IKEA now stocks indoor gardening kits

Ever wonder how green roofs can help with productivity and recovery? If you are a hospital administrator you'll definitely want to check out the latest from the International Green Roof Association.

-I love to do deeper dives into how green infrastructure takes off. And why. This Atlantic piece investigates Washington D.C.'s adaptation, spurred by the municipal government. Speaking of deeper dives, here's a paper on the knowledge and awareness of wastewater use for urban agriculture in Ghana's capital, Accra.

-New Orleans got a major commitment from the federal government, $144 million dollars, to add design and install a 25 acre water garden to alleviate flooding like they experienced during Hurricane Katrina.

-And the biggest news of the week, IKEA (in the UK) is now selling indoor gardening kits!

World Cup green roofs - Group G

Group G provides Germany, a.k.a. the complete package, breathtaking Portugal, deceptive Ghana and the USA is...? That's my fault. I chose one from Guam because when have I ever posted a green roof from Guam?

Germany

Portugal

Ghana

USA

40 hours of free permaculture lecture + urban agriculture opportunities in Africa

A supermarket in South Africa has embraced alternative technologies like no one else, by incorporating solar energy and aquaponics to get closer to being a fully sustainable supermarket.

-Watch, listen, revel in 40 hours of permaculture lectures from Bill Mollison!

 

-An urban agriculture internship, with flexible starting times and lengths from 2-8 months, has 

opened up in South Africa.

-Even better is an urban agriculture scholarship to pursue a PhD co-sponsored by schools in Sweden and Ghana!

The European Commission set to support green infrastructure

So much good news from the GILA world over the last week!

-The European Commission adopted a, new, long term, strategy to encourage green infrastructure projects including identifying possible projects, expanding the knowledge base of innovative, green infrastructure supporting technologies and most importantly, financing through the European Investment Bank.

-If you're at work and can listen to a podcast, without getting in trouble, give a listen to Will Allen's latest interview.

-A 7.5 million euro German/African partnership, UrbanFoodPlus, has been created to boost the productivity of urban farming in Africa. Although there will be a range of project groups focusing on different elements of food production across the continent, initially grower, seller, and government officials will be interviewed in Burkina Faso and Ghana to understand their current realities.

-What do you get when you combine martial arts and urban agriculture? Boston's own Green Dragons of course!

-There are very few vertical gardens anywhere around the world. If you are in Singapore or stopping through, one is actually open to the public!

Mushrooms galore!

Since the last post spring has sprung and things are getting busy. Looking back at the blog last year, this is around the time when the blog production started to decrease. Hopefully not this year. It's weird how the news cycle goes, I don't know if you can even call it a cycle. 10 days ago, there wasn't that much (seemingly) happening in the living architecture world and then an explosion of activity.

-We'll start off with some news from Africa,first in Ghana Greg Knibbs from Australia drops in to run the first Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course in the country. Great article. Then a little bit from Tanzania and some great permaculture ideas for the urban environment.



-Speaking of mushrooms, there's a weekend mushroom workshop in late May at the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute. The 5th annual!!!

-Here's a novel idea in LA. How about instead of just serving customers, have restaurant goers become part of the process?
Why not have them source ingredients? Which is what happens at Forage.
If the restaurant wants something specific they turn to urban foragers, not distributors, to get what they want. Communal, local, provocative...and radical.
Oh and there's only one month left in San Francisco to see an exhibit by Exit Art called "Vertical Gardens". I think some Patrick Blanc work should be profiled as well.

Looks like Austin, Texas is trying to make some headway with a green roof advisory panel, hoping, by August 2010, to recommend policies and priorities about where green roofs will make the most impact, what kind of incentive programs to implement, and how city codes should encourage practices consistent with the goals of conservation, and discourage those that are not. And a lot more.