EAT UPskyline vegetable convention
Overlooking the Windy City’s articulated skyline a handful of urban farmers has climbed up to the convention center‘s roof to cultivate 1/4 acre of prime real estate. McCormick Place West, as its known by locals, was…
the inside scoop with Lara Mrosovsky
A 6,500 square foot rooftop garden atop Toronto’s Access Alliance provides the community health center’s visitors with opportunities for community development, environmental education, and social health activities. Lara Mrosovsky, the organization’s Green Access Community Animator, engages primarily…
agricultural roofs in Gaza
Rooftop agriculture is taking root around the globe. With its beginnings in 600 B.C.E. Babylon (present day Iraq), rooftop farming has arrived, full circle, back in the Middle East. According to the online Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour, Gazan residents are installing…
sky-high winter greens
While rooftop farms around the country lay fallow for winter, one skyline gem continues to churn out greens. Noble Rot, a restaurant and wine bar in Portland, OR, supports a 3,000 square foot (0.07 acre) farm…
fancy plants
Designing and building a rooftop farm may come with a hefty price tag. While many ground-level farms offset costs by expanding acreage, rooftops are limited by the bounds of the building below. So how do you…
the root of it
This year’s Thanksgiving dinner was something to write home about. A menagerie of vegetable dishes flanked my mother’s heavenly, rosemary-infused turkey: roasted bliss potatoes, braised fennel, sautéed Brussels sprouts, butternut squash soufflé. But the one side that got me…
the groundhog done it
It finally happened. While harvesting cherry tomatoes from my backyard garden earlier this week, a patch of topless broccoli plants caught the corner of my eye. Slowly turning to assess the damage – brow low, fists…
containers and raised beds and pouches, oh my
In many developed nations we are both blessed and cursed with an obscene breadth of consumer choices. With a selection as simple as what type of cereal to buy: low fat, high fiber, whole grain, multi-color… decisions can…
“Daddy, I want a cucumberrrr!”
Jay Sand, a home gardener in West Philadelphia, feeds his kids the freshest veggies on the block. The source? His own roof. Sand and his wife decided to renovate their spacious Victorian fixer-upper from bottom to…
got organic? you betchya.
Chicago has something to brag about. Uncommon Ground, a restaurant on the north side of town, houses the country’s very first certified organic rooftop farm. The farm was founded on the restaurant’s Edgewater location in 2007,…