Urban Garden Initiative 🌱

Why Urban Gardens?

Sustainable future for city living

An urban garden or urban agriculture as it often called, refers to the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in urban areas. There are many different types of urban agriculture present in many cities today, including aquaculture, beekeeping, animal husbandry, and horticulture.

There are numerous benefits to urban agriculture and/or gardens and the way it transforms the urban environment:

Mitigates climate change by reducing both heat and air pollution in urban landscapes.
Helps conserve natural resources. Using wastewater for irrigation improves water management and increases availability of fresh water for household consumption. Solid waste can be transformed into resources such as fertilizer for growing agricultural products.
Vacant urban areas can be used for agricultural production including community gardens.
Local production of food allows numerous energy and economical savings. Energy normally consumed in transporting food from rural to urban centers is reduced drastically as is storage and product loss which results in food cost reduction.
An effective tool to fight against hunger and malnutrition since it facilitates access to healthy food by an impoverished sector of the urban population.

These urban gardens are essential in providing opportunity and growth for many city sectors and their inhabitants. It's also proven to be a very useful and effective educational tool to teach kids about healthy eating and meaningful physical activity.

An Urban Farm in Chicago

Garden Types

Urban Gardens and Farms

Gardens

Many communities make excellent use of small urban plots either at ground level or on rooftops, and make accessible to the public to cultivate plants for food, recreation and education. Community gardens give people the opportunity to learn about horticulture and thus get a better understanding of the process of producing food and other plants. In return, these gardens provide food to people in need.

Detroit Community Garden

An Urban Rooftop Farm

Farms

City/Urban farms are agricultural plots in urban areas, that have people working with animals and plants to produce food. These farms are usually community run and create awareness surrounding agriculture and farming to people who live in urbanized areas. Urban farming is a wide encompassing term as farming can be done in an individual's backyard or the rooftop of an apartment building. What's most important as that these farms are sources of food security for many communities around the world. While some urban farms have paid employees, most are done on a volunteer basis and other city farms operate as partnerships or co-ops within the city.

An Urban Rooftop Farm

Aquaponics

Aquaponics is a closed-loop farming technique that combines both aquaculture and hydroponics to create a self-sustaining ecosystem. This ecosystem includes a symbiotic relationship using fish waste to naturally fertilize plants while the plants filter and purify the water for the fish. This system thus minimizes water usage while also eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers, making this system eco-friendly and an efficient method for food production.

An Aquaponics Farm

Urban High Rise Gardens Concept

Vertical Farming

Vertical farming has emerged as a solution for sustainable urban agriculture. This type of system allows for crops to be cultivated in vertically stacked layers or inclined surfaces and even in controlled indoor environments. This helps maximize space utilization and can even facilitate year-round cultivation which is ideal for densely populated areas that have limited land space. Balcony spaces in large cities have proved useful for individual farming uses, whereas larger farms tend to employ hydroponics or even aeroponics which can allow plants to grow without soil, using nutrient-rich water or air as sources instead.

Urban High Rise Gardens Concept

Indoor Farms

Indoor farming is a method that cultivates plants indoors, free from the issues that present with traditional agriculture like weather fluctuations and limited land size. The indoor farming concept emerged as a solution to the ongoing challenges faced by conventional agriculture such as unpredictable weather patterns and urbanization taking up valuable arable land. Indoor farming offers an excellent sustainable alternative. These types of farms tend to use advanced techniques like hydroponics, aeroponics or aquaponics to cultivate plants. Having plants in a climate controlled system proves useful in maintaining the perfect condition for crops which in return provides superior agricultural products that meet safety requirements.

Indoor Farm

Markets and Co-ops

Urban Centers for Harvested Crops

Worldwide you can find countless farmers' markets that provide essential crops to consumers. In some cities, there are even rooftop markets that allow the produce to be kept in the same area helping to reduce its carbon footprint of being shipped and stored. From urban educational farms in Melbourne, Australia, to Brazil's "Cities Without Hunger" policies, to numerous farmers' markets in central cities in the United States, it's clear that the importance of growing healthy food in urban centers is undeniable. As more people move towards dense urban areas, the need for these urban gardens and farms will continue to increase.

When it comes to selling the food harvested, there are a few options within the urban centers. The first one is called a food co-op. Food co-op's are a distribution outlet that is organized as a cooperative, rather than through a public or private company. These co-op's are usually consumer membership based, where the decisions regarding the production and distribution of food are chosen by its members.

Another option for selling is through farmers' markets. These are physical retail marketplaces intended to sell foods directly by farmers to consumers. These shops can be either indoors or outdoors and have tables or stands where farmers sell their produce, live animals and plants. An example of a year round farmers' market is located in Los Angeles, California. The Los Angeles Farmers' Market is open seven days a week and has linked several local grocers together to provide varying food products. The market's central location in downtown Los Angeles provides the perfect interaction for a diverse group of sellers to connect with their consumers.

Urban Greens Co-op Market

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