Tonight I attended the opening of a charrette at UW on designing for urban food. I wish I had known about it sooner so that I could have spread the word!
It was amazing, thought provoking and inspiring to listen to the speakers and hear ideas of designing spaces, utilizing abandoned properties and maximizing what we’ve got. Whether you believe in peak oil or not you’ve got to admit that we are not living sustainably on this planet and should be focused on reducing our impact. The food we eat and the things we consume need to start coming from more local sources and renewable resources.
This charrette was organized by students in a short amount of time yet they managed to pull together principals from major architecture firms, food activists and concerned eaters.
They have some great ideas and posed some interesting scenarios for growing or distributing food. Imagine growing food on top of ferry boats, rooftops, on abandoned properties, open city spaces, alleyways and lawns. Imagine vertical farms encasing apartment buildings. Imagine enclosed bubbles producing food in climate controlled conditions. It’s thought provoking stuff and the design elements are wonderful. What they don’t have is you.
I heard a lot of talk about design. I hear no talk about the practicalities of gardening and not one breath about nutrition. Do you garden? Ever think about compost, soil health, nutrients in food? Then they need you!
Do you think a designer would know that you can’t save seeds from hybrid variety vegetables and therefore without buying new seeds the garden would die, i.e. not sustainable. Or that hybrid veggies have but a fraction the nutrition that many open pollinated ones do? Without the nutrients you need to buy synthetic vitamins, not sustainable. Or that open pollinated varieties need pollinators to fruit so they can’t be grown in a bubble? Not sustainable.
If you have any time at all tomorrow, Friday, April 16 then please consider attending this charrette to help design or educate.
They have stations set up with different design opportunities but the one I naturally gravitated to was the single family residence. Here were the images they had posted up.
When I look at this image I see the grass gone in that wide parking strip. Down the middle I see a row of trellised grapes or espalier fruit trees flanked on both sides by veggie beds that gradually step down from the middle. Terracing lets you create a watering microclimate that minimizes water. When you water the center bed you can create channels that carry water down to the lower steps like the ancient Incas did. Things needing the most water would go on the bottom step. By stepping you can create some residual or reflective heat from the vertical surface behind the plant, which maximizes any sunlight. I’m guessing this growspace is 5 feet wide and probably at least 50-60 feet long. That’s a lot of vegetable space, enough to feed a family of four through at least two seasons of the year. And I haven’t even gotten to the next image yet.
Before I do there is a traffic circle in the background. Imagine a communal space for kids. A place where they could choose the plantings and tend the garden themselves or a pumpkin patch for jack-o-lanterns or a sunflower fort or a bean teepee or a space where they can sell extra produce or backyard eggs.
These legacy plantings aren’t doing anything for anyone I’m guessing. But imagine taking them out and terracing this front. You could easily get 4 rows of nice veggie layers in here, stepping down. Where the wrought iron hand rail is you could train berry vines or grapes. All along the front of the house you could trellis grapes, kiwis or hops. A nice container in front of that top story window would get radiated heat from the roof in front and the window above it. A perfect microclimate for growing heat loving things like tomatoes, peppers or eggplants.
All along the property line you could grow mid size, dwarf stock or espalier fruit or nut trees. Along borders and as foundational plantings imagine evergreen huckleberries, highbush blueberries, seaberries, aronia, elderberry, currants, saskatoon berries. Trailing from each terrace or rockery imagine strawberries, trailing rosemary, trailing tomatoes or groundcherry. You could tuck in pots for horseradish or other things that need to be dug so you don’t disturb your terracing. For height and interest along the house lines you can plant artichokes, asparagus, cardoons, rhubarb, corn and pole beans or peas.
We haven’t even touched the backyard. Perhaps a run for mini goats and chickens? On the sideyard there might certainly be room for a gray water system and small grow house for starts? A beehive perhaps? Mushroom logs?
I see a whole lot of food here instead of the nasty shrubbery. What do you see?
