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Research for a Handbook on

Growing Wild and Edible Plants in the Urban Landscape

Kathryn Lwin

GROWING WILD AND EDIBLE PLANTS IN THE URBAN LANDSCAPE

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. ABSTRACT 3

2. STUDY GOALS 4

3. APPROACH 5

8. VACANT LOTS

8.1 New York Growing Communities

8.2 Toronto Growing Communities

8.3 Milwaukee Growing Communities

8.4 Chicago Growing Communities

8.5 San Francisco Growing Communities

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9. POLLINATOR PARTNERSHIPS

9.1 City Partnerships

9.2 Botanical Partnerships

9.3 Pollinator Partnerships

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4. INTRODUCTION

4.1 River of Flowers

4.2 Pollination

4.3 Native v Non native

4.4 Urban Nature

4.5 Urban Agriculture

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10. KEY FINDINGS 81

11. CONCLUSION

82 5. BUILDINGS

5.1 Floating Farms

5.2 Aerial Apiaries

5.3 Rooftop restaurants

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12. RECOMMENDATIONS

13. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

84-86 6. TRANSPORT

6.1 Streetwise

6.2 Wild Waters

6.3 Rails for Trails

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14. REFERENCES 87

7. PARKS

7.1 Edible Parks

7.2 Parks Go Wild

40 APPENDICES

1. Agencies involved with Urban Farming in New York City

2. Brooklyn Bridge Park Plant List

3. Friends of the Urban Forest Plant List

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1. ABSTRACT

River of Flowers is a simple idea: work with the community to create trails or

‘rivers’ of flowers to provide forage and habitat for bees, butterflies and

pollinators in cities.

The most sustainable resource we have for producing food is the free pollination

service, carried out by billions of insects and other pollinators and vital to the

maintenance of wild plant communities and agricultural productivity. Wild bees

are more effective pollinators than farmed ones.

Native wild plants are preferable to non-native because they support the native

wild pollinator population. Pollination value could be added to all city greening

schemes and underpin urban food growing by selecting native wild pollinator-

friendly species over non-native plants.

Gardeners have the potential to become the nature reservists of the future,

helping to save urban wildlife. Depending on the plants grown, gardens can help

to maintain healthy pollinator populations in and around the city and aid the

movement of pollinators in the surrounding countryside.

Support for urban agriculture is growing due to concerns over the current

capacity to supply cities with fresh and affordable food in the future given the

global uncertainties over the economy, loss of fossil fuels and increased climate

change. More so than ever urban agriculture is becoming reliant on the free

services of pollinators at the very time when pollinators are declining.

To meet the challenge of two of the biggest problems of the 21st century, land use

and food security, there has been a huge groundswell of action in cities with many

communities taking matters into their own hands to make their cities more

sustainable and productive.

The post industrial world, punctuated by periods of recession, has given rise to

miles of disused lines of transport and acres of redundant factory areas, now

being converted into productive spaces.

Food growing is being brought into the heart of the city in the form of rooftop

farms, apiaries and restaurants, edible sidewalks, schoolyards and parks. Wild

plants are being grown in the urban landscape along elevated railways and

daylighted and restored rivers and creeks, in the new nature reserves of gardens,

as urban forests along streets and as companion plants in organic city farms.

Community organisations are creating their own miniature River of Flowers

along lines of transport using edible and wild plants. A relationship is being

created between street, garden and, farm, providing an urban trail for the pollen

gatherers to fly along.

There are extensive city government schemes supporting urban agriculture and

urban wilding schemes from community to commercial level. Partnerships

between the city and the community are being brokered by educational and

environmental organisations, which is facilitating the process of greening the city

and making it more sustainable for pollinators.


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2. STUDY GOALS The questions that this study seeks to address are:

Which innovative ideas and inventive practices demonstrated by urban

organisations growing wild and edible plants in North American cities would be

transferable to the UK to inspire and benefit similar groups there?

Would the concept of specifically planting for pollinators to create a River of

Flowers in urban areas be viable in North American cities?


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3. APPROACH

My intention is to grow a wild city. Since I cannot do this on my own, my

intention is to find others to work with to create a River of Flowers in every city.

In order to find urban projects growing wild and edible plants in the urban

landscape whose innovative ideas, practices and potential to strengthen the

pollination core of a city that would feed into a River of Flowers Guide to the Wild

City, I researched the agencies and organisations supporting urban food

production and urban conservation projects in five North American cities. These

were New York and Toronto in the Eastern side of the continent, Chicago and

Milwaukee in the mid region of North America and San Francisco in the Western

side of the continent. I also spoke with contacts working on urban wild and edible

projects in Boston, Corvallis, Guelph, Montreal, Portland OR and Los Angeles.

I arranged visits to the sites where I carried out informal interviews and

discussions and took photographs. I also talked face-to-face on Skype. Since my

purpose was also to find out whether the projects in each city would constitute a

potential pollination core or ‘River of Flowers’, I researched a wide range of

literature from political policymakers, the scientific community, conservation

based and food based NGOs and the popular press such as the New York Times

and the Chicago Tribune.

I talked with the founders and managers of urban food and urban wild projects in

municipal and educational institutions, botanical gardens, museums, NGOs, and

nonprofit and for profit enterprises including farms, community gardens,

restaurants, hotels and stores. I visited rooftops and balconies, pocket and bow

tie parks, parks, community gardens, brownfield sites and vacant lots.

Growing spaces included sites along lines of transport such as sidewalks,

roadways, railways and waterways, and the grounds of botanical gardens and

urban nature reserves. I mapped the organisations and the urban projects on the

River of Flowers website. I wrote a regular Wild City blog of my experiences using

photographs of the spaces and native wild flowering plants.

In this report, the term ‘urban landscape’ refers to both urban and suburban

areas. It also refers to the surfaces of the city, which are either hard and

impermeable, such as concrete, tarmac and stone, or soft and poorly biodiverse,

such as closely mown grass. These are surfaces, which wild native plants and

edible plants have the ability to enrich and ultimately transform into mini

ecosystems supportive of urban pollinators and other wildlife. The two criteria

that this report takes into account to decide whether or not a plant is ‘native or

non-native’, are the defined ecoregion and the biome the plant grows in.

The report examines and describes historical and current case studies of:

projects growing wild and edible plants in the urban landscape, which

represent potential role models of great ideas and good practice for

communities in other cities to emulate

city parks designed for the benefit of urban dwellers that have been

specifically modified to benefit native wild and edible insect-pollinated

plants, and by default their pollinators

partnerships between city government, non profit community

organisations, for profit urban farms and other stakeholders, which are

helping to add pollination value to the city


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4. INTRODUCTION 4.1 River of Flowers

There is much evidence to show that pollinator species are declining globally,

which is giving rise to increasing concerns about food security in the future. The

main reasons given for this decline are loss of forage and habitat due to

agricultural intensification and increasing urbanisation. Recent studies indicate

that urban areas have the potential to be beneficial for pollinators, and there is

more land available in cities than was previously thought. So one answer to this

dilemma is that cities should provide more forage and habitat by growing

pollinator pastures using the surfaces of the urban landscape.

River of Flowers is a simple idea: work with the community to create trails or

‘rivers’ of flowers to provide forage and habitat for bees, butterflies and

pollinators in cities. We can also link the new River of Flowers with groups in

other cities in the same eco region. So in a way, we act as a social network for

people planting for pollinators.

Our usual method of contact is via email, Facebook and Twitter. However

meeting contacts face-to-face, either in person or via Skype, has made a

significant difference to the strength and durability of the relationship, and our

ability to persuade contacts to incorporate more native wild plants in their

growing projects. This means that central to our work is to research what

pollinators require in terms of forage, food plants and habitat and to disseminate

such information in such a way that communities understand and engage with it.

We encourage groups to distinguish between indigenous wild bees and the largely

alien domesticated honeybees, and to ensure that the wild ones have sufficient

habitat since these don't have hives.

Since the issue of declining pollinators is a global one, our initial River of Flowers

mission to form partnerships with the community solely to create a River of

Flowers in London has now evolved into a model that has the potential to be

rolled out worldwide. Each new River of Flowers is unique to its city and the aim

is for it to become independent of the main River of Flowers Organisation as well

as self-directing because each city has different policies towards urban wild

landscaping. A River of Flowers in a city starts when a community group or

another organisation contacts us and initially maps three places where native

wildflowers and wild flowering trees are to be found in the city.

These wild areas could be areas that have sprung up naturally or been planted,

with or without edible crop plants or ornamentals. Since we are often in touch

with groups already successfully growing wild native plants or food plants, we

assist the new River of Flowers in its early stages, by connecting the starting

community group or organisation with these groups and by mapping the new

River of Flowers.

Each River of Flowers is named after the city or in the case of a large city such as

New York and London, after a borough or region of that city. Naming the River of

Flowers after its city means that new community groups and organisations can

easily join and add their spaces. It also keeps the focus on local native wild plants

and pollinators and puts us in a better position to advise the groups on these. If

we are not familiar with the native flora and fauna of a city, we introduce the

groups to local experts or source key websites for advice on which species of

native wildflowers to plant for specific urban areas. Once a city is mapped, it is

possible to see where the gaps of forage and habitat are, and where it would be

strategic to plant wild plants alongside edible crops. We map beehives too since

apiculture is a part of urban agriculture.


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Mapping makes it possible to see if too many beehives are being brought into an

area where there is too little forage available. Studies indicate that competition is

likely between the native wild pollinators and the alien honeybees, even though

many feed from different species of plants. This cannot be good for our city food

supply since we need more not fewer pollinators, and a greater biodiversity

overall. Farmed honeybees are more likely to succumb to disease so conserving

the wild pollinator population, which is more disease-resistant and diverse, is

paramount. Our mantra is: ‘feed the bees that feed us’ – especially the wild ones!

It might appear that River of Flowers is taking an anthropocentric stance, so

pervasive in the food movement, by preserving city pollination systems to ensure

a sustainable and affordable urban food supply for humans. It is true that River of

Flowers flows along the lines of least resistance, including the routes that urban

food growers and community gardeners have already carved out but in the

process of working with communities to create small yet viable, biodiverse

ecosystems in urban landscapes, and in informing communities about the value

of planting wild native plants as a food supply for native pollinators, our

approach is essentially biocentric one.

There are few if any pristine habitats left in the city and the urban environment

has distinct features of its own, for example, it is warmer, more polluted and

populated than the surrounding countryside and the buildings make it less

negotiable for flying insects. So by promoting native wild plants, River of Flowers

is helping to conserve biodiversity and protect pollination systems in the urban

environment.

4.2 Pollination

The most sustainable resource we have for producing food is the free pollination

service, carried out by billions of insects and other pollinators and vital to the

maintenance of wild plant communities and agricultural productivity. In 2005,

the economic value of insect crop pollination per year was estimated to be £120

billion globally, 3 billion in the United States and around £440 million in the UK.

