A rare orchid sprouts on a green roof

The biggest news of the last couple of weeks has to be the ReGen development in Almere, outside Amsterdam. The five pillars of the community are:

+Energy positive homes;
+Door-step high-yield organic food production;
+Mixed renewable energy and storage;
+Water and waste recycling;
+Empowerment of local communities.

Once completed this pilot project will be one of the most resilient and sustainable in the world.

-Here’s an update on Virginia State University’s Urban Agriculture Centre a year after receiving their $1.5 million dollar grant. Food production, both indoors (aquaponic systems) and outdoors (micro farms, orchards and vineyards), is in full swing and the aims to have classes and training for local residents as well.

-A delightful visitor has landed on a green roof in the UK. The very rare orchid, pictured above, is the only one to grow on a green roof.

-Last week Saskatoon (!) became the latest city to offer tax breaks for residents to grow food on vacant lots.

-Pittsburgh is doing something very unique, foodies are turning invasive species, like Japanese knotweed, into beer, paper, kimchi, tinctures, ice pops and honey. They figure with so much out there, why not consume it! Hopefully this becomes a trend worldwide!

-If you needed more reasons to grow your own food, here’s one: people who garden at home, eat more veggies which means they'll be healthier!

Update on green roof collapse in Hong Kong

The rooftop collapse, apparently from the application of a green roof which much heavier than the roof could hold, has struck a nerve throughout Hong Kong. Anyone involved with the project, even at arms length, is looking to distance themselves and the government has taken the event very seriously.
The university is removing several other green roofs, built on tin roofs, as a precautionary measures.

Next generation green roof systems

In London there are already over 1200 green roof projects (covering more than 500,000 square meters) and the market is exploding. New modular systems, for both green roofs and roofs incorporating green roofs and solar panels, have hit the market. Even speciality butterfly attracting plug and play plant blankets are available! All of this without major government incentives or legislation!
Also profiled in the article are next generation green roof systems, ones designed to hold large quantities of water, intensify the phytoremediation process or utilizing bioresponsive materials.
If you read one piece about green roofs this year, this may be the one.

-Can anyone guess where Canada's largest urban farm is located? If you guessed Calgary, I tip my hat to you!

-Sacramento will host the year two of the Cultivating Change Summit from June 8-11. It's the first summit for LGBTQ+ agriculturalists and allies. Register here!

-Big things are happening in Toronto. An alley behind a public library has been bought and is being converted into a community garden and a vacant plot of land in the east(ish) end will become a temporary home to a 1500 crate mobile urban garden.

Green roof collapse at Hong Kong City University

Luckily only two people were hurt. Preliminary reports indicate the weight of the green roof was 5 times the structural limit!

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!

New Toronto development plans trees inside and out

Westbank Corp. has big plans for Toronto, have a gander at the trees on top and inside the building.

Old school green roof recipe

Here's an old school formula for making a green roof. I can't vouch for this as I haven't seen one done, nor watched how it performs over the years, but if you're up for an experiment on the cheap, please let me know how it works out.

-While not exactly living architecture, these new mechanical trees are supposed to replicate the real thing, while generating wind power.

-It's wonderful to see more hospitals embracing horticultural therapy and all its benefits, in Philadelphia Magee Rehab Center plans to open a $4 million dollar creative therapy center and healing gardens.

Although this is outside my normal purview, it is too cool not to pass on. Norway hopes to spend $1 billion dollars on bike infrastructure!

The Super Bowl's super green roof

The Super Bowl is today, as you probably know. The Big 50!  And Levi Stadium is pretty proud of it's start-of-the-art facility, including a massive green roof which boasts 16 indigenous plant species and a handful of others used in the restaurant on site.

Brain scans show gardening is good + GILA predictions for 2016

More evidence that gardening is good for mental health, this time brain scans show that it's true...which is a first! Horticultural therapy advocates rejoice!

Another $20 million euros has been given to the Great Green Wall programme by the European Union! Finally serious money is heading their way, this is on top of 5 billion dollars from France last month for various greening projects, including building the Green Wall.

-I know, I know, it's very late, but Foodtank.com had it's list of the most exciting stories for 2016. Here are four things I see in my crystal ball...

-The aquaponics movement will continue to develop in landlocked and import dependent countries and regions (like the Caribbean).
-We'll see the beginning of neighborhood scale urban agriculture projects, aquaponics and urban gardening designed to fill the food needs of a urban block or two, further decentralized food production. Those shipping containers? Yeah, they'll be big.
-This year will also mark the true beginning of the miniaturization of the insect growing movement, as tabletop systems, designed for a family, begin to take off.
-I also predict you'll see more green roof funding, specific in it's focus, get moved to general stormwater management funding for gardens and the replacement of lawns.

What do you think?

GILA word of the week: Food Swamp

I have a bunch of things to mention which have slipped under the radar recently, for instance your GILA word of the week: Food Swamp. We've all heard the term food desert, well a food swamp has lots of food available and most of it is unhealthy.

-It's important that everyone is aware of the benefits of green infrastructure, especially green roofs. In Victoria, Australia, a local university, the city council and state government are trying to put a dollar figure on greening utilizing their own research and the country's Economic Framework for Green Infrastructure. Similarly, Mauritius is attempting to quantify how much green roofs would mean to them.

