Urban gardening or urban agriculture is the establishment and practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in a community or city. It can be in the form of a social movement or group of individuals who came together to share their love of growing their own food. The main principle behind urban gardening is to make food as “local” as possible. Once people gets access to the food they need closer to their homes, “food miles” associated to the transportation of food from far-off farms to cities are minimized. Plus, we get the freshest and healthiest food we can buy and get our hands on.
Aside from providing people in the cities access to healthier food and being generally better for the environment, urban gardening also offers a host of other benefits. Urban gardens could provide much needed greenery to cities – which could reduce harmful runoff, provide much needed shade, and counteract the island heat effect normally felt in big cities. Urban gardens can also attract tourists, connect persons with other like-minded people and help them reconnect with nature, and provide much needed jobs or food resources to people living in the cities.
We have provided you with the resources to start your own home garden and participate in a community garden, so this time, here are a few beautiful urban gardens all around the world to further inspire you to get your hands dirty, and just grow food.
Jonathan Club, located in downtown LA took container gardening to a whole new level when it converted a rarely used paddle tennis court on its 5th floor to an urban garden. The garden now grows broccolini, baby carrots, yuzu, blueberries, figs, snap peas, and heirloom tomatoes – which the club also offers to its customers under its “home-grown items.” The garden costs $40,000 to build, produces as much as $150,000 worth of crops per year, and provides work and opportunities for different groups, projects, and even people.
Urban Farming in Tokyo from imageMILL on Vimeo.
The Pasona Group’s office is an urban farm in the middle of Tokyo’s business district. The nine-storey office building grows over 100 types of produce indoors, underground, and on the building’s exteriors – such an impressive way to bring awareness and healthy food to city-dwellers.
Sky Greens provides densely populated Singapore city, an opportunity to grow their own food using a less space than what is normally required for a farm or even garden. Their A-frame structure can hold up to 32 trays of greens – growing different kinds of vegetables such as lettuce and spinach. Similar to a Ferris wheel, the assembly also rotates – ensuring that all crops get the sunlight they need to thrive.
Prinzessinnengarten, Berlín © 2010 Monocle from Jacobo Zanella on Vimeo.
Prinzessinnengarten is an urban farm that grew between unused subway stops, graffiti-ed concrete walls, and old apartment complexes. Friends and neighbors started clearing and planting organic vegetables in the summer of 2009, and has since then been reaping the fruits of their labor.
Urban Organics converted a former commercial brewery building into an aquaponics garden in Minnesota. The company currently supplies vegetables to grocery stores and restaurants using just 2% of the water supply typically used in conventional agriculture.
These are just a few of the #GrowFood projects out there. Have one in your community? Share it with us.
This World Food Day, learn how climate change affects our food production and supply, and what we can do about it.
