Category — Roof Garden

Fresh, clean and green — these are the words that pop into your head when you walk into Prathima Adiga’s rooftop garden in Rajajinagar.

By Saboor Ali
New India Express
July 3, 2019

Excerpt:

CHENNAI : Fresh, clean and green — these are the words that pop into your head when you walk into Prathima Adiga’s rooftop garden in Rajajinagar. She is a freelance cookery expert who started the garden around three-and-a-half years ago. She grows all her fruits and vegetables here and sees no need to buy any of it from the market. She was inspired by her father who grew roses and hibiscus flowers. Attending a one-day gardening workshop about organic farming changed her life. Through Facebook, she met numerous friends from across the world who shared seeds with her.

Cameron’s goal is to make her businesses as sustainable as possible. So the restaurant is solar-powered, locally sourced, and everything that comes out of the kitchen is organic.

By Jalyn Henderson
ABC7 Chicago
July 12, 2019

Excerpt:

“A small working farm that provided food for a restaurant, provided a community center and place for people to learn how to grow food and a place for us to teach people about local food and why that’s so important,” Co-Owner Helen Cameron said.

A restaurant with an all-natural, organic farm, you can find on the roof. The first of its kind in the country, certified by the Midwest Organic Services Association.

“You should come here to see drunk people’s faces when the crabs start walking around. It’s like they’re worried they got something extra in their drink!” founder of OnHand Agrarian Shannon Lim exclaims.

By Harrison Linder
Rice Media
12 Jul 2019

Excerpt:

In a former car park on the 11th floor of Shaw Tower, three hungry chickens cluck at my feet as I take in the three-way panoramic view. Growing on the northern half is corn and other stalk vegetables; the southern half is almost completely aquatic, with fish tanks of various lengths widths and depths, on top of which sit loading crates and makeshift planks to help people navigate between them.

“Love to see more rooftop farms, we’re working with different projects in San Francisco, it’s a great habitat for bees, hummingbirds,” said Fahrer.

By Cornell Barnard
ABC7
July 11, 2019

Excerpt:

An East Bay farmer is helping to Build a better Bay Area by taking her crops of plants and flowers to new heights. Located high on a Berkeley rooftop, where this entrepreneur is looking to give back to her community.

“Right now, I’ve got a lot of flowers I need to get into the world,” said flower farmer Joanna Letz.

Most days, you can find Letz tending nearly a quarter acre of sweet peas, zinnias, and edible chocolate cosmos.

“It’s a natural gathering place and there are a lot of people in some distress. This is something that soothes the soul and people who are going through very difficult transitions at times.”

By Laura Sciarpelletti
CBC News
July 7, 2019

Excerpt:

Hidden from the street, and way up on the fourth floor of St. Paul’s hospital in downtown Vancouver is an oasis.

It’s a community garden where residents of the downtown grow just about any vegetable you can name.

The Downtown Intercultural Gardeners Society project — or DIGS for short — began in 2010.

“[Our aim] was to bring together a community that’s representative of Vancouver’s diversity, and having immigrants as well as Canadian-born gardeners come together and share their cultures and ways of gardening and growing food and preparing food,” Kai Chang, president of DIGS, told CBC’s Matthew Parsons.

This Indigenous-run enterprise in Sydney’s inner-city suburb of Eveleigh is a community gem.

By Samantha van Egmond
SBS
July 8, 2019

Excerpt:

Four storeys high in Sydney’s South Eveleigh precinct, silvery-blue saltbush and vibrant pink-sea fig sit among a blanket of warrigal greens and a hardy border of finger limes.

“Basically, what we have here is a mini food bowl,” says Christian Hampson of the native rooftop farm he and Clarence Slockee created in February as part of a collaboration with real estate group Mirvac.

A 7,000-square-foot (650-square-metre) greenhouse

By Jenna McKnight
Dezeen
July 4, 2019

Excerpt:

Up above, the team created a 7,000-square-foot (650-square-metre) greenhouse that “supplies the kitchen with the freshest organic greens available throughout the year”.

Managed by Altius Farms, the growing area features white, aeroponic towers that require no soil. The plants – which include lettuce, herbs and edible flowers – are regularly misted with nutrient-laden water.

The key objective behind the initiative is to increase green cover in urban pockets of Bihar, apart from adding to the income of the urban population.

Anil Kumar Ojha
Hindustan Times, Gaya
July 2, 2019

Excerpt:

As part of Bihar government’s initiative to encourage roof-top farming in urban areas, horticulture department officials have begun work to identify 230 “suitable” roof tops for which applications have already been invited.

The key objective behind the initiative is to increase green cover in urban pockets of Bihar, apart from adding to the income of the urban population. As incentives, the state’s horticulture department is even offering 50 per cent subsidy on the entire cost of the roof top farming.

In the first leg of the ambitious project, it has decided to launch roof top farming in four districts of Gaya, Patna, Bhagalpur and Nalanda.

