Help Fund an Urban Garden, Get Some Free Undies

Ok, you don't usually hear gardening and underwear in the same sentence, except for maybe that time your friend said 'you wouldn't believe what happened last night'... anyway, PACT, a company that helps fund social projects by selling organic cotton basics, has recently launched their spring line for 2013 and has teamed up with Whole Kids Foundation and Indiegogo to help support their latest cause, helping fund and start 100 urban gardens for schools across America.

Through the crowdsourcing platform, Indiegogo, you can make donations until Feb. 28 to fund your local garden, another garden anywhere in the country, or both. Whole Kids Foundation, a Whole Foods Market^® foundation, will provide additional support for each garden, like online garden planning tools and organic seeds to help build or expand each urban garden. 

Urban gardening is the practice of growing, harvesting, and distributing food within city communities and is becoming increasingly more necessary in this day and age. Having gardens in urban areas encourages children and adults alike to choose healthier foods than the more processed foods and snacks found in your local grocery aisle.

The goal for spring 2013 is to establish 100 urban gardens that offer access to healthy food and at the same time empowering adults and children in those communities to actively experience the process of growing food from seed to plate.

For more information, or just to get some trendy new underwear (which also help fund future 'PACTivist' causes) visit PACT



~ James
Garden Media Group

Gardens in the Most Unlikely of Places

Los Angeles residents are being treated to an exotic sight during their daily commutes. The Urban Air project created by artist Stephen Glassman and a collection of partners has turned Los Angeles billboards into bamboo gardens to beautify urban areas and help clean the air by processing the carbon dioxide from the cars below.

Urban Air was first recognized when it received the 2011 London International Creativity award. A Los Angeles based billboard company, Summit Media, has lent their support by donating prominent billboards along major Los Angeles thoroughfares to provide a launch for the first Urban Air prototypes.

Urban Air aims to have many of these billboard gardens all over Los Angeles freeways by the new year. But they don't want to stop there! Pending a successful launch they hope to pursue a greener future by transforming billboards in cities around the globe.

For more information on the Urban Air project visit their kickstarter page!

~ James
Garden Media Group

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