The Bastille restaurant in the Ballard district of Seattle, Washington not only serves fantastic French-inspired cuisine but it’s as fresh as fresh can get. They are so committed to this concept that they grow their own produce on their roof.

One of the things that I found particularly interesting was the chef’s comment regarding new kitchen staff and students. He said that many aspiring chefs don’t fully understand or appreciate where food comes from and how precious it really is. Then he said that after a day of pulling weeds and picking produce for that evening’s dinner menu, they have a new-found respect for food and they are even more careful during preparation and they try harder not to waste anything because suddenly they have a full understanding of all the hard work involved in getting it there to their counter, ready to be prepared for a gormet dish.

Like most restaurants that pursue rooftop gardening, it started out small and there was a lot of trial and error but now they’ve pretty well figured out what works and what doesn’t.
In fact, one of their lessons learned is that something like the picture above with the nicely built, expensive wooden planter with removable doors, irrigation and even heating coils was just not necessary to have good plant growth. As pretty as they are, they work just as well as the images below.

This container is really just a kiddie pool filled with rock and topped with another kiddie pool with drainage holes in it then covered in a sort of black plastic (which they learned was necessary to keep the kiddie pools from breaking down in the sun) and filled with the appropriate growing media. Extras include irrigation and a removeable wall and lid that can open and close. And this much cheaper and easier to build than the more sophisticated wooden planters yet functioned just as well.

Just as simple as the kiddie pools are the buckets for the tomatoes.

The Bastille also has bee hives integrated with the roof for both pollination and a portion of the honey for their restaurant. The bees are provided by Ballard Bee Company as a pollination service for the restaurant and honey for the owners.

Ultimately, with all the success they’ve had from their current rooftop, their looking to expand further and take over the neighboring rooftop!

Growing up on a farm as a child, I was fairly well connected to the idea of food, place and time but of course didn’t think about it much back then. In 2008, while working in Germany and sitting next to a girl from Colombia, I made a comment one day about the fruit bowl she kept on her desk and the amazing amount of apples that she ate. Every single day she would be happily crunching away on an apple, a fruit of great abundance in the area of southern Germany where I lived which was surrounded by countless orchards. She told me that she grew up with the kinds of fruit I would consider exotic like mangos and papayas but the only apples they could grow were very small and not as flavorful. When she arrived in Germany she was in heaven being surrounded by all the delicious and fresh local apples. It sort of stopped me because I had moved from a place in the US that had a great abundance of apples so to me it was of little difference that I could buy apples at the market. I began thinking more and more about how fruit can define place, not just what is cultivated but what can grow naturally just out in the open. I thought back to my childhood again and realized that a lot of what defined that time and place in my mind had to do with fruit, like wild huckleberries. I remember strategically choosing a favorite sitting spot in a tree because it was within reach of the little red berries that I would sit and snack on.

Awhile ago I came across a great group that followed along this line of thinking, using the fruit as their lense to investigate the ecologicial, social and political issues surrounding food and land use as well as to inspire community building. They are called, Fallen Fruit, an art collaboration created by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young that began six years ago.

The trio first began in their own stomping grounds of the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles by mapping out “public fruit” which included the creation of street-by-street diagrams of fruit trees that grew on public land. They were especially interested in the use of this public fruit and expanding on the idea of a city planting with the goal of helping to support their populace through something of a planned urban orchard.

The groups website describes what they are about:

“Fallen Fruit investigates urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community. From protests to proposals for new urban green spaces, we aim to reconfigure the relation between those who have resources and those who do not, to examine the nature of & in the city, and to investigate new, shared forms of land use and property. Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration that began with creating maps of public fruit: the fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles.”

“Over time our interests have expanded from mapping public fruit to include Public Fruit Jams in which we invite the citizens to bring homegrown or public fruit and join in communal jam-making; Nocturnal Fruit Forages, nighttime neighborhood fruit tours; Community Fruit Tree Plantings on the margins of private property and in community gardens; Public Fruit Park proposals in Hollywood, Los Feliz and downtown LA; and Neighborhood Infusions, taking the fruit found on one street and infusing it in alcohol to capture the spirit of the place.”

The trio doesn’t just stop at Los Angeles, or even the United States but finds inspiration in whatever part of the world that calls to them. They have followed activites around the world that have interested them in regards to the social aspect of food from documenting the harvest of isolated, wild berries in Norway to following a boy in Copenhagen all the way to Colombia to research and study the activities surrounding the banana.