Do you have a front yard like this that you want to take out and turn into growing space? Then email me because I would LOVE to take on a yard like this one as a personal challenge. I’m happy to help you design your own personal grocery store instead of this unusable shrubbery.
This post is part of www.foodrenegade.com’s fight back friday. I’m fighting!
Annette, this is great! You’ve inspired me to start rethinking the design of my home and integrate an edible landscape. I’m adding a few things in this year as I’m pretty sure we’ll be moving within the next year or so. However, I am definitely going to tackle these things at our next and prayerfully, final home!! Just love your blog and all that you do!
Diane, that is one of the cruxes for creating community gardens or personal gardening space for the transitory, which many lower income groups are. How can we come up with inexpensive migratory gardens or communal solutions with low barrier to entry? I’d love any ideas you may have! Containers are hard because they are exensive and you need to bring in soil. How do you schlepp compost on the bus? Or if you do then you must have bought it or it wouldn’t be in a bag you could transport it in. And if you knew you were going to be moving soon you wouldn’t buy containers which you would have to move with you.
It’s a hard issue.
I’m so glad you got a chance to go to that. It’s been a crazy week for us so we weren’t able to find them time. We will be coming over for a garden tour though!
Tiffany, can’t wait to meet you! I’ve tried to comment on your blog before but it’s not set up to accept anyonymous comments and I don’t have a free blog. I’m going to one of the Joel Salatin talks next week too – are you going to the later one at night? I’m dying to hear how he addresses “food elitism” since that is my schtick. Getting good food to the masses.
Annette, If you’re interested in taking a look at my yard, I would love it. I couldn’t find your email, but perhaps you can respond to mine.
We’re on about 1/4 acre in Shoreline — you may be more interested in tackling a more urban style yard, however. I’m starting with fruit trees and bushes, and a smallish vegetable garden. I have much to learn! Sorry I can’t make your garden open house this Saturday. Your yard looks amazing.
Hi Anne,
Is it a terraced shrubby yard like this? That is what I want to really tackle but I’d be glad to help you out anyway. Email me at annettecottrell (at) yahoo.com and we can figure it out. I have 1/5 acre so 1/4 acre is no problem!
Annette, I’m so happy to hear that you are interested in food elitism! That has been one of my biggest issues of the entire real/local food movement. As much as I love the energy and information, how does one honestly propose even middle income families (not to even mention lower income) to pay so much for “real” food? I focus a lot on my blog on not buying real food for the cheap but instead seeking out local coops, local buying groups, and getting to really know your family farmer to buy directly from the source. I am a first generation American. My fathers side of the family are Mexican from California. Although he grew up POOR, praise God, through education his 12 siblings have made quite the improvement in their lives and are middle class. Most living in beautiful homes in Rancho Cucamonga. That is where I came from before moving to Iowa. My family in Cali would be astounded to hear that people are paying $20 a gallon for raw milk. $25 for ONE pastured chicken. I can’t imagine what people are paying out there for one pound of grass fed meat. I know Seattle is pretty much up there as well. Hearing those prices breaks my heart because there is no way I can propose to middle income families much less lower income families in my Latino community to make changes like this for the benefit of their family. They have WAY more important issues to deal with than whether their food is organic or not. For me it’s a blessing in that in Iowa we have many sources of free range pastured animal meat. Yes, I do pay a bit more than at the grocery store, however, it averages out since I do not buy any sort of processed food. Seeing the prices that I pay here, I know that farmers in larger cities can charge what they do because of the demand. People will pay it and so they sell it at that price. As great as that is for the farmer, it’s unfortunate that it’s setting the standard and making real food a luxury. Something I feel everyone deserves access to.