Pollination is a key ecosystem service since about 70% of all edible crops in North

America and 84% of all edible crops in Europe require insect pollinators. These

crops include fruits, vegetables and stimulants such as nuts, spices, coffee and

chocolate. Many plants used to clothe and medicate us rely on insect pollinators.

Meat production as well since herds of cattle often graze on alphafa, an insect

pollinated crop. However, pollinating insects require more than our cultivated

crops to feed from. Since the crop season is a narrow one, sustenance is required

on either side of it for pollinators to survive. Native wild plants can provide a

forage buffer between the seasons to maintain a healthy pollinator population.

Bee pollination not only results in a higher number of fruits, berries or seeds, it

also gives a better quality of produce. An apple for example will only develop all

the seeds inside if the flowers has been pollinated by several bees and fully

fertilized. An apple flower can develop around ten seeds but if all the seeds do not

develop, the fruit itself will not develop where the seeds are missing and this

results in a poorly shaped apple of low weight. Native insects are often

overlooked as crop pollinators with much attention being focused on the plight of

the honeybee (Apis mellifera) but UK research suggests that the wild bees carry

out the majority of crop pollination. Farmed honeybees contribute to only about

10-15% of the pollination carried out in the UK.


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There are very few feral honeybees left in the UK (in the wilds of Scotland) and

honeybees are not native to North America at all and all the honeybees

pollinating crops are imported.

However, there are around 4,000 species of wild bees indigenous to North

America, and worldwide there are over 19,500 different species of bees. Wild bees

such as bumblebees and solitary bees are the unsung heroes of our food security,

and bumblebees are important pollinators of crops, such as strawberries,

raspberries and tomatoes. It has been estimated that the short-lived Blue

Orchard Mason Bee is around 250 times more effective a pollinator than a

honeybee and 250 of these tree nesting, solitary female bees can effectively

pollinate an orchard, which would require one or even two hives of honeybees.

Research shows that honeybees even perform better when they are pollinating an

orchard when bumblebees are present. Other important insect pollinators include

hoverflies, moths, butterflies, beetles and wasps, and in North America humming

birds and bats play a significant role.

4.3 Native v Non Native Species

It became apparent early on in discussions with my North American contacts,

that the term ‘native’ should prefix ‘wild’ when used in conjunction with wild

plants. Wildflowers do not have the lovely connotations as they do in the UK. The

US is burdened by alien wildflowers many of which are encroaching on the

remaining indigenous habitats.

Definitions of ‘native’ vary. The Sustainable Sites Initiative (2009) of the United

States defines a native plant as one which is ‘native to the EPA Level III Eco

Region of the site and is known to occur naturally within 200 miles of the site’.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency Landscaping Program

provides a broader definition of a native plant defining it as one that has ‘evolved

over thousands of years in a particular region (EPA Green Landscaping Native

Plants Brochure). These bring both distance and time into the equation, and beg

the question of how long a plant must be established in a given region in this era

of climate change? The generally accepted definition is that a plant is native if it

has existed and persisted in a natural landscape before the arrival of Europeans.

Another way of determining whether a plant is native or not is to see how it well

fits into a native ecosystem. A native wild plant requires no chemicals such as

fertiliser and pesticide, less watering and maintenance, and some cases is able to

grow in uncongenial conditions such as poor or shallow soils where cultivated

plants may fail to thrive. It is likely to be better adapted to local systems and help

to return the area to a healthy ecosystem providing forage for pollinators and

other fauna, and improving the overall biodiversity and food growing capacity of

the area. Or it might be a great companion plant by sequestrating nitrogen into

the soil and attracting beneficial insects for biological pest control.

Or, as in best-case scenario, a native wild plant might offer all of these benefits. It

might have a cultural significance, for example it may be a plant used by Native

Americans or Ancient Britons, and is part of the cultural heritage. Or it might be a

plant well appreciated by landscapers for its wonderful design and aesthetic

qualities of colour, texture and form.

Being native to a city does not determine how well a plant is able to grow there.

Distributed throughout any city of a specified Eco Region, there may be many

ecosystems or biomes where the growing conditions differ widely. A city could

have wetlands, woodlands, remnants of natural grassland and coastal areas.


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In some cities, there are distinct microclimates, where due to the variations in

temperature alone, one plant may grow better in one part of the city than

another. For example, the Mission District of San Francisco is distinctly warmer

than the rest of the city.

For years, gardeners in the US (and the UK too) have chosen to grow ornamental

landscape plants from China and other parts of the world rather than native

plants and native cultivars. One of the reasons for such a selection is that the

alien or non-native ornamentals were rarely eaten. So why is this? Plants cannot

move around so they have developed an astonishing array of static plant defence

systems including protecting their leaves and other plant parts with a species-

specific mixture of toxic chemicals. With very few exceptions, the native insects

herbivores, which include the larval forms of native butterflies and moths, are

only able to survive on native plants. So how can it be a good thing, as many

gardeners think, to starve out the insects before they eat the plants?

One of the concerns about the rise in invasiveness is based on the tremendous

loss of native indigenous species due to competition with alien species.

In the States, tall grass prairie once covered 140 million acres but today less than

4% remain and most lies in Kansas. North America has been colonized by wild

flora and fauna from the rest of the world for hundreds of years so there are

numerous alien ‘wild’ plants, a significant proportion of which are invasive.

Despite its innocuous behaviour in its own country, an alien wild plant can

become invasive in another where there is no appropriate predator to check its

growth. In North America, the twin scourges of Garlic Mustard (Allaria

petiolata) and Common Reed (Phragmites australis) have wrecked havoc, while

Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica) has acquired a terrifying reputation.

As territory diminishes, competition becomes more intense and nowhere more so

than in the cities. According to the 4sda economic Research Service, nearly 60%

of the US Population was living in rural areas in the 1900s. But that coin has

flipped, and the US Census Bureau recorded in 2008 that 83% of the 300 million

Americans now inhabit cities. This is a situation being reflected worldwide with

85% of people estimated moving to cities by 2050 from a potential global

population of 11 billion.

As the cities have grown, the borderline between urban and suburban begins to

blur. Where does the definitive urban landscape of a city begin and end? At the

centre? To the outskirts? Around some US cities, suburbia has increased by

nearly 6000% since the 1960s while some other areas of some cities have become

largely uninhabited.

In the suburbs, North Americans still maintain their love affair with sterile lawns

- perhaps these represent the order that many crave on the fringes of the city, and

are symbolic of being a ‘good neighbour’. In addition, four million linear miles of

roads have been paved on public throughways, and this is increasing. All of this

has taken so much land away from native wild plants and their pollinators with

the resultant degradation of biodiversity. We are losing our wildlife because we

have taken away forage and habitat by planting our cities and roads each an

obstacle course of hard, impermeable surfaces of concrete and tarmac, as well as

obstructive buildings, wind tunnels, traffic and pollution, and in the countryside

we plant our fields. Douglas Tallamy in his brilliant book ‘Bringing Nature Home” refers to research

by evolutionary biologists showing that the area required to sustain biodiversity

is almost the same as the area required to promote it in the first place.


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Tallamy points out that the consequence of this simple relationship is profound,

‘Since we have taken 95% of the U.S. from nature we can expect to lose 95% of the

species (flora and fauna) that once lived here unless we learn how to share our

living, working, and agricultural spaces with biodiversity.’

Tallamy states that urban and suburban areas have a part to play in restoring

biodiversity to a city. It has been estimated that in certain cities, up to 25% is

private garden space. Gardeners have the potential to become the nature

reservists of the future, helping to save urban wildlife. Not only gardeners but

farmers too! Growing native wild species in urban and suburban gardens and the

urban landscape could help to restore some of the lost biodiversity.

Tallamy comments that many cities lack suitable forage even where that city has

plenty of open green spaces and street trees, and he gives as an example, the

Chinese Kousa dogwood, which abounds despite the fact that it supports no

insect herbivores whatsoever.

It has been selected in preference to the native flowering dogwood (Cornus

florida) that supports 117 species of moths and butterflies. The equally non-

biodiverse Golden Rain tree, another species from China, which proliferates in

parks and on streets highlights the missed opportunity to plant one of the many

North America’s beautiful oaks along with the chance to support 532 species of

caterpillars, which will develop into pollinators as well as providing nutritious

meals for birds. With a little tweaking of species, and the streets could run with

‘rivers’ of flowers for pollinators and other wildlife.

Of course, if we do not feed the larval young, we will not get the adults especially

if that insect is reliant on a specific plant.

A case in point is the Monarch butterfly that lives almost exclusively on the

Milkweed plant, a native perennial plant once considered a weed by farmers. The

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) was nearly eradicated through wanton

destruction of its habitat and use of pesticides. Monarchs have an incredible

journey from Canada across the US and into Mexico where they overwinter every

year. The skies can sometimes be filled with hundreds of millions of these orange

butterflies migrating to sanctuary, a magnificent spectacle. So now habitat

enhancement along the entire length of the Monarch's two migration paths are

critical to its survival and a ‘Monarch Watch’ has been set up across the states

over which the butterfly migrates.

However, things are changing, albeit slowly. Native wild planting has been

encouraged for a number of years in public areas across North America including

regional species of Milkweed such as the orange flowered Butterfly Weed

(Asclepias tuberosa). Suburbia is being gradually subverted by nonprofit

organisations such as Edible Estates founded by Los Angeles-based artist Fritz

Haeg, who aims to persuade people to grow food on their front lawns to

demonstrate a more productive use of land.

Parks and other open spaces that were once vast areas of manicured grass

requiring costly maintenance in terms of watering, mowing and chemicals,

notoriously lacking in biodiversity and almost completely lacking in forage for

pollinators and other wildlife, are being transformed into productive urban

orchards, urban farms, community food gardens and native prairie wildflower

meadows.

Other types of urban forage, besides native wild forage, are becoming available at

an even more rapid rate.


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As a result of recession and changing attitudes towards managing our resources,

more and more people have taken to growing their own food across North

America, and this food movement has made a tremendous impact in many North

American cities. It has also brought urban rooftop farming to the urban

landscape.

The term ‘urban landscape’ is defined variously as the traits, patterns and

structure of a city’s specific geological area including its biological composition,

physical environment and social patterns. It can also refer to the space all

around, between and on top of buildings, streets, squares, parks, gardens, urban

woods, cemeteries, railways, waterways and other types of open space.

Thus ecology in the urban landscape is not relegated to its parks, gardens and

nature reserves but exists on these overlooked spaces of rooftops, cracks in the

sidewalk, narrow islands between streets and vacant land areas. The urban

landscape is not necessarily green but often contains green plant components

including grass, ground cover, ornamental shrubs and trees performing the

functions of cooling, shading, filtering pollutants, absorbing water and

supporting urban wildlife.

