(In the photo: 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.)
Edible walls — metal panels filled with soil and seeds and hung vertically.
They may sound like a piece of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. In fact, they are the latest development in green roof technology. Like green roofs, edible walls include a thick layer of vegetation on the outside of buildings to provide insulation and reduce heating and electricity costs.
But unlike green roofs — and their vertical cousins, green walls — edible walls also produce fruit, vegetables and herbs in far less space than typical gardens. That’s why advocates of urban farming have embraced them as a way to lower food costs, increase nutritional quality and cut fuel consumption and carbon emissions by using fewer delivery trucks.
Read more and go to Garden Media Group for more gardening trends.
2 comments:
Farming / edible plants require a constant high nutrient and water supply. Both essential elements are not naturally available on walls and have to relay on an external supply with a very high carbon foot print. So it is hard to picture that these supplies can be provided on walls less carbon neutral and with less pollution (i.e. run-off) for the environment on building walls than on biological farming fields.
I am also wondering about the filter function of plants; if we want plants filtering pollutions they accumulate these pollution in all plant parts – this is common knowledge. It IS environmental friendly producing the highest food quality to affordable prices for everybody in the population (the poor also have the right for it) however our society is still far a way from that.
There is no doubt that green walls in cities playing an important role for a healthy environment. Green walls in Europe are much more effective and cost less than 20 cents per square foot wall. The annual maintenance is even below 5 cents per square foot. This is common knowledge in Europe but not exciting enough for headlines because nobody wants to eat them.
JBi
Thank you for this post, we are a online dating website blog network, which college students read our blog, so thanks and well post this article on our blog. Jennifer @ University of Syracuse
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