Urban Agriculture in LA Backyards

Do you live in an urban area but crave the freshness of homegrown?

Well now, if you're an LA resident, Farmscape is here to help.  This new urban agriculture company is proving that there's enough of an appetite for residential farming to turn the proposition into a high-growth business. 

Home Grown tastes better!  (Photo via GOOD)

According to GOOD, "Projects range from a rooftop garden on a downtown Los Angeles highrise to small plots for families. An exciting project in the works is a three-quarter acre-sized farm for a restaurant in the West San Fernando Valley. And the diversity of the projects is echoed by the diversity of their clients. "When we first started, we expected that our clients would be of a higher income level and would be two-parent working families," says Rachel Bailin, Farmscape's marketing manager. Instead, Farmscape has been delighted to build gardens for preschool teachers, single mothers, and institutions and businesses that want employee gardens as perks."

An Urban Garden (photo via Farmscape)

So far they've installed more than 300 urban farms throughout the L.A. area and maintain 150 of them weekly.

Bailin says the challenges of farming in Los Angeles are manifold. "You have to account for  spaces that haven't had life or biodiversity for decades and then you kind of have to bring it back." The company uses raised beds to avoid contaminated soil and drip irrigation systems to provide water.

Read more at Good Magazine or on Farmscape's website.   

-Katie @KatieGMG
Garden Media

Urban Gardens: A "right" for everyone?

There is no doubt that urban gardens are growing on us. But should it be a "right" accorded to everyone who wants and NEEDS to grow fresh food? Free community gardens?

Perhaps the desire is simply seeking the sheer pleasure of digging in rich earth and connecting with friends, neighbors and building bridges within communities. Or finding peace and contentment.

From Oakland to Brooklyn, communities are growing gardens in plots of empty land, transforming food deserts into colorful green spaces. Young and old work side-by-side, digging in the earth, planting, learning, experimenting, and sharing the joy of gardening.

For many children who live in blighted urban areas, and don't have access to fresh produce on a daily basis, growing gardens and tasting fresh picked lettuce and tomatoes they planted can be a life-changing experience.

"People are realizing that greenspace and the environmental services that plants provide can be just as important to the overall health of a metropolis as its infrastructure. The interest and demand for public growing space is growing across the country. Advocates say that community gardens provide new opportunities for residents to learn and connect with each other and the city around them, while agencies and city planners see them as a way to beat back the entropy that has come to define declining cities, bringing a welcome respite from the concrete jungle."- text, Enrique Gili, MNN 

And so I posit again: Is access to public growing space a "right"? A natural solution to providing fresh, wholesome produce that's accessible and affordable for EVERYONE?  A green oasis of beauty and sustainablity that nourishes the belly as it soothes the soul?  

Share your thoughts- love to hear from you.

Check out these 12 urban gardens; they're inspiring odes to ingenuity and creativity: Mother Nature Network (MNN)

Lynne, Garden Media Group
photo: West End Community Gardens, West Chester, PA

Urban farming meets Cyber-Gardening

Image via EcoLogicStudio

A decaying fishing industry in the Baltic sea and two digitally obsessed architects from EcoLogicStudio have created an interactive exhibit, "The Hanging Algae Garden," aimed at educating people about the benefits of algae.

GOOD describes how this interactive exhibit works: 

Image via EcoLogicStudio

"Each bag connects to a blow-tube, where visitors can exhale to feed the system carbon dioxide and help the plants grow. Using smartphones, participants in this strange experiment scan QR codes on each bag to discover information about the nine different types of algae, and can tweet about their actions. The digital engagement is mapped out on a nearby screen in real-time, a 3D visualization referred to by the project's creators as a "cyber-garden" that demonstrates the evolution of the ecosystem and the relationship between plants and humans." 

Claudia Pasquero, who helped create the exhibit says "the project makes you think about farming and gardening, but there is another level where knowledge can be disseminated and exchanged, and it's a virtual cultivation of knowledge."  

Read more about how the physical and virtual worlds collide here. And let's discuss, do you think this is a good teaching tool for how we can help effect the growth of plants?
@KatieGMG Garden Media Group