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!

All the fruit trees in the US and Canada

If you're a non-European and you've been in the green roof industry for a while, no doubt you've heard a lot about Germany and how many green roofs it has. Here are some fantastic aerials views of one town in particular, Wohldorf-Ohlstedt, posted by a blogger who attended the International Green Roof Congress last month.

-One of the challenges of the internet is deciphering what is worth your time perusing and what is not. If you like fruit, the Falling Fruit website, is worth your time. Building off the pioneering mapping work of Fallen Fruit, which they did by canvassing the neighborhood, Falling Fruit utilizes public databases and catalogs hundreds of thousands (!) of fruit trees across North America and beyond. The honey locust seems to be the most popular tree. I'm nominating this for website of the year!

-Here's a great article about a horticultural therapy program which provides therapeutic activities for refugees and immigrants.

GILA word of the week: Fruit activist

Whether you consider the installation and care of fruit trees as “art”, is another matter, but more fruit trees in the world, especially on city streets, is definitely a good thing.

-Well, that didn’t take long. Several parties are interested in what remains of the Sweet Water Organics facility, including some former employees and local professors and entrepreneurs. Their complete proposal hasn’t been released yet, however it includes a commercial kitchen which can serve the fish and vegetables processed in the adjoining facilities.

-In September I posted a story about an aquaponics operation in Abu Dhabi. The facility was quietly kept under wraps until it was up and running and very little information about the people behind the idea was ever released. This is the first article I have seen which talks about the manager and driving force behind the project, Jabber Al Mazroui. They even have been able to grow watermelon!

-Whenever I give a talk about living walls I reference on of the most well-known examples, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Now it seems the gardens were never in Babylon, but 300 miles further north in Ninevah.

28 activities and 18 benefits to urban agriculture

Do your friends want to know why they should support urban agriculture? Here's a fantastic metrics framework from the Design Trust for Public Space detailing 18 benefits and 28 activities. 

-Stat of the day: according to one calculation Beijing has 93 million square metres (23,000 acres) of green roof ready rooftops. Particle pollution could be reduced by as much as 880,000 kilograms every year, (equal to removing 730,000 cars from the road) and a reduction of 3.5 million cubic metres of stormwater.

-Back in July I first talked about the Bayview Compass' coverage of Sweet Water Organics, the Milwaukee based aquaponics organization. That article was perhaps the best one of the year, in the living architecture world. This follow-up one is not that bad either, SWO defaulted on a loan which could be renegotiated. For the life of me I don't know why SWO has such a spotlight on them, it seems organizations run into trouble all the time. Perhaps when you garner as much positive attention as they have, when something goes wrong, you get as much negative attention.

-Coming soon to Vancouver, a 1,000 tree urban agriculture orchard.