Since cities are principally for people, cultural, horticultural, social and aesthetic

values need be taken into account as well as the scientific when landscaping a

city. The urban landscape may have aesthetic value and provide places for people

to congregate and use for a variety of activities. There are also many health and

social benefits when derelict open spaces and vacant land, used as informal waste

dumpsites or meeting places for drug dealing, are converted into safe and

productive green spaces in the form of parks, pocket parks and community

gardens.

These help to combat the social isolation and alienation in a city by increasing

social interaction, improving the ‘look’ of the neighbourhood and engendering a

greater sense of belonging and community.

Rapid urbanisation and climate change have affected the quality of life in cities

and put a strain on ageing city transport, services and energy infrastructure

especially as cities have continued to grow. With reference to the abilities of

plants to green and clean, many urban landscaping schemes are designed to:

• reduce the heat island effect through greening the surfaces of buildings

with plants and shading the streets with trees

• improve air quality through sequestration of CO2 and filtering pollutants

by such planting schemes

• reduce storm water runoff through planting on roofs and in rain gardens,

bioswales and overspill lakes in parks

• reduce anti-social behaviour by improving areas of the city through the

creation of new parks, pocket parks, community gardens and urban

farms in abandoned lots, brownfield sites and other forgotten corners

More recently, some designers are adding pollination value to all the above

schemes and underpin urban food growing by selecting native wild pollinator-

friendly species over non-native plants.


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4.4 Urban Nature

Bringing nature to cities takes place through three main approaches: (1)

conservation of habitat (2) restoration of natural landscapes and (3) planting for

direct human benefit both functional and design-led.

Conservation approaches more often than not are about keeping people away

from nature since nature is perceived to be ‘unspoilt’ and human beings the

spoilers. An urban approach to conservation is more common in the post-

industrial climate where old industries have closed down, railway links been

abandoned and waterways cleaned up. The land left vacant develops an urban

ecology of its own, which can be fostered, studied and promoted. However, the

element of protection against human interference still prevails here just as with

conservation outside the city but there is more of a sense of the city integrating

with nature.

Urban re-wilding can also come about through restoration where the landscape is

manipulated to return it to some kind of remnant of its former self. At these sites,

plants considered ‘weeds’ or plants ‘in the wrong place’ such as garden escapees

and non-natives are removed to allow native plants to germinate from the

indigenous seed bank. Surveys are taken and records of the pre-European habitat

consulted to restore the land back to its original composition of indigenous plants

while padding this out with plants of local provenance.

Virtually all planting in cities is for human benefit since cities are created for

people but this can still have a considerable spin-off for nature.

This approach includes specifically planting native wildflowers for pollinators to

support the urban food supply, integrating wildflowers with edible crops in

organic urban farming, holding educational wildflower displays and festivals as

well as urban landscape design schemes that may have a lot of biodiversity value

or not as in the case of green walls or uninformed street tree plantings. The Trust

for Public Land is working with communities, the municipalities and various

stakeholders to create some grand projects such as the Harlem Greenway, The

606 in Chicago and the Bay Area around San Francisco.

All three approaches bringing nature to cities are needed if we are to create

healthy core of urban nature to support pollination in cities. However, with the

current passion for growing food and turning a small backyard into a productive

farm and the increasing awareness of the value of native over non native plants,

there is an opportunity here to educate growers of all kinds, amateur and

professional, about how important pollination systems to the city and to

encourage city governments to take a serious look at how to best support

pollination systems in their city.

4.5 Urban Agriculture

Urban agriculture is hardly new. Growing food for human consumption was the

way that cities began when settlements formed around areas of good soil and easy

access to water so in a sense growing for food or urban agriculture is central to

life in the city. Until the mid-nineteenth century, many cities in the US including

New York City were mainly farmland, which were then densely planted with

buildings, both residential and industrial.


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In the built up areas of US cities, a state-wide programme of allotment gardens

began in the late 1890s in response to the effects of economic depression on

families. As part of his educational reforms, John Dewey encouraged gardens in

schools and, by 1910, it is estimated that there were 80,000 allotment gardens

across the States.

During both world wars in the UK as well as the US, the need for growing food in

community gardens became paramount because not only was most of the

agricultural labour force away fighting overseas, there were also problems

transporting food by sea, rail and road. Nearly 20 million Americans planted

‘victory gardens’ during World War II, producing 44 per cent of the nation’s fresh

vegetables. Neighbours pooled their resources to plant different types of crops in

these ‘victory gardens’ ranging from backyards, vacant lots to city rooftops, and

exchanged food with one another. The Federal Government provided extension

agencies to supply seed, fertiliser and gardening tools but when the war ended, so

did the government promotion of victory gardens. Some survived and the

American Community Gardening Association, still a voice for urban horticulture,

emerged out of this movement.

During the recessions of the 1970s and 1990s up to the present day, enthusiasm

for urban gardening has continued to escalate, involving all income groups. In

2009, First Lady Michelle Obama planted a White House edible garden as part of

her ‘Let’s Move’ initiative. The Community Garden movement in US cities has

resulted in hundreds of small community gardens where food and flowers are

grown. Through the efforts of key individuals such as Liz Christy, founder of the

Green Guerillas, and key organisations, land has been steadily reclaimed for the

community.

In the low-income districts, funding has helped to bring this about but ironically

these are often the most vulnerable areas where subsequent development has

resulted in demolition of many of these community gardens.

Community gardens range from the original ‘victory gardens’ to newer city

greening schemes including pocket parks and the beautification schemes

planters, tree beds and gardens on urban sidewalks and street corners. Some

community gardens only grow flowers and some only food, but magically, there

are an increasing number of gardens growing native wild plants. Some

community gardens are owned in trust by nonprofit organisations that offer

assistance to low-income families, children groups, helping them to acquire land

in the first place and training people to garden the gardens.

Besides providing fresh fruit and vegetables, generating a sense of belonging to a

neighbourhood and simultaneously improving it, urban community gardens

connect people to their environment physically and emotionally, and are valuable

where green space is at a premium such as in the low income areas. Some offer

education and training to local youth and adults.

Community gardens narrow the gap between rich and poor where access to

growing space is concerned. Depending on the plants grown, gardens can help to

maintain healthy pollinator populations in and around the city and aid the

movement of pollinators in the surrounding countryside.

Every year more and more people are moving to the cities placing a greater and

greater demand on the urban food supply. Cities are expanding into the suburbs

and suburbs into the semi-rural. This rapid urbanisation runs parallel with a

rapid increase in urban poverty and urban food insecurity.


14

In the US, this can also be related to the intense periods of recession in which

whole areas within some cities have become blighted, with homes and streets

abandoned. It is estimated that 49 million Americans are currently experiencing

food insecurity with another 23 million living in ‘food deserts’ where little or no

fresh produce is available. Cities need to feed their citizens and to ensure this

they need to ‘feed the bees that feed us’. According to the Food and Agriculture

Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), at least one quarter of all agricultural

land is seriously degraded due to poor farming practices. The FAO’s definition of

degradation extends beyond soil and water issues and includes biodiversity loss

and damage to pollination systems.

However, the tide is turning. Urban agriculture is undergoing a powerful

renaissance. In 2011, 38% of American households or around 41 million people

took food production into their own hands and started growing their own

vegetables and fruits, and not only in the States. It is estimated that around 800

million people a year worldwide are practicing urban agriculture. People are re-

connecting with the land because they want fresh food and to know where it

comes from.

Besides planting their own gardens at home, more people are supporting urban

farms and farmers’ markets full of locally grown produce, as well as eating at

restaurants and buying from stores, which rely on locally sourced edibles.

Communities are supporting one another to earn more about growing and to

teach the young where food comes from.

Support for urban agriculture is growing due to concerns over the current

capacity to supply cities with fresh and affordable food in the future given the

global uncertainties over the economy, loss of fossil fuels and increased climate

change. Locally based urban agriculture could also address a number of problems

affecting cities all over the world such as rising chronic diet-related disease

among the population, unemployment and pollution due to storm water run off

and food waste and diminishing open access to space and nature.

Some urban farmers are responding to land insecurity, a constant issue in the

city, by developing creative modular farming systems without access to subsoil

such as mobile raised beds, hydroponics, aquaponics and greenhouses are

springing up. Included in the remit of urban agriculture are beekeeping

(apiculture) and the keeping of fish such Tilapia for aquaponics (aquaculture).

Some groups are keeping livestock such as chickens or growing mushrooms

(myoculture). There are more organisations supporting this renaissance such as

Farm Start US and From Field to Fork in the States as well as the HomeGrown

movement in Canada.


15

5.0 BUILDINGS

Roof top growing is not for the faint hearted.

A roof has a diabolical surface, similar to the ‘hell’ of the sidewalk and plagued

with the same questions that prevail on the ground: how to maintain soil life,

good irrigation and effective protection against the elements, except these

problems are magnified several stories up in the air. Plus you need a lift or super

strong backs! Nevertheless, roof top growing has its passionate adherents

because it makes use of part of the urban landscape that would otherwise be

wasted dead space.

Each city building planted, displaces the soil and all that lives on it, and since

most are crowned with lifeless, rainproof, bituminous hells or asphalt

purgatories, conversely a living roof is teeming with life, millions of soil creatures

and pollinators, and birds in the meadows, prairies or farms in the sky!

List of Organisations

Floating Farms

Eagle Street Rooftop Farm

Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm

Brooklyn Navy Yard Farm

Access Alliance Green Roof

Big Carrot Green Roof

A Rooftop in Toronto

Toronto Balconies Bloom

Gary Comer Center Rooftop Farm

Aerial Apiaries

Fairmont Hotels Toronto

UrbanBeeSF

Marshall’s Farm Bees

Rooftop Restaurants

flour + water

Roberta’s Restaurant

Uncommon Ground

True Nature Foods


16

‘I want to farm yet stay with my friends in the city’

Ben Flanner

Brooklyn Grange Farm


17

5.1 Floating Farms

Eagle Street Rooftop Farm

The leader in urban farming in New York is the Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm

founded by Ben Flanner, but its precedent at only 6,000 square feet is the Eagle

Street Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, also founded by Ben Flanner in

conjunction with food educator Annie Novak. Eagle Street Rooftop Farm works

in tandem with a community supported agriculture (CSA) program and

participates with Growing Chefs, whose mantra is ‘food education from field to

fork’. The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, Brooklyn Grange is one of the few places in

New York you can catch a view of a bed of lettuce growing against the backdrop of

the Manhattan skyline.

Brooklyn Grange Farm

Ben wanted to ‘farm yet stay in the city with my friends’, so he quit his job in

finance to become an urban farmer, and went on to start up two even more

gigantic city farms, Brooklyn Grange and Brooklyn Navy Yards. The former took

a while to start up since he had to find ‘a landlord with guts’! Brooklyn Grange is

sited on 2.5 acres of industrial warehouse rooftop in Queens, NYC and has to be

walked along its length to fully appreciate how vast this roof top is. Ben and his

team grow hundreds of thousands of vegetables without the use of pesticides or

other chemicals.