-The Dutch have taken urban agricultural to new heights, by creating a floating dairy platform making it one of the first urban aquatic agricultural operations.

-Follow a Kenyan family on the front line of climate change in the first episode of Al Jazeera's "The Climate Diaries".

-Speaking of pioneers, urban agricultural guru Will Allen may be in a jam of a different kind as an investor has sued him (and his partner) over the disputed mismanagement of their investment.

-Last week it was announced India is slated to get it's first horticultural therapy garden in 2016. While a new program is opening in India, sadly a popular one is being shut down in the UK.

-Let's end on a positive note, shall we? How about focusing on Detroit's intention to plant tens of thousands of trees on 1/2 square miles of vacant city space. Note, this is only a demonstration. There are over 20 miles of vacant land in the city...right now! Other lots will be filled eventually, whether it's with wildflowers or urban farms.

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.

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!

A food forest begins to sprout in Guelph

Ithaca Permaculture Park, River Valley Food Forest, Greenbelt Food Forest in Maryland and most famously, Beacon Food Forest in Seattle, Washington food forests are already on the map. Now Guelph (Ontario) is in the process of building one. I was lucky enough to be part of the kick off.
It's tentatively called Hanlon Creek Community Food Forest. Six designs were produced by breakout groups, last Thursday, and the common elements will be combined into three workable designs for further elaboration in a couple of weeks. 
This is very exciting for a town of roughly 125,000. Your town can do it too! 

-Some big news out of Ireland as a new green roof bylaw in a suburb of Dublin, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County is set to take effect in a few months. It covers new building construction starting January 1!

-Gigantic retailer Target is teaming up with MIT to explore how they can support urban agriculture.

-There's so much happening in Detroit, lots of good stuff gets underreported. A $15 million dollar, 60 acre, urban agriculture project was announced which will hopefully employ up to 125 ex-offenders and recovering addicts.

-A fantastic permaculture program is taking off in Ethiopia. 450 hectares in total may be transformed.

-Here's a handy dandy guide to growing indoor plants, what kinds of containers you can use and which plants work best in them.

Chives are amazing

Here's a little something I just had to share from the vault. Look at these chives growing IN this bag.

And another plant has decided to break out of it's prison and is doing quite well...at Home Depot

Aquaponic and rooftop farming news from Egypt

This operation has been operational for a couple of years, but they rarely release updates. What they have accomplished in a few years is very impressive!
There was another article about Egyptian living infrastructure this week, the missive takes a look at the rooftop garden operations.

-Here's a very long and well-written article from Business Insider about America’s largest crop, the American lawn. The thirsty crop drinks Nine billion gallons of water A DAY and covers more than 3 times the amount of area corn does!
Several of those interviewed believe it will be harder to get people to quit watering their lawns because the lawn is a symbol of the American dream. Subconsciously, letting your lawn die may be akin to giving up on the American dream, conspicuous consumption, social contract and multi-billion dollar industry, combined. Look for lobbying groups to fight restrictions as they pop up around the USA and beyond. It has already begun...

-A recent study suggests there are 3 trillion trees worldwide! That’s incredible! On the bad side, that’s half of what was there a few hundred years ago and 10 billion per year are currently lost.

-In a very, very curious story, the Vancouver Aquarium has decided to start raising fish...for sale at local stores! Wow!

-In other aquaponics news we learned something amazing, by accident. It appears the US is creating a Hydroponic and Aquaponic Task Force. The press release states "aquaculture, aquaponics and hydroponics being the fastest growing sector in agriculture"!

Events in October

We've hit September folks and those events which seemed like the distant future are right around the corner.

On October 15 forty-five cities will sign an urban food policy pact. That's World Food Day, by the way. Milan is leading the way, hopefully this leads to coordination of urban food policies around the world.

Also, I must mention the World Green Infrastructure Network's 2 day symposium bookends World Food Day, it runs from October 14-16. This year, Nagaya, Japan welcomes the green infrastructure world.

The World's Biggest Green Roof - coming soon...

I try to stay away from commenting on projects still in the development phase, but if a developer is willing to make the largest green roof in the world, at a price tag of at least $300 million, I think it’s worth paying attention.
The idea apparently sprouted from a community consultation. In the future, maybe they could even have their green roof design by children, as is being done in Stockholm with the help of Mine Craft!

-The Great Green Wall is about 10% done, 330 miles out of 4,750 is a great start. However if the UN estimates are true, that by 2025 two thirds of Africa's arable land will be covered by desert, we had better get a move on to plant the other 90 plus percent.

-Speaking of changes, Americans’ lawns gobble up more land than Texas, that’s three times larger “than any irrigated crop in the U.S.A.”  How will that change in the coming decades?

-Here’s what Toronto could have done if the City council had decided to tear down part of their Gardiner Expressway. Welcome to Providence!

Fireflies on a green roof - in song

These are normally supposed to be the dog days of summer, but the season seems to barely have arrived! If you're lucky there are a few fireflies around where you are. Maybe one or two on your green roof? I serenade you, luminescent visitors with songs as beautiful as your glow!

The Temptations - Firefly
Gato Barbieri - Fireflies

Lawrence Welk - Firefly Serenade
Leo Kottke - Spanish Entomologist      

Perfume...inspired by green roofs

Yes, it totally exists! Here's the ad, now you can smell like a green roof too!