Synthetic grass stores are spreading

Found primarily in California and Arizona, fake grass stores are beginning to pop up around the country. Definitely a sign of the landscaping times.

The week of big urban agriculture hits!

It's the week of big hits!


I'm sure many folks have heard about Serenbe in Georgia. But here's one of the first news stories about the development, 2 hours south of Atlanta, which gives you a feel for the houses surrounding the urban farm and the farm itself.




-Right on cue is another article about how food one of the hot trends in real estate is...can you guess?...food!


-What's happening in the Vancouver urban agriculture scene? What are the guidelines, standards and policies? What is being farmed, how is pest management handled? Which farms have staff and volunteers? Everything you want to know is here.


-We've seen lots of urban agriculture farms made out of shipping containers. The next step in the evolution is having a farm shipped, IKEA flatpack style, in a shipping container and ready for assembly.

-In Guyana a bold new collaboration has sprung between universities in Chile, the United Kingdom and Guyana to pioneer aquaponics education in the Caribbean.


-North American researchers have said to beware of the soil in urban settings, heavy metals may be present. It seems that the same could be true in Spain.


-Finally the biggest news of all, Gotham Greens opened the world's largest urban greenhouse facility in Chicago.

Vines reclaim a town, so green roofs and walls abound

A fishing community once inhabited this island in China. Once deserted nature took over, the vines took over and green walls and roofs exploded all over the place. Almost as fascinating is how this article from the day before Halloween is based on another from June. Both yield incredible pictures from different parts of the year.

Philadelphia adds another green roof incentive

After Jet Blue's announcement a few weeks ago, they get a full NY Times story covering their urban agriculture endeavor at JFK airport. Maybe the NY Times saw my posts about airports and urban agriculture?

-A self-storage facility in St. Louis gets to green their roof while offering the space for rooftop gardening. 9,000 square feet for $10,000 per year sounds like a pretty good deal!

-Regular readers know I don't like to profile projects still in the design stage...there's no certainty they will be built. But I'll make an exception for this project in Singapore, when Singapore wants something done, it gets done. So this project, the picture above, is as good as gold.

-Philadelphia already gives tax credits for green roof installation, now they are offering another incentive: density bonuses for green roofs.

-The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University has just released a "guidebook which provides science-based guidance and sample zoning code language designed to reduce the barriers to, and promote production and sales activities commonly associated with urban agriculture." Wow. Iowa!

-For those who want to expand their horizons, here's a paper on food security and urban agriculture in Vietnam.

GILA word of the week: Zfarming

A couple of tasty tidbits for the week. A nice collective term, courtesy of the Germans, for vertical farming, rooftop farming and indoor farming: Zfarming. Here's a paper about perception and acceptance about the phenomenon.

What do you get when you mix tasteful architecture, aquaponics and leisure. Have a look:

The second design meeting for Guelph's food forest

Last night was design meeting #2 for the Guelph food forest. A nice turnout despite the driving rain, gale force winds and temps flirting with freezing. Three designs were created composites of the original six designs (picture number four). Participants split into groups to discuss what they liked and did not like about the designs and which one they like the most. It seemed to be a tie between picture number 1 and 3.
What's your opinion?
The next meeting should be after the new year, stay tuned!

The world's first desktop edible insect harvester

 I think this week marks an important point in the urban agriculture revolution. A group (which may or may not be based in Germany, it's hard to tell) launched a Kickstarter campaign to manufacture the first desktop edible insect harvester. As many know the idea of eating insects, in much of the West, is absolutely foreign to most people. But with people now keeping chickens in urban environments instead of depending on farms, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to up the game.

I predict that there will be a slew of imitators very soon, who strive to make desktop harvesters sleeker, easier to use, smaller, you name it. But this is the first. Tell your kids (or grandkids) about it.

-Singapore now has 72 hectares of rooftop greenery (enough to cover 100 football fields, says this article), an increase of 8 hectares in a year. There's of course room for growth. In Melbourne, Australia they currently have only 5 hectares of green roofs and rooftop gardens, but the city council is really behind the idea and have mapped out over 240 hectares, across the city, which would be suitable for greening!

-In Memphis, Tennessee, if you mow the vacant lot adjacent to your piece of property, you can now own it! Wow!

Permaculture in the city

Over the summer permaculture guru, Toby Hemingway, published his latest book entitled The Permaculture City. With so much of the world in urban environments, he thought the time was right to encourage more urban denizens to embrace the movement. Here's an overview of the book:

Good news for urban fruit lovers

With concerns over lead levels in community gardens, a few researchers wondered if fruit from historical farms, urban parkland, and residential properties would be similarly afflicted. A least in the Greater Boston Area, they are not. In fact, the fruit appears to have higher calcium and "...on average, urban fruit contains a wider range of micronutrients than its commercial counterparts."

So eat that street peach!

Indonesia shows us how to save urban trees

Nigeria's fight against desertification, the Great Green Wall Project, is looking for international support to help move things along. Let's see if an NGO steps up to help out.

-Indonesia's "One Soul One Tree" has been a smashing success as city dwellers have found new ways to preserve their urban trees for the benefit of all.

-Virginia State University pioneering aquaponics work got a huge vote of confidence, last week, in the form of a $900,000 check to support the construction of an aquaponics production center. Well done, VSU!