Ben is a fan of companion planting to prevent pest attack. Despite being six

stories up in the air, aphids as well as beneficial insects have made their way up

on the roof in droves.

However, since they have increased the variety of plants grown rooftop farm, the

problem of pest attack has greatly lessened. Surely, a fervent argument against

monoculture!

Brooklyn Grange grows plenty of wild companions, red clover and vetch as winter

cover crops to hold down the soil during bitter winds. Being legumes (Pea

Family) these bring nitrogen into the soil. A sprinkling of cornflowers dusts the

rooftop. Although not native, these are often grown in the UK as companions to

edibles in the UK to attract a wide range of pest-eaters including ladybugs

(ladybirds) and parasitic wasps. The farm has expanded way beyond its initial

mission to grow vegetables in the city. There are egg-laying chickens and a

commercial apiary. As with Eagle Street, it is surreal yet rather wonderful to

watch people picking peppers against a skyline of iconic Manhattan buildings.

Meals up on the roof in the evening with these buildings silhouetted against the

sky must be magical!

Other notable rooftop farms in New York City include Gotham Greens also

created by Goode Green, with rooftop greenhouses and a ground level farm, and

the Fifth Street Farm blooming atop the Earth School on Avenue B, Manhattan

among others. Using sustainable agricultural techniques, young students learn

how to grow kale and basil among other edibles, in their classrooms in the sky

and on their rooftop plots.

Rooftops are highly exposed to wind, sun, rain and drought yet not always

vulnerable to the elements if preparations are made in time. Winds vary in their

savagery.


18

During Hurricane Sandy, Eagle Street and Brooklyn Grange endured 70 mph

winds while hard pressed staff and volunteers prepared for the storm in advance

by picking all harvestable crops and placing the chickens in the market room. But

the farm’s green roof drainage system held up in the storm.

Brooklyn Navy Yard Farm

Brooklyn Grange’s second farm at historic Brooklyn Navy Yards, installed during

2012 on the rooftop of Building no. 3 did not suffer the hurricane so well. A

massive 65,000 sq ft roof urban farm, Brooklyn Navy Yard Farm towering eleven

stories over the East River is now the largest in New York. Ironically, the

Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Green Infrastructure

Stormwater Management Initiative had financed this green roof, with the

intention that the farm should manage over one million gallons of storm water

each year to ease the burden on the Red Hook Wastewater Pollution Control

Plant, servicing 32,000 acres of Northwest Brooklyn. It was hoped this would

ultimately reduce the amount of waste water that overflows into the city’s open

waterways. But no one anticipated the force of Hurricane Sandy!

Chase Emmons is the Special Projects and Chief Beekeeper at the Brooklyn Navy

Yards, and he had just taken charge of some twenty-five beehives donated last

year by a retired Pennsylvania beekeeper. Each contained around 40,000 super

fit bees with reputedly pristine genetics when Sandy struck. Only the one

Hurricane Hive survived. However, since then new hives have been introduced at

the Brooklyn Navy Yards, and an apiary of 290 hives now lies in the 300 acres of

its grounds. The Brooklyn Grange Bees are thriving. Life goes on!

Although many New Yorkers kept illegal hives, beekeeping was not permitted in

New York City until a change in the law in 2010. Individual beehives are now

popping up all over the city on the roofs or in back yards. Urban farms such as the

Brooklyn Navy Yards, can accommodate huge apiaries have been set up but most

are small operations.

Although bees can fly to forage up to four miles from their hive, they are

intrinsically lazy despite the myths of the ‘busy bee’, they prefer to forage from

local sources where they don’t have to fly too far. There is a funny story going

round about the red honey from Red Hook, a largely industrial but rapidly

gentrifying neighborhood. Local honeybees were sourcing the readily accessible

bright red syrup from a maraschino cherry factory, which turned their honey

blood red and horrified their beekeeper until he worked out what had happened.

Red Hook Red Honey is extremely rare now and commands a high price as does

the honey from the hives once lodged at Red Hook Urban Farm and the

Rockaways before Sandy.

New York could be considered the international capital of rooftop urban farming

but other cites in North America, including Toronto, Chicago and San Francisco,

and even a few cities in Europe are coming up fast.


19

Access Alliance Green Roof (Toronto)

In Toronto, Lara Lucretia Mrosovsky, who manages the Access Alliance

Roof above a community health centre - the first health organisation to have an

organic green roof in Ontario let alone Toronto - invited me and my guide

community gardener and medicinal plant expert Zora Igniatovic to see the roof.

The rooftop kitchen garden provides the local residents, mainly new immigrants,

refugees and their families, with fresh food. The Green Access program uses

the Green Roof as a launch pad for community education on the environment and

healthy eating. Local volunteers come together to tend the garden.

It’s not a huge rooftop farm, only 6,500 square feet in size, but produces around

40 varieties of cultivated vegetables, integrated with culinary and medicinal herbs

as well as wild native plants such as Purple Coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea),

Blackeyed Susan (Rudbekia hirta), Nodding Onion (Allium cernum), Harebell

(Campanula rotundifolia), Lance-leaf Coreopis (Coreopsis lanceolata), Prairie

Smoke (Geum trifolium), Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia spp.), Wild Columbine

(Aquilegia canadensis) and Western Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis

margaritacea). Lara had created pollinator habitats: soft sandy areas for mining

bees and bee boxes for the cavity dwellers.

Lara has written a brilliant little book entitled ‘An Illustrated Guide to Growing

Food on Your Balcony’, distributed without copyright. As well as sections on

native plants and pollinators, the book includes ancient remedies for pest control

indoors using Neem and Tea Tree Oil, and for outdoors using hot Scotch Bonnet

chillies and garlic. Beekeeper Maria Kasstan has written an article on ‘Seed’.

Big Carrot Green Roof

Along the same street as the Access Alliance building although several miles

further down the road, the productive roof of the Big Carrot Natural Food Market

has been providing organically grown, non-GMO and environmentally safe

products since the 1980s. Certified by Ecocert Canada to process and package

organic products in its juice bar, and spice, cheese and produce departments, the

fresh rooftop produce is sold in the Big Carrot store. Zora and I paid it a visit and

I was surprised to see what a great resource the roof had become for the local

community. As with the Access Alliance Green Roof, a key goal of the Carrot

Green Roof is to encourage local growers such as CultivateTO, and engage the

community in caring for the environment and healthy eating. The Big Carrot

Green Roof has a strip meadow of colourful native wildflowers running down

right down the centre of the roof, and a large covered area where various

community events take place.

A Rooftop in Toronto

However, as in the UK, most rooftop gardens in North American cities are neither

commercial nor nonprofit enterprises but are flourishing on private residences

often completely hidden from view. I was lucky to be invited to see one of these

jewels of the city - the spectacular ‘garden in the sky’ on Johanne Daoust’s roof in

Toronto. Every so often, on my journey, I came across someone who is not only a

gifted, growing genius but also an extremely generous one, willing to be an

inspiration to others. Johanne publishes her ideas on Flickr and advises her many

followers by email. She provided me with a lot of information on the problems of

rooftop growing for River of Flowers to use any way we chose to such as on our

website or in the River of Flowers Guide to the Wild City.


20

‘Each spring a Queen bumblebee visits my roof’

Johanne Daoust Rooftop Farmer Toronto


21

The issues facing rooftop growers are the same everywhere: How to: (1) Maintain

soil health; (2) Water effectively; (3) Protect against the elements; and (4)

Control pests. For the growing medium, Johanne uses a soil-less recipe in

common with many rooftop and hydroponic growers because it is lighter than

soil and in some ways more manageable. Her recipe includes worm castings,

rotted garden and kitchen compost to encourage mycorrhizae and provide

nitrogen and glacier rock dust for its minerals among other ingredients. Johanne

amends her soil every year by emptying out her planters so she can revive it

whereas some of the other rooftop growers in Toronto, New York and Chicago,

prefer to rotate their crops. Johanne does this in order to check the sub-irrigation

watering system (SIPs) at the same time. SIPs help to solve the ever-present

problem of watering a rooftop garden or farm without getting algae build-up or

dehydration. If automated, SIPs release the grower from every day management.

Johanne protects her vegetables with cages and netting and her Flickr site details

a range of framing systems and other equipment including a variety of SIPs that

she has tested. Johanne directed me to sites on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and

various useful blogs, which show how other people have experimented with these

all over the world. Her favourite framing system is the Build-a-Ball Trellis

System. Covering plants protects against wind, heavy rain, occasional hailstorms

and excess sun. Erecting framing means that Johanne can use clear plastic sheets

in spring to plant early, landscape cloth in summer to protect her lettuces from

bolting, and wire mesh and bird netting in the autumn to deter crop marauders

such as pesky squirrels and inquisitive raccoons! As for pest attack, Johanne has

been lucky so far having only experienced one Cucumber Beetle infestation and a

few bouts of Powdery Mildew on the zucchini (courgettes), kept at bay with

regular milk sprays!

Johanne was keen to try out growing native wild plants as well on the roof to

attract beneficial insects both pollinators and pest controllers. She is a great lover

of bees and told me that early every spring, a large bumblebee follows her for a

couple of weeks or so staying by her side like a tiny companion as she walks

around her rooftop tending her plants, and then it disappears entirely. Other

bumblebees come and go but this one is distinct and almost certainly a queen

from the description of its size and appearance. A queen would be likely to vanish

from view once she has found her nesting site but it could not be the same queen

every year because only new queens survive over the winter. But we do not know

enough about what bees communicate to one another or how they do this. I

would like to think that before she dies, the old queen describes Johanne’s garden

to her young successor, and tells her to go to the rooftop garden as soon as spring

is sprung because it’s paradise for bees!

Toronto Balconies Bloom

Balconies can be productive spaces on buildings too. Toronto Balconies Bloom,

founded by Fern Mosoff and her partner Paul Magder, is a volunteer project to

inspire and support residents with balconies to create thriving balcony gardens in

the city of Toronto. Toronto has acres of untapped growing space on its balconies,

and an opportunity for creating a peaceful and pleasurable living environment

while at the same time improving the air people breathe. Toronto Balconies are

blooming all over the city but the lovely display I went to see, was at a housing

block at the intersection of Church St. and Alexander St. Given the number of

high rise buildings in cities, promoting more native wild plantings on balconies

sounds like a good plan.


22

Gary Comer Center Rooftop Farm (Chicago)

While farmers in post-industrial cities like Detroit and Cleveland might be able to

find acres upon acres of abandoned land ripe for cultivation, in New York and

Chicago most land comes at a high premium, which is why would-be farmers in

these places are coveting spaces that they might not have to wrestle from

developers, such as rooftops that are already green. Anyone who has seen The

Boss series, knows that Chicago loves a green roof! Chicago City Hall roof that

was featured so brilliantly in the TV show is not for show to the general public – I

tried contacting by email and speaking to security guards to no avail!