While all of their projects are interesting in their own way, I was especially drawn to a project titled Public Fruit Jam that made its first appearance in 2006 and is ongoing. They say everyone has a fruit story and I have many but one thing that I always recall with great fondness, even from my very early childhood years, the days I’d spend making jam with my grandparents from the fruit we picked together on their farm. Making jam is so easy a child can participate and there is little concentration involved so during the time it is an incredible opportunity for socializing. This event is especially interestined because by attending and bringing fruit, each person from the community shows up with a story as well as an interest in the topic and together people can explore their connections through the fruit they gathered in their own neighborhood and walk away with something they made through shared resources and effort, adding layers to the story they began with. A description of the project from the site:

“Fallen Fruit invites the public to bring home-grown or street picked fruit and collaborate with us in making a collective fruit jams. Working without recipes, we ask people to sit with others they do not already know and negotiate what kind of jam to make: if I have lemons and you have figs, we’d make lemon fig jam (with lavender). Usually held in a gallery or museum, this event highlights the social and public nature of Fallen Fruit’s work, and we consider it a collaboration with the public as well as each other.”

Their latest project, called EATLACMA, will be held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art beginning this month and will run through November. A video below provides a teaser of the project and the LACMA website describes the project:

“EATLACMA is a year-long investigation into food, art, culture and politics. Fusing the richness of LACMA’s permanent collection with the ephemerality of food and the natural growth cycle, EATLACMA’s projects consider food as a common ground that explores the social role of art and ritual in community and human relationships. EATLACMA unfolds seasonally, with artist’s gardens planted and harvested on the museum campus, hands-on public events, and a concurrent exhibition, Fallen Fruit Presents The Fruit of LACMA (June 27-November 7, 2010). It culminates in a day-long event (November 7, 2010) in which over fifty artists and collectives will activate, intervene, and re-imagine the entire museum’s campus and galleries.”

images via Fallen Fruit

Based out of El Paso, Texas, a company called Valcent has been working on a vertical farming system called VertiCrop that they believe is even better and more cost-effective than traditional field agriculture because the system has produced “20 times the normal production volume and only requires 5% of the average water used in conventional growing conditions.” All the trays kind of remind of lunch period back in school.

Here’s how the VertiCrop high density vertical farming system works:

“The VertiCrop system grows plants in a suspended tray system moving on an overhead conveyor system. The system is designed to provide maximum sunlight and precisely correct nutrients to each plant. Ultraviolet light and filter systems exclude the need for herbicides and pesticides. Sophisticated control systems gain optimum growth performance through the correct misting of nutrients, the accurate balancing of PH and the delivery of the correct amount of heat, light and water.”

images via valcent

Titled, “Lettuce Field As Big As A Sky-Scraper Building” this agro-art piece by Helmut Dick is indeed the size of the neighboring building. The 10,000 lettuce heads make up 12,000 square meters, making up what appears to be the shadow. The piece was a temporary installation in Berlin-Neuköln in 2001, the largest area in Germany of apartment towers. The installation lasted the life of the lettuce before undergoing a 5 week harvest period where the piece became food that was given to the local inhabitants.

images via Helmut Dick, spotted on Vulgare

You know urban gardening is becoming popular when websites start popping up that want to match people up based on their gardening compatibility. But this isn’t a dating site, this is about sharing land between those that have it with those who don’t but want a space to grow food. Smart thinking. It’s a great concept and makes perfect sense.

This website is called Urban Garden Share and while it’s based out of Seattle, I can certainly see this taking root elsewhere. There are other programs out there in the nation for people to sign up for plots of land in community gardens but this one is unique in that it’s completely individually organized. It’s all about the hookin’ up.

urbangardenshare.org explains:
“There is limited green space for food and flowers in this place we call the urban jungle. Matching homeowners (with garden space) to gardeners (with experience) is the perfect solution for cultivating both food production and community. Condo and apartment dwellers are faced with containers or p-patches as their only prospects for vibrant gardens. Homeowners can be overwhelmed by yet-another-garden-project. Together, we make a great team.”

I dug through some of the listings and it’s rather amusing. It’s kind of like looking for a house really…what are the qualifications that you desire? Would you like a view with your garden? Do you want your garden share to be near public transport? Or do you respond to simply written ads like “My backyard wants a vegetable garden”.

While going through some old photos I came across one of an old abandoned train tunnel in Bavaria that had been partially demolished while another portion left as a piece of history embedded into the hillside, vegetation taking over the stone. There are many things around the world…abandoned tunnels, cellars, bunkers, etc. and what might become of their future? Do they become a forgotten element in time or can they be used again, transferring a piece of history into a new future?

The most recent post over at BLDG BLOG reminded me of the re-purposed single track railway tunnel in the New South Wales Southern Highlands between Mittagong and Bowral, Australia.