What’s sure to be a buzzworthy draw are the Buffalo Bayou and downtown views from Skylawn, the sprawling five-acre rooftop park and sustainable organic farm that calls to mind downtown rooftop green spaces in New York City.

Steven Devadanam
Innovation Map
Jun 28, 2019

Excerpt:

Downtown Houston will soon have one of the largest rooftop gardens and farms in the world, thanks to the innovative reimagining of a forgotten structure. The Barbara Jordan Post Office, the massive government building nestled in the Theater District, will be transformed into a bustling, dynamic, mixed-use complex that’s meant to become the city’s new urban ecosystem.

Green roof systems retain 60-100% of the stormwater they receive. In addition, green roofs have a longer life-span than regular roofs.

By Rohit Poddar
Business Today
June 27, 2019

Excerpt:

Although Rooftop farming is fairly a new concept in India but there is a progressive increase in the number of green roofs and rooftop farms. Eco-conscious and organic-friendly urbanites are acknowledging the importance of sustainable living as it is the need of the hour to sustain in the changing ecological conditions. As more people are moving and migrating around the urban areas, urban agriculture is starting to be viewed as a sustainable way to produce and efficiently supply locally-grown fresh crops and vegetables to cities.

We talked to two actors, Will Seefried and Hannes Otto, who were married on a rooftop farm in the Brooklyn Navy Yard last August, with a ceremony (almost) officiated by Laura Linney.

By Kaitlin Menza
The Cut
Photograph By Les Loups
June 21, 2019

Excerpts:

Will: I personally made all the menus myself; I went through this whole process of melting this wax stuff on there to give it a raised glossy look. The watermelon-peach salad we had stands out in my mind. There was burrata, a delicious pasta. And a lot of the produce came from the farm, which is another amazing part of the Brooklyn Grange. The tomatoes in the tomato salad were picked that day. Dessert was by our friend Kira [Kira Lepine Williams], who owns two restaurants in Cape Town. There were three cakes: a Momofoku-inspired birthday cake, a carrot cake, and a flourless chocolate cake.

Viraj Puri, cofounder and CEO of Gotham Greens, talks with Amy Sowder, northeast editor of The Packer, during a summer tour for media, at the Brooklyn, N.Y., greenhouse location on top of Whole Foods Market. ( Amy Sowder )

By Amy Sowder
The Packer
June 19, 2019

Excerpt:

Adam Demartino, founder of Smallhold, described how Whole Foods shoppers can sometimes select the mushrooms they want from the farm and have it picked fresh for their carts. He took out and showed a substrate block of pink oyster mushrooms for the tour guests to see and smell.

How long does it take to grow?

“It depends on the species. Each of those levels is a different environment,” Demartino said. “We’re able to cycle the blocks in, week by week, so we’re able to meet weekly demand.”

“It’s cool being in the city,” she said. “It’s an opportunity to show that it can happen here and can help push for more land or unused space or rooftops to be used for agriculture.

By Alix Wall
Berkeleyside
June 17, 2019

Excerpt:

Ask Joanna Letz how she became a flower farmer and she finds it a little hard to answer. There wasn’t one particular aha moment, although farming does run in her family.

Nevertheless, the 35-year-old, Berkeley-raised entrepreneur has cultivated flowers on a farm for several years. The latest iteration of her venture comes with a twist, however, as her crops are sown and bloom on top of a downtown apartment building that many Cal students call home.

A few months ago, Letz’s business, Bluma Flower Farm, took over the rooftop plots in the Garden Village building on Dwight and Fulton that used to be home to Top Leaf Farms.

“Urban agronomy is hard, there’s chemistry, micro climates, lots of insects and pollution,” he said. “We use the stuff in the restaurant, so it’s gotta be good.”

By Jessica Steinberg
Times of Israel
June 16, 2019

Excerpt:

The rooftop kitchen farm is a challenge the culinary incubator took on when it opened L28, and one that’s more complicated than it looks, said Mizroch. There’s a towering building next door that cuts off a lot of sunlight, and the Ritz Carlton will soon begin construction on a 27-floor hotel across the street.

“Urban agronomy is hard, there’s chemistry, micro climates, lots of insects and pollution,” he said. “We use the stuff in the restaurant, so it’s gotta be good.”

Hunter’s Point South, Long Island City, Queens, NY, USA

By Linda Velazquez
Green Roofs
June 4, 2019

Excerpt:

Overlooking the East River, the 13th floor amenity terrace makes the most of dramatic views of the East River and in the building’s sunny southeast corner, a community urban farm gives residents the tools and plantings they need to grow their own organic crops.

The 2,300 SF urban farm is a community-building amenity that speaks to Hunter’s Point South’s mission to provide affordable housing in perpetuity for the City’s young families and essential service providers. Low-profile planters allow all residents to participate in the success of the farm, and GrowNYC Partners manages the Urban Farm, beehive and CSA program.