The City of now claims nearly 400 roofs are green or partly green including the

simply glorious floral roof in South Chicago, atop the Gary Comer Youth Center

that was founded by the philanthropist Gary Comer. The rooftop has been

transformed into a third of an acre rooftop farm that produces over 1,000 pounds

of organic edibles, including vegetables, herbs, and flowers per year while

teaching urban young people where food comes from.

Urban farms have increasingly proved to be an effective tool to teach children and

parents about healthy eating and physical activity. Set in one of Chicago’s poorest

areas, a typical ‘food desert’, the Gary Comer Youth Center also runs a ground

level farm just across the road. The fresh bounty is used in the Center’s café to

feed around 175 students per day, finds its way to a youth-led farmers’ market

and through an entrepreneurial project, Comer Rooftop Crops where it ends up

in up market restaurants in downtown Chicago. Students eat their lunch and pick

the fresh food up on the roof itself – a kind of alfresco restaurant in the sky.

I was taken there by our stalwart River of Flowers supporters in Chicago, Roger

Thryselius and Justin So who not only drove me to south Chicago but also to

Milwaukee the following day.

Manager Marjorie Hess and her students showed me around the breathtaking

roof, an expanse of vibrantly coloured native wild plants such as Purple

Coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) growing alongside vegetables and herbs – a

River of Flowers’ dream come true - nature and nuture blooming together!

Other roof top farms in Chicago include the Urban Canopy, a rooftop farm

located on the rooftop of The Plant building. Probably the most unusual place for

a farm is the vertical aeroponic tower garden in the Rotunda Building of O’Hare

International Airport. Visitors arriving and departing can see the herbs, greens,

and tomatoes growing there.

It’s such a great idea to have a kitchen garden on the roof of a restaurant, I am

not surprised that these are springing up in cities across North America. Driven

by the passion to cook seasonal and sustainable food and not satisfied to source

food only from local farms, some restaurateurs and hoteliers are taking the

initiative to install these as well as beehives on their roofs to supplement what is

bought from family farms. Some even offer public tours of their rooftop gardens,

greenhouses and the serial hives of their aerial apiaries.


23

5.2 Aerial Apiaries

Fairmont Hotel Bees

Many of the Fairmont Hotels have grow gardens next to their aerial apiaries. The

bee garden has herbs such as lemon balm and red basil growing with floral forage

including asters and edible pansies to feed the bees and juicy verdant foliage of

herbs to feed the customers below not to mention the rooftop honey, which finds

its way into drinks, desserts and truffles among other delicacies below. The

quirkily named hives on the Royal York Fairmont Hotel roof, The Honeymoon

Suite, The Royal Suite, the V.I. Bee Suite, The Bee & Bee, Stay-in-Hive and the

Honeycomb Combo, managed by Melanie Coates of the Toronto Bee Cooperative

Not only the honeybees were tasting the delights of the herbal feast. Dancing

around the planters were a huge range of wild bees including the bright green

Agapostemon bees and hoverflies, more than at any other place I visited. The

Fairmont in San Francisco is equally bee-endowed. Two beekeepers from River of

Flowers Madrid, Violeta Roche and Fernando Magdeleno, studying at UC

Berkeley, took photographs of the aerial edible gardens and the rooftop bees.

Urban BeeSF

Terry Oxford, founder of Urban BeeSF is insistent that unlike large-scale

commercial honey producers, she never uses any plastics, refined sugars or corn

syrups, mite pesticides, chemical medications or antibiotics inside any hives. It’s

a pristine operation and from hive to jar, only wood, stainless steel, glass and

bees ever come in contact with the honey. Healthy beehives can and do flourish in

the city because thanks to the Friends of the Urban Forest, the City of San

Francisco and its many environmentally conscious citizens, San Francisco fairly

bursts with pesticide-free flowering trees all year long.

Terry and partner Brian Linke look after the beehives at number of restaurants

with bees on the roof to feed the customers below. The story goes that Brian

Linke didn't know a thing about bees until he started dating Terry and helping

her with the hives she had been keeping on top of her San Francisco high-rise

apartment for years, but he learned fast.

The two had a habit of walking around the city at night, and one evening they

found themselves staring into the window of the open kitchen at Quince, a

restaurant owned by chef Michael Tusk, who also owned the Cotogna next door.

As Brian and Terry stood there, Michael came out to say hello, and after a few

introductions, Terry mentioned that she had always wanted to put beehives on

top of a restaurant. Coincidentally that was just what Michael Tusk had been

thinking about doing too. A serendipitous meeting indeed!

A month and a half later, four beehives were in residence on the shared rooftop

over the two restaurants, and roasted carrots with rooftop honey was on the

Cotogna's menu. UrbanBeesSF are responsible for buzzing up many restaurants

in the San Francisco area including Nopa, that lies north of Panhandle, Tony's

Pizza Napolitana at Washington Square, the Mission Beach Café, which has four

of their beehives and two more on Farm:Table on Post Street. The Jardiniere is

home to thousands of their bees that live on top of the two-story brownstone on

Hayes Street and dine nearby at the glorious Hayes Valley Farm. In Oakland, the

beekeeping duo have installed three hives on the roof of Blue Bottle Coffee's

roasting facility,


24

Marshall's Farm Bees

Urban BeeSF is not the only beekeepers bringing bees closer to the dining table.

Helene Marshall, owner of Marshall's Farm, has managed a large bee community

at the Culinary Institute of America for 15 years, and looks after hives on

the Fairmont Hotel roof. Marshall's Farm started selling honey to restaurants

years ago, and maintains about 80 different bee communities across the Bay

Area, including six beloved hives for Thomas Keller at The French Laundry in

Yountville.

5.3 Rooftop Restaurants

flour + water restaurant (San Francisco)

Even the divine flour + water restaurant, an Italian gourmet eatery, has popped

their own hives on their rooftop to accompany their garden, and hosted a bee-

centric art exhibit at their bee-launch. David Steele, David White, and chef

Thomas McNaughton planted a 450-square-foot rooftop garden, which provides

about 5 percent of the vegetables used in the dishes, including carrots, herbs, and

spinach. The chefs also forage for wild plants three or four times a week around

the San Francisco Bay Area. Their second restaurant and store, called Central

Kitchen, is only one block away from flour + water, and has an apiary as well as a

rooftop garden. Flour + water lies so close to the Friends of the Forest floral

sidewalk plantings along Harrison that I began to think that a bee friendly,

circular ‘river’ of flowers was blooming in this particular area just for me. As if to

prove me right, while I was standing in line at the Central Kitchen buying my

rooftop-grown zucchini, a honeybee landed (and maybe tried to pollinate) my

bright lime green jacket. I gently placed it on an aster growing in the sidewalk just

outside the door and it buzzed off!

Roberta’s (New York)

The San Francisco Bay Area, with its year-round warm and moist climate, might

arguably be the epicenter of the locavore movement in the States, but the best-

known restaurant with a rooftop farm is the insanely popular Roberta Spizza’s

restaurant ‘Roberta’s’ in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Chef Carlo Mirachi is passionate

about urban farming and community involvement, and the restaurant owners

helped to found Brooklyn Grange Urban Farm in Queens with Ben Flanner.

Two cargo containers on the restaurant's roof are used for cultivating crops

including some heirloom varieties and Melissa Metrick, the gardener, has to fit a

lot of growing into the tiny space. The two roof top garden areas now have hoop

house frames over the garden beds, one covered in plastic so that the purple and

green basil can bask in the heat.

Everywhere you look, there are plants. Tomatoes clamber up trellises, perky baby

greens glow green between the tomatoes and bright herbs and edible flowers are

peeping out everywhere. Brassica flowers are left to bloom to provide plenty of

pollen and nectar for passing bees passing. There is lots of companion planting

going on. Melissa is not only growing edibles next to edibles, carrots beside leeks

and wildflowers blooming with fruit trees. An orchard and raspberry bushes in

reclaimed plastic brewery containers overflows with chamomile and wild pansy,

and is positively buzzing with bees.


25

‘We experiment with food and flowers’

Farmer Jen Uncommon Ground


26

Uncommon Ground on Devon (Chicago)

No less impressive is Mike and Helen Cameron’s family-owned restaurant,

Uncommon Ground in Chicago, with its latest ‘small is beautiful’ rooftop urban

farm, the first certified organic rooftop farm in the States, providing uber fresh

produce to be savoured moments after picking down in the restaurant below.

Up on the roof, there are even a few tables for special guests dotted among the

fronds of bronze fennel. The floating, insulated and strengthened roof bears the

solar panels that heat up water used in the restaurant. Planters full of companion

plants and pots of wildflowers lie close to the beehives. A huge range of

vegetables from beets, eggplant, okra to bush beans is cultivated in planters,

including vegetables grown from rare seed varieties of the Slow Food ‘Ark of

Taste’.

The Ark is dedicated to preserving the ‘economic, social, and cultural heritage of

fruits and vegetables’, as well as promoting genetic diversity. Farmer Jen, the

head farmer, and Helen are very proud of the Wildlife Habitat Certificate from

National Wildlife Federation, the first organic rooftop farm in the States to

receive this accolade. Uncommon Ground is the Cameron’s second rooftop farm.

The first, just a few blocks away, lies on Clark Street.

True Nature Foods

A few blocks away but in another direction, is the tiny yet rampantly wild urban

farm perching above the True Nature Foods store started in 2006 with Urban

Habitat Chicago. Paula Companio, owner of the natural food store in the

Edgewater neighborhood, is growing vegetables and herbs above her customers’

heads, and displaying the produce on the shelves some six metres away from its

hyperlocal source.

What is great about this particular roof garden is the profusion of wildflowers

grown on the roof with the edibles. It is no orderly vegetable garden grown in

planters, more of a scrubby meadow of plant life covering about 1,000 square

feet. Wildflowers are gloriously abundant, dandelions jockey for space with a

prickly rhubarb bush, a carpet of white clover is dotted with tufts of burdock, all

in a mere four inches of soil on a green roof system, made up of multiple layers of

filtering and insulating materials. No pesticides or synthetic fertilisers are used,

and the plants are chosen carefully to benefit the rooftop ecosystem. The cover

crop of white clover produces a fibrous root system that defends against invaders

and fixes nitrogen to help fertilise the soil. The native prairie plants are there to

attract beneficial insects.


27

6.0 TRANSPORT

Planting along lines of transport is a fantastic use of land space. Wildflowers

could be straddling the streets, filling the flyovers, running rampant around

roundabouts. There are the street gardens of New York City, productive

pavements of Chicago and the famed Pollinator Pathway in Seattle.

The doyen of street or sidewalk gardens in the city has to be San Francisco, and

most of its finest gardens lie in the Mission District of San Francisco. This area is

warmer than the rest of the city and glimpses of the hills of the Bernal Heights

can be seen from the streets. Everything about this part of the city is hot, from the

vivid murals on the walls of the building along 24th Street to the pulsating music

spilling out of the restaurants and stores. The Mission is where many Hispanics

have made their new home, and their new streets sing with flowers in the ribbons

of little gardens threaded along the sidewalks.