As far as creating inexpensive migratory gardens, well that is what I love about our community gardens here in town. We have 4 large community gardens throughout our metro. They are absolutely free to anyone. The city provides the land, compost, wood chips, and water free of charge and all we have to do is seed, feed, and weed. It doesn’t get any cheaper and easier than that! Many people take advantage of this. Also popping up throughout Iowa are farmlands setting up as non-profits and reaching out to lower income families that have immigrated. So many are so talented at ranching, farming that they are creating these impressive farms and setting up as a coop to sell their food at farmers markets. It’s impressive and such a value to the citizens of Des Moines to be able to find a wider selection of fresh, locally grown produce. I also think it’s great when the farmers market and csa’s take food stamps allowing lower income families to buy nourishing food chemical free. Here in Iowa you can purchase a csa share with food stamps as well as shop at farmers markets.
As you can tell one of my passions is in this area. My family took a huge pay cut when I decided to leave work and work part time from home. It’s been rough at times. Last year especially! I’ve had to make the most of things by being frugal and really paying attention to prices. However, although we didn’t always have new clothes or new toys or were able to see any movies, we always had a roof over our head and really good food
Praise God that is all I had to worry about, where my food was coming from. The reality is that most people living in lower income families well… in between immigration issues, a lot of domestic abuse, drugs, rebellious and hurt teens, food just doesn’t make that list. That is why I really admire Jamie Oliver and his food revolution. Targeting our youth is really where it’s at! They are our next generation and if we can teach them how to cook and eat good real food, they will have that to cling onto and pass onto their families. Really that is what has happened. So many Americans didn’t have their mother or grandmother to pass on the simple basic skills of cooking and preserving their food.
I can go on forever, sorry Annette for hogging this space!!! Excited to hear what you learn about at Joel Salatin’s event.
Hi Diana, I loved reading your comments here because I completely concur.
We have P-patches in Seattle (plots in public gardens) but the waiting list to get one is super long despite that there are so many. And they seem to all be dormant over the winter which drives me crazy – if folks aren’t going to garden year round I feel like they should get bumped down the list so that people who want to grow their own year round can.
Other than soup kitchens and food stamp programs (which our local farmers markets take but I never see anyone there who looks like they qualify for food stamps) there aren’t too many programs available to those folks.
I’m dying to hear what he’s got to say about it because Joel is a man who seems to think a lot and presents those thoughts in such an engaging fashion. He just makes sense.
Hopefully he has some insight on how to make this food movement less elitist.
When I first ditched the grocery store I did it because I wanted to control our food. I never would have done it if I didn’t have the resources to spend more money initially on local foods.
It costs a lot to shop at the farmer’s market and buy local produce in a city like Seattle! Only the affluent can afford to do it. But I bit the bullet and decided to find other places to cut my spending, realizing I was increasing demand which would increase supply and eventually lower prices so that others could afford it.
What I found was that in getting to know the farmers and butchers I was able to network and find other cheaper farmers who didn’t sell at the farmer’s market. That is when I started saving a ton of money.
Unfortunately I only learned how to eat so inexpensively because I have the resources to eat expensively. It’s such irony!
I’m guessing that most of my readers are in the “comfortably affluent” range, meaning can afford to spend a little more on food somehow so any knowledge I share here will be helpful for them but not really get lower income families eating this way.
I’m really hoping to change that this year, somehow. I’m just not sure how yet. Healthy food should not belong to the middle and upper classes. And children shouldn’t be suffering the health issues they are these days. It’s appalling.
Dear Ladies — the irony continues when I think that when I grew up back in the 1960′s, it was only the poorer folks who DID grow their own food! My mother grew up on a scrubby patch of land in central Texas and would have died rather than grow anything herself as an adult. She left that life as fast as she could — she saw it as bondage to the land. . her cousins from that area all moved to California in the 1930′s and 40′s to work in factories. Now, remember that home gardening NOW does not look like home gardening did back then. . no garden centers, little choice on what would grow in your area, few garden experts (excepting your own family members who may or may not have known what they were talking about) only the roughest tools and little or no system of irrigation. . she once told me her fondest childhood memory was of buying storebought bread on Saturdays when they went to town — as a child I have few memories of her ever cooking from scratch. . I could go on and on, but I guess I’m off topic now. . my mom would crack up if she were alive today to see my backyard chickens and vegetable garden. .