Built in 1866, the railway was used as the link between Sydney and Canberra until a new double track tunnel was built in 1919. Unused for three decades, the tunnel opened once again in the 1950′s for a new purpose – to grow mushrooms.

The mushrooms have thrived in the damp and poorly lit environment of the railway underworld. Now, the Li-Sun Mushroom Tunnel leads the way in exotic mushroom development in Australia.

images via jolly_jarvis

I would love the ability to tour these tunnels but since I can’t, it’ll be really interesting to what Geoff Manaugh has to say about them if he gets the opportunity to visit them while on Cockatoo Island for the Urban Islands design studio.

Urban chickens are all the rage these days and why not? You can have fresh eggs for breakfast, use food scraps for chicken feed and use the waste as compost for your garden which then continues the cycle. It’s one more piece of sustainable local food. But a company out of Boulder, Colorado called Urban Hens goes beyond the simple food aspect and uses chickens to reach out to people of all ages and encourage sustainable education.

The Shawnee Gardens assisted-living center received a 48-square foot coop for their residents,built by students, as part of the University of Colorado’s Children, Youth and Environments Center for Research and Design. But the residents of Shawnee Gardens are not the only ones who will benefit from the chickens. Just across the alley, Blossom Preschool will also take part in the program which is designed to bring together the old and the young to care for the chickens, thus nurturing the relationship with animals as well as with people across generations.

For the youngsters, these chickens also provide the necessary education in their early years about sustainability and a better connection with the environment through hands on training like feeding the chickens. The lunch and dinner scraps will help to feed the chickens. The two groups will share the eggs from the donated hens and reuse the waste which will be become fertilizer for the area’s garden.

Check out the video with a little story on the new Urban Hens’ attractive-looking coop and it’s unique location:

A big question that is always on my mind has nothing to do with future technology but rather how we make things work in a more susatainable way for the way things are now. No one is going to go around tearing down skyscrapers to build all new ones, so while we are continually working towards healthier cities and sustainable technologies….what do we do with what we already have?

Living roofs and walls are perfect for retrofitting buildings in a way that doesn’t have to make any changes to the structure and Australia-based 1:1 Architects have come up with a solution for skyscrapers in Melbourne. From Arch Daily: “’Our green roof concept is a flexible modular system, designed to adapt to varying scale rooftops and respond to differing site conditions and functional requirements,’ explained the architects. The roof provides a new atmosphere for the existing buildings where a variety of activities, such as an informal meeting or a simple lunch break, can be held.”

“The green roof is a completely separate entity from the existing structure. The structural timber frame, which sit upon the ‘Versijack’ footing system, provides a platform for users to access the planting crates. These crates create a shelving system that displays different plants. The packing crates, comprised of a CHEP recycled material and usually filled with indigenous Australian grasses that can tolerate high temperatures, vary in depth depending on the plant density and type. The plants help filter the airborne particles that pass over the area, creating a space with cleaner air for its occupants.”

images via Arch Daily

It seems no matter how many or how little plants people put in an area, they always like to point out that they will make the air cleaner. But by looking at the images, there isn’t a huge amount of vegetation in relation to the roof and the cleanliness of the air is not likely to be all that different. However, it’s nice to see retrofitting efforts and this one looks like a good possibility for some rooftop community gardening in how they have the crates setup, even though they don’t discuss this. With such a high demand these days all around the world for urban garden spaces, the rooftop as a possibility for community gardening makes sense. Then maybe people can use their fire escapes for something else, like escaping fires perhaps.

These shiny little pocket planters designed by Puerto Rican designer Maruja Fuentes that slightly resemble little porcelain sinks are actually made of recycled materials and can create interlocking wall designs.

images via mocoloco

For a less artsy feel and just a simple plant holder for needs like vertical farming, the Outdoor Living Wall Panel Grid offers a grid system of pockets. These can be planted as single planters for a hanging art feel or grouped together to form a wall.

With the simple grid box system, this could work well for some vertical farming, especially for people like me that have little more than a fenced patio for a backyard. They could attach to the fence and maybe even provide a nice bit of extra sound barrier from my noisy neighbors too.

images via thegreenhead

Using a 200 year old Spanish door, Los Angeles-based artist Michel Horvat created a living wall centerpiece for his clients home. The rich wood and hardware of the door become the frame to hundreds of succulents.

The edges were lined with copper flashing for durability before placing 300 1-inch pots inside modular baskets in the center of the door, working to balance colors and textures for an artistic masterpiece.

images via LA Times

image via urban organic gardener