Wildflowers emerging from winter around the Bay Area and in the foothills of the

Sierra Nevada, drenched in rainfall and the warmed by the sun, come alive with

song every spring, orchestrated by the colours of the Californian wildflowers such

as the red Indian Paintbrush (Castilleja sp.), white Wild Radish (Raphanus

raphanistrum) and Californian Milkmaid (Cardamine californica), blue Douglas

iris (Iris douglasiana) and Wild Hyancinth (Dichelostemma capitatum), buttery

yellow Goldfield (Lasthenia californica) and orange Californian Poppy

(Eschscholzia californica) among many others. Many of these wild plants have

come from the hills to grace the sidewalks of the city.


Streetwise

Friends of the Urban Forest

Pavement to Parks

Visitacion Greenway

Nature in the City

Green Connections

Green Hairstreak Butterfly Corridor

Paley Park (Pocket Park)

Queens Plaza (Bow Tie Park)

Sidewalk Gardens of Williamsburg

Pollinator Pathway in Seattle

Water Wild

Trust for Public Land: Harlem River Project

New York Restoration Project: Swindler Cove Park

Newtown Creek Walk

Lost River Walks Toronto

Milwaukee River Valley

Urban Ecology Center

Rails for Trails

The QueensWay

The 606 (Chicago)

‘Connectivity is key to biodiversity’

Sarah Bergmann Pollinator Pathway Seattle


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6.1 Streetwise

Friends of the Urban Forest (San Francisco)

Homeowners in San Francisco have a responsibility for the upkeep of the

sidewalk or pavement in front of their homes, and this gives innovative groups

such as the Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF), a unique opportunity to broker

the planting of street trees between the residents and the City of San Francisco,

something they have done for over 30 years with magnificent aplomb. The figures

are inspiring; FUF have planted 2,000 trees per year, altogether 48,000 trees

since the programme began in 1981. However, trees are also being lost, up to 13%

in the San Francisco area and around 21% in Oakland over the water, so keeping

up the tree planting is vital.

Many of the more recent installations of sidewalk gardens lie sprinkled between

Cesar Chaves Street and 26th Street, dotted along the York and Alabama

crossroads, and spaced out over two blocks along Manchester Street. There are

sidewalk gardens on Folsom street on the west side of the street by St Anthony’s

Roman Catholic Church and the Leonard R Flynn Elementary School, as well as

on the Precita Avenue side. Other sidewalk gardens and street trees are located at

the 100-200 Block of Precita, the northwest corner of Shotwell St and 26th St and

the many properties along 26th at Sanchez Street. The gardens along Harrison

Street are spectacular.

The Friends of the Urban Forest has a great partnership with the City of San

Francisco. Although there are some great parks in San Francisco such as the

Golden Gate Park, which houses the SF Botanical Garden, this city has brought

new parks to the pavements.

Dealing with communities is not always straightforward, for example many

Chinese residents, for reasons of Feng Shui, refuse to have any trees or gardens in

front of their properties since these block the flow of Chi.

FUF has linked up with the San Francisco Department of Public Works to set up

‘The Sidewalk Garden Project’ to install sidewalk rain gardens in strategic

locations as a way of relieving the burden on the city’s drainage systems. Urban

watersheds of hidden rivers, including one called the Wiggle, are covered with the

impermeable surfaces of concrete, asphalt and buildings, so storm water has no

place to go but into the sewers resulting in flooding and partially treated

wastewater cascading into the San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean. Making

surfaces more permeable with plants is an effective way around this problem.

FUF’s first rain gardens were created on Page Street between Laguna and

Buchanan streets in the Hayes Valley neighborhood a couple of years ago.

Program Director, Doug Wildman and Karla Nagy, the Sidewalk Landscape

Program Director, sent me the FUF species lists (see Appendix). The plants

selected are mainly California natives and most are drought resistant.

The FUF website gives an excellent argument for planting trees in cities, some of

which I had not heard of before. Besides their ability to intercept rainwater – the

figures given are over a 1000 gallons per year per single street tree – produce

oxygen, clean the air and reduce the effects of global warming, a study referred to

by Columbia University found that trees can lower the incidence of asthma.

Another study found that the presence of trees actually reduces the speed of

drivers, and the frequency and severity of crashes. Trees also encourage people to

linger in shopping districts and interact more with one another.


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Pavement to Parks

The City of San Francisco appears to be highly conscious of the importance of

greening their metropolis. The world celebrated PARK(ing) Day idea, intended to

bring awareness to the importance of using pubic space productively, started in

San Francisco, and the City has taken this to a more permanent level. Inspired by

New York City’s efforts and the permanent traffic free plaza at Times Square, the

City officials launched the Pavement to Parks Scheme, and this innovative Parklet

Program has steadily transformed a sea of asphalt and paved public spaces into

swaths of lushly planted, community-gathering spaces.

It helps that San Francisco’s streets are exceptionally wide for a metropolis and

estimated to make up at least a quarter of the city, so there is plenty of room for

such an initiative. The first Parklet was installed in March 2010 outside the Mojo

Bicycle Café on Divisdero Street, where two car parking spaces were allocated to

parking people instead. Now, there is an outside Café with tables, chairs, benches,

and parking for bikes. Plants sit over a raised platform over the painted

asphalt. City of San Francisco has even produced a ‘Parklet Manual’ giving

guidelines on how to create a Parklet in San Francisco. It is an excellent resource

for those living outside of San Francisco, who wish to establish Parklet Programs

in their own cities.

Visitacion Valley Greenway

Will Rogers, President of The Trust for Public Land (TPL) based in San Francisco,

introduced me by email to Jennifer Isacoff, Director of the TPL Parks for People -

Bay Area Program, who has been involved in the creation of wildlife and greening

gems in some of the most under-served and challenged communities in the Bay

Area, and she brought a number of street projects to my notice.

In Visitacion Valley, The TPL has worked closely with local residents, to design

and establish a ribbon or ‘river of flowers’ of mini-parks over five blocks including

a two-acre community garden that crosses over several lots running through the

heart of the community, numerous sidewalk gardens flowing along walking paths

and a children’s playground. The Visitacion Valley Greenway provides a valuable

space for residents to grow vegetables and has been designed with native plants

as a pollinator corridor..

Nature in the City

Nature in the City is a nonprofit based in San Francisco, concerned with urban

environmental justice. It aims to connect people, communities and the city to

local nature through urban ecological restoration and stewardship. For its

Backyard & Plant Nursery Project, Nature in the City offers kits and instruction to

encourage the community to grow food plants and create plant nurseries for

pollinators, butterflies, birds, and insects in their backyards.

Green Connections

In 2011, Nature in the City began a partnership with the SF Planning

Department's Green Connections Plan and put together ‘Green Connections’, a

two-year planning process working to connect parks, community hubs, and open

spaces to each other via a selection of routes, each named after a San Francisco

native species and its habitat with designed native plant and wildlife corridors..

The intention was that the Green Connections would increase access to parks,

open space and the waterfront by re-envisioning City streets and paths as ‘green

connectors’. Again another River of Flowers along the streets in the making!


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Green Hairstreak Butterfly Corridor

There is also a delightful on-going project supporting the Green Hairstreak

butterfly (Callophrys viridis). This tiny, iridescent, bright green butterfly was in

danger of dying out because it found in three isolated and distinct hilltop

populations in the Inner Sunset District of San Francisco. Not only were these

areas lacking in host plants, the female butterflies was only capable of flying a few

hundred feet from their original habitat to find plants on which to lay eggs, and

so were trapped in these small, isolated and vulnerable populations. The

butterflies would have vanished without human intervention.

Luckily in 2006, this came in the form of actor and butterfly lover Liam O'Brien

who was performing in the Angels of America theatre on Market Street where

Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly landed on his shoulder. He was intrigued by

the sight of this delicate beauty in such an urban area, so he contacted the

Lepidoptera Society and found out that San Francisco is more famous for the

butterflies that have been lost (the last place the Venus Blue flew there was in

1946) than for those remaining albeit on the brink of extinction. Liam combed

San Francisco high and low, trespassed, climbed fences, questioned residents

until he found the three locations the Green Hairstreak butterfly still clung to.

Working with Nature in the City to launch the Green Hairstreak Corridor to

connect the three populations to each other by little street parks, Liam

encouraged neighborhood residents and schoolchildren to plant these with the

Green Hairstreak’s forage plants, especially the Californian Buckwheat

(Eriogonum fasciculatum) and habitat to feed and shelter the flying insects, This

is of course, a River of Flowers in practice! Every year since, the populations of

butterflies and other associated insects and birds, have been increasing so’ rivers

of flowers’ do work especially when backed by the community.

Pocket Parks (New York)

Driving through the New York City, it is hard to miss the tiny flashes of green

bursting out of the little Pocket and Bow Tie Parks dotted at the intersections of

streets and shady trails of trees along roadways and in natural playgrounds. A

Pocket Park is a space that literally forms a small ‘pocket’ among the other

buildings. Pocket Parks are also known as miniparks, parklets or parkettes.

Pocket Parks soften the edges of the concrete and asphalt cityscape, and if these

foliage dots also contain the floral forage of urban orchards and wildflowers, they

could become valuable stopping off points for pollinators, and flow into the River

of Flowers of a city. New York has so many Pocket Parks that they have their own

online Frommer’s Guide! Several have been upgraded to ‘vest pocket parks’.

Pocket Parks are found in parts of the city with minimal access to green space and

are usually surrounded by existing development on three sides, and they often

have shady places for people to sit or eat.

Paley Park

Paley Park, one of the most flowery Pocket Parks in Manhattan, is a little slice of

nature tucked between high-rise, office buildings, has native honey locust trees

offering dappled shade on sweltering days, and brings a waterfall to the centre of

Manhattan. The waterfall drowns out the street noise and the native honey locust

trees provide serene shade during the sweltering summer months. Its walls are

covered in ivy, a wonderful plant for pollinators if it is allowed to flower.

According to New York City Trees: A Field Guide for the Metropolitan Area, the

honey locust is the most common street tree in Manhattan. The trees in full leaf

provide a lightly stippled shade. The Honey locust is wind pollinated but the bees

can use its pollen.


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A similar-looking tree that also tolerates pollution well is the early and short

flowering Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia), which is pollinated by bees and

humming birds. The Honey locust pulp inside the long pods is edible to humans

but that of the Black locust is toxic, which may be the reason why fewer of the

latter are planted in cities.

Queen’s Plaza (New York)

Queen’s Plaza is one of the more unusual Bow Tie Parks, more like a multi

stranded, slightly mangled and crazed cravat, but I was determined to visit it

despite the fact that the day was grey, cold and univiting. Queen’s Plaza, a former

snarl of non-stop traffic, elevated trains and pot-holed roads, reeking of urban

decay had undergone a ‘makeover’, orchestrated by architect Margie Ruddick and

her team.

They planted ‘tens of thousands of plants into this urban tangle’ as she puts it,

and created a linear park called Dutch Kills Green where almost 500 trees,

including Hornbeams, now flourish.

As Ms Ruddick recalls, ‘the butterflies came in very soon after we did this’. Ms

Ruddick appears to be a person after my own heart because as well as planting

trees and welcoming the butterflies, she approves of Sumac - sometimes

unappealingly categorised as a ‘super weed’.

Its creamy or rosy spikes of flowers or of ruby red fruit can be seen peeping

through the concrete slabs on one strip under the elevated subway. In some

countries sumac is ground and used as a spice, and steeped in ice cold water,

sumac berries make a refreshing summer drink.

The North American varieties of Smooth Sumac (Rhus glabra) and Staghorn

Sumac (Rhus typhina) are abundant in pollen and nectar, and the bees adore

it. Something for the pollinators in the ‘super urban environment’ at last!

Sidewalk gardens proliferate all over New York especially in Brooklyn, Queens

and the Bronx, but less so in Manhattan where the public utilities crowd the

space under the pavements. The New York Restoration Project (NYRP) has also

gone to the streets by joining forces with Mayor Bloomberg to launch

MillionTreesNYC (MTNYC), whose goal is to plant and care for one million new

trees throughout the city’s five boroughs by 2017.

Sidewalk Gardens of Williamsburg (New York)

Life’s not pretty for a floral plant in a tree bed or a garden planted directly in the

sidewalk, up close and personal to the curb. It’s a hell of trampling feet and

curious dogs, alternate dehydration or flooding, drowning under leaves in the fall

and pickling by road salt in the winter. Worst of all, such plants have to survive to

thrive in iron-hard compacted soil. However, walking around Williamsburg,

Brooklyn, nearly every street has a trail or ‘river’ of tiny gardens created around

trees, which could become a potential floral feast for pollinators in the city.

Some of these gardens of the street are tree-less, magnificent, profuse looking

constructs, stepped high above the ground, faced around with railway sleepers

and planted with a wide range of ornamental flowering plants. There is a lot of

lavender flowered Cat Mint (Nepeta cataria), native to Europe and a benign

naturalised plant in North America. Cat Mint is a long flowering nectar source for

honeybees and even hummingbirds, a food plant for certain butterflies and

moths, a repellent for aphids and squash bugs, and drought tolerant.


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Other sidewalk gardens veer in the other direction, simple and understated, lying

level with the sidewalk and faced by barriers made from recycled plumbing

materials such as old copper piping. In some, tenderly nurtured tomato plants

and currant bushes can be found.

There are many tree bed gardens, which look as if they are doing the tree no good

service. The plants are either piled in so densely, growing too close to the tree

rather than around the edge of the tree bed or the soil has been heaped up high

around the base of the tree in order to raise the bed with the attendant problem of

rotting the lower bark. Many sidewalk gardens are full of straggling plants

sprouting from seeds that have blown in from the nearest vacant lot – street

gardens made by nature.

Every so often, I come across a delight such as the plantings along the Old Fulton

Ferry Road leading away from the Brooklyn Bridge Park where a lovely trail of

median strips in the central reservation, curated by the park’s horticulturalist

Rebecca McMackin, reveals a profusion of wild native plants including Milkweed

(Asclepias tuberosa) and Mountain Mint (Pycanthemum spp.).

This beautiful, densely white-flowered plant provides nectar for a spectacular

range of pollinators, honeybees, wild native bees, wasps and moths, throughout

its long flowering period. It would be a great alternative to Cat Mint because it is

so attractive to native pollinators, and as Ms McMackin says, ‘Mountain Mint

loves the city’!

Pollinator Pathway (Seattle)

Kelly Brenner interviewed me for the Metro Field Guide based in Seattle, who

told me about this intriguing project. The Pollinator Pathway, the creation of

Sarah Bergmann, is a necklace of sidewalk gardens running along a one-mile

stretch in Seattle. The first garden in the Pollinator Pathway was installed in July

2008. At one end is Seattle University, which has a number of beneficial gardens

on its campus such a biodiversity garden, a rain garden and a wildlife garden. At

the other end is Nora’s Woods, a tranquil spot in the city. Columbia Street runs in

between, a relatively hilly mainly residential area with roundabouts and many

street trees. A designer was brought in to help create the gardens filled with many

native plants including Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium), Kinikinnick

(Arctostaphylos uve-ursi), Costal Strawberry (Fragaria chileonsis), Nootka

Lupine (Lupinus nootkatensis), Columbia Lewisia (Lewisia columbiana) and

Common Thrift (Armeria maritima).

6.2 Wild Waters

Lost Rivers Found

New York’s dank and rank rivers are emerging from years of industrial abuse. The

first was the Hudson now threaded with a five-mile ribbon of parkland and then

the East River, which sports a popular park by the ferry. The gritty eyesore of the

Harlem River remains. However, a newly constructed, dainty pedestrian bridge

has now provided the park deprived residents of the south Bronx with access to

green Highbridge Park on the Manhattan side, and more parks are being created

to make the vision of the Harlem River Greenway, a clearer one for the future.


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The Harlem River Project

The Harlem River flows across New York City for 9.3 miles to form a natural

boundary between Manhattan and the Bronx. It links the East River to the

Hudson and flows into the Long Island Sound, and is due for a massive overhaul.

The Harlem River Working Group (HRWG), a coalition of nearly 50 community

groups, together with city, state and federal agencies, and their elected officials is

bent restoring the Harlem River. There will be a Greenway linking a ribbon of

parks alongside the river, and lots of new green infrastructure such as green

swales, enhanced and natural plantings at the rivers edge.

Swindler Cove Park

Part of the Harlem River is also getting a facelift from the New York Restoration

Project, which has turned an illegal dumping ground along the Harlem River into

the new swish five-acre Swindler Cove Park and built the adjacent Peter Jay

Sharp Boathouse – the first community boathouse on the river in over 100 years.

The NYRP has transformed Fort Tryon Park a dilapidated park concessions

building into the New Leaf Restaurant & Bar, a celebrated fine-dining

establishment. The restaurant’s profits support NYRP’s ongoing work to beautify

the city’s public parks and community gardens.

Newtown Creek

Long ago, Greenpoint was green and Newtown Creek was a babbling brook but

centuries of industrial waste and neglect has rendered this part of Brooklyn into

one of the polluted industrial waterways in the United States. Over time, more oil

has been spilled into the 3.5 mile stretch of murky waterway than the 11 million

gallons released into the sea during the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.

I was told that the contaminated soil resembles black mayonnaise and dangerous

toxins lurk in the sludge lying at the bottom of the creek.

Newtown Creek is the second waterway to have been given Superfund Site status

by the US Environmental Protection Agency, the first was the Gowanus Canal,

which means it has been designated special funds to try to clean it up and stop it

flooding. It is really needed! During Hurricane Sandy, the creek surged past its

banks, inflicting immense damage all along its 3.5 mile length. Six years ago, the

Department of Environmental Protection planted a Nature Walk designed by

environmental sculptor George Trakas, which rather daringly does not disguise

its surroundings. Stopping off points give extensive views of the sewage treatment

plant and recycling centre and the natural history of the Newtown Creek is carved

on gigantic stones, representing a timeline from the Ice Age until now. The rather

brutal concrete sided walkway to greener areas is now almost disguised with

native trees and perennials but the ghost of the long-vanished vast wetlands

teeming with birds and fish, still seems to hover in the air.

Lost River Walks (Toronto)

The ‘lost’ environments are now being ‘found’ as more and more people try to

restore the wetlands of their city. In Toronto, Helen Mills, the driving force

behind the Lost Rivers Walks invited me to a HomeGrown National Park event at

Fort York, a national Historic Site, put on by the David Suzuki Foundation in

collaboration with the North American Native Plant Society, and linked to

National Aboriginal History Month.


35

A canoe was carried upturned by a couple of the HomeGrown National Park

volunteer Rangers in their distinct brown and yellow t-Shirts and Ranger hats,

and laid down beside the buried Garrison Creek. Volunteers filled the canoe with

sand and gravel and planted it up with native wildflowers, which included several

drought-resistant plants such as Prairie Smoke (Geum trifolium), Blue-eyed

Grass (Sisyrinchium spp.), Penstemon (Penstemon digitalis) and Canada

Anenome (Anenome canadensis). This canoe eventually turned out to be the first

of a string of Community Canoe Gardens since Rangers found many old canoes

that were no longer seaworthy, and recycled them as bee-friendly garden planters

in parks and streets tracing the path of the long-buried Garrison Creek.

Helen started the Lost Rivers Walks, which trace the courses of other buried

creeks that once flowed through Toronto. These hidden waterways reveal

themselves in small anomalies in the street such as a curve or a wiggle or an

unexplained difference in levels, which might indicate where a forgotten stream

or a vanished ravine once lay. The Lost River Walks is a joint project of the

Toronto Green Community, a non-profit association of community residents,

businesses, and community groups set up to promote grassroots action for a

healthier community and environment, and the Toronto Field Naturalists, a non

profit charity set to encourage appreciation of Toronto’s heritage.

Helen proposes ‘Watershed Thinking’, a way of conceiving that recognizes the

relationship between people and their city environment. ‘Daylighting’ or bringing

these waterways once forced underground to the surface also means bringing

back the habitat of hundreds of species of wildlife including water-loving plants.

An evening movie called the Lost Rivers, which explores these themes, was shown

on an inflatable move screen later that evening.

The Toronto Green Community have produced a number of excellent pamphlets

on ‘Caring for Your Garden Naturally’, and ‘Selecting Native Plants’ including

those for the water’s edge.

Jode Roberts of the David Suzuki Foundation told me that the HomeGrown

National Park was keen to create a trail for pollinators through Toronto and link

and map pollinator friendly pit stops in pretty much in the same way as River of

Flowers does, and that this could be included in the River of Flowers Toronto.

I like the concepts of the Community Canoe, HomeGrown National Park and

HomeGrown Rangers but I am not sure whether these would translate to a UK

audience since they are so North American in concept. However, it was amazing

to be invited to link up to such a well-resourced organisation, which also has a

strong presence in Vancouver. As with Toronto, the pavements and streets of

many cities in the UK are also hiding buried tributaries of the rivers that once

flowed through them in the light. London has a whole network of these forgotten

streams or ‘bournes’ ranging from the Fleet under Fleet Street and the

Westbourne in West London. If these underground waterways could be

‘daylighted’ at strategic points where it would be easier to open them up such as

the places where the stream flows under a park, these areas could be used to

create new habitat for wildlife, including pollinators.


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‘The river is life’

Vince Bushell

River West Project


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Milwaukee Renaissance

The Milwaukee Renaissance includes a restored river with wildflowers flowing

along its banks, an aquaponics food movement, which has revolutionised the

mid-West and spread throughout the world, a garden, which was once part of the

Underground Freedom Railway for escaped slaves, a food co-operative central to

the development organic food growing and community in Milwaukee, and an

amazing ecology centre based right in the heart of deepest urban Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee River Valley

Walking towards the footbridge across the Milwaukee River with Vince Bushell,

well known for his work on the river restoration, we passed through a glorious

meadow, and while standing on the bridge and looking out over the river, it was

so easy to forget that we were in the centre of a busy city. The pressure and traffic

of downtown Milwaukee seemed a hundred miles away.

The Milwaukee River Valley is a 797-acre wildlife and water ribbon of green and

blue and is home to factories and condominiums as well as native plants and

animals. Since the removal of a dam has improved water quality, it has the

potential to become as strong a city statement as the Highline is to New York. The

river winds its way through the middle of an urban community, flowing freely

from North Avenue up to Silver Spring Drive. But nothing is safe. The Milwaukee

River Work Group (MRWG) is seeking formal protection for the river from the

City of Milwaukee because at least 30% of it is held in private ownership and

some cases by eager developers. The MRWG been restoring 40 acres of land

along the Milwaukee River as an arboretum of native species and improved

wildlife habitat, enhancing and maintaining the river as a nature reserve.

The Urban Ecology Centre (Milwaukee)

I had talked on Skype with Urban Ecology Center director Ken Leinbach, a clever,

thoughtful guy who put River of Flowers in context far better than me. He said,

‘River of Flowers is the perfect marketing tool to close the link that I find so

common within our anthropocentric thinking and that is so persuasive with the

food movement. It uses our "kind of selfish way of being" to the advantage of the

environment. People can get behind food and flowers because they derive direct

pleasure from both. Getting behind native plants, pollinators, foragers, diversity,

ecosystems and even just plain getting kids outside in nature require a level of

buy in and understanding that many miss. Flowers and food are basic!’

The Urban Ecology Center is an environmental education organisation with three

community centers adjacent to Milwaukee County parks. The Urban Ecology

Center is involved in ecological restoration and creation at its own and other

urban sites, and promotes native landscaping to create pockets of important

habitat in urban corridors. The Riverside Center has a unique ‘green’ building

with many sustainable features. It has a hidden classroom, a native Wisconsin

Animal Room and a Habitat Playground to engage students in hands on learning

about nature, science and how to live more sustainably as well as working with

teachers on how to add native plants to their school grounds.

The Urban Ecology Center is also involved with the restoration of the Milwaukee

River, and part of this includes an extensive and beautiful Oak Savannah that can

be seen from the Riverside Center Tower. Planting is also taking place in the

center itself including a delightful rooftop meadow surrounding a Beepod.


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6.3 Rails to Trails

The QueensWay (New York)

Two new Trust for Public Land projects in New York City involve Greenways. The

proposed QueensWay will transform an abandoned railway into an elevated

pedestrian and bicycle pathway connecting Rego Park, Forest Hills, Richmond

Hill and Ozone Park, and will become a new public green space - possibly a River

of Flowers wherever there are wooded gullies.

Linking the parks to create trails of wildflowers through the city would add great

pollination value, and are already being developed in the Greenways schemes

that TPL is fostering in New York and other cities.

The 606 Railway (Chicago)

The Trust for Public Land is working with the City of Chicago to create a new

greenway in north west Chicago, along the route of The 606, a three mile stretch

of elevated abandoned railway line, once called the Bloomingdale Trail. Renamed

the 606 to represent the first three digits of Chicago’s zip code and linked to

three parks. Planted up with pollinator plants, The 606 would be a natural

pollination corridor.


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7.0 PARKS

New York has many ‘rivers’ of wildflowers connecting the parks and community

gardens with the sidewalk gardens. The ’river’ of flowers even floats above the

streets. A ribbon of sassafras and chokeberry trees flows along an elevated

railway track floating above the city streets where the misty fronds of switchgrass

bring the prairie to the heart of Manhattan. Bomb debris and rubble landfill

transported from Coventry during the Second World War lies forever hidden

beneath the pale sands of a marine park in Brooklyn, covered by newly planted

costal wild plants such as marsh goldenrod, reclaiming the land from the alien,

invasive reed beds. Butterfly milkweed sparkles in parks all over the city where

rosy serviceberry trees and sumac also shine. Sidewalk rain gardens blossom and

sprawl with catmint and butterfly weed while coneflowers partner the peppers,

luscious in red, green and yellow Rasta colours, growing six stories high in an

urban rooftop farm in Queens. A meadow blooms in the centre of Central Park!

Such beauty surprises people because the concept of the city is demonised and

the public view of nature is that it is to be found ‘outside’ the city rather than part

of the fabric of the urban landscape. In recent years, a number of writers have

promoted the urban environment as one in which nature can flourish as opposed

to being suppressed or eliminated. The best known of these is Eric Sanderson

whose book Mannahatta: A Natural History of Manhattan matches old 18th

century maps with modern ones, and recreates the once lush forests of Times

Square, the meadows of Harlem and the wetlands of downtown Manhattan,

hidden for ever in the past.


Edible Parks

Battery Park Urban Farm

Riverside Valley Community Garden in Riverside Park

North Brooklyn Farms in Havemeyer Park

High Park Children’s Garden

New Horizons Community Garden in Tom Riley Park

Ben Nobleman Park Orchard

Parks Go Wild

The Highline

Marine Park

Central Park Meadow

East River State Park

Grand Ferry Park Retreat

Brooklyn Bridge Park


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7.1 Edible Parks

Battery Conservancy Urban Farm (Manhattan)

Early in the morning, Marechal Brown and I arrived at the Gardens of

Remembrance in the Battery Conservancy, nestled on the southern tip of

Manhattan beside the Staten Island Ferry. We met up with Sean Kiely who

manages these vast, gorgeous landscapes designed by Piet Oudolf as a memorial

to those who died on 11 September 2001 and a comfort to those who survived.

Oudolf, who hails from the Netherlands, was one of the first landscape designers

to favour perennial plantings and resilience in public landscapes. There are many

native wildflowers too, sprinkled among the ornamentals. The Gardens of

Remembrance are a visual delight because Oudolf is a master of texture, colour

and variation, his palette of plants is amazing.

The Butterfly Weed (Asclepias spp.) is one wildflower that I find in every park

that I visit so I am not surprised to find it here. Along with Penstemons, which

are ubiquitous too! Penstemons are often given the common name Beardtongue

because of their open mouthed and fuzzy tongued ‘look’. While we are walking

along the promenade, the Staten Island Ferry looms large reminding me how

close we are to the waterline. There are plenty of pollinating insects around. On

our way into the park, we had passed small circle of pastel coloured beehives - the

first of the park’s secrets. As you would expect, I see plenty of honeybees but I

don’t recognise any wild native pollinators including a bumblebee with a little

white jacket on (the bumblebees I am used too have different coloured bottoms,

for example the Red-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius).

Later on I find out that it’s the Common Eastern Bumblebee (Bombus

impatiens) and there’s a similar looking one called the Brown belted Bumblebee

(Bombus griseocollis).

As we make our exit, we spy the second of the park's little miracles, an urban

farm, which was once home to over 80 varieties of organically grown vegetables,

fruits and flowers. Hurricane Sandy gave it a bashing as it did other parts of this

lovely park but the bamboo is back up around the perimeter and things are

growing again!

Riverside Valley Community Garden (Manhattan)

This community garden lies uptown, near the intersection of 12th Avenue with

138th Street, It is unique among the New York City’s community gardens in that

it is situated in a park, namely Riverside Park, a scenic yet narrow four strip of a

waterfront park that had once been landscaped by Frederick Olmstead and later

on by Robert Moses, the master builder of mid-twentieth century New York City.

Marechal Browne, my guide during much of my stay in New York City, managed

Riverside Park before she became director of Horticulture for NYC Parks, and she

recommended that I meet with Jenny Benitez who has been tending the Riverside

Valley Community Garden in Harlem, Manhattan for over 25 years, firstly as a

longtime volunteer and now as a staff member, at the garden where variety of

crops grow profusely including lettuce, potatoes, aubergines, peaches, plums,

pears and cherries, as well as strawberries, raspberries and even grapes.


41

North Brooklyn Farms

North Brooklyn Farms was in the process of being alongside Havemeyer Park by

Henry Sweets and Ryan Watson while I was staying on Kent Avenue, Brooklyn,

and I walked past it on several occasions. On my final walk by, I spoke to Henry

Sweets because I wanted to let him know how pleased I was to see so many wild

plants growing around an arable farm. Henry told me that they were planning to

produce herbs, flowers, and seasonal vegetables on the site, a former parking lot

of the former Domino Sugar Refinery in the newly opened Havemeyer Park.

North Brooklyn Farms mission is to demonstrate how city-dwellers can grow

their own food in under-utilised urban spaces. They were using raised beds,

partly because of potential soil contamination of the site due to years of use as a

parking lot and partly because the site is a temporary one, and one day they will

have to move the farm. North Brooklyn Farms aims to be a role model for organic

urban ecology and provide the residents of North Brooklyn with healthy local

produce grown without chemicals.

As part of Havemeyer Park, the farm will have to share space with a dirt bike

track and grassy fields provided for leisure activities. The management company

that owns the space plans to develop the site eventually into a residential and

commercial complex, at which point North Brooklyn Farms will be able to pick up

their portable fields and relocate to another urban space hopefully in the

neighborhood.

Henry told me that squash, kale and aubergine (eggplant) will be grown and

companion planting carried out by growing marigolds (the uber companion

plant) next to aubergines next to one another. Native wildflowers salvaged from

the site such as perennial sunflower would also be planted.

North Brooklyn Farms aspires to be a model for organic urban sustainable

agriculture, and so it also tries to source sustainably and reuse materials, Next to

the raised beds, butternut squash, collard greens and blueberries will be grown in

barrels discarded from a local produce shop and lined with old sacks from the

Brooklyn Roasting Company.

I visited Havermeyer Park and North Brooklyn Farms more than because I

admired the wildflowers growing just outside the chain link fence as well as

inside on the farm. Later on, I heard from my family, who had recently moved to

Williamsburg, Brooklyn that the North Brooklyn Farms was planning to a series

of farm dinners later that summer and in the autumn. Wonderful news!

Henry Sweets and Ryan Watson, like the majority of the founder growers I came

in contact with, were young, idealistic, educated, entrepreneurial growers starting

up farms on demolished factory sites, rooftops and old basketball courts. These

initiatives rely on stalls at farmers market and restaurant sales as well as

Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscriptions in order to turn urban

farming into a viable business. To those I spoke to, food production was only one

of their goals; they were motivated by other and more political drivers such as

engagement of the local community, the desire for environmental justice, a

healthier society and better environmental services by producing local grown and

chemical free food.


42

‘I planted this Quince tree in memory of my mother’

Zora Ignatovic New Horizons Community Garden


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High Park Children’s Garden (Toronto)

This garden celebrated its 15th birthday on 3 June 2013, just before I arrived in

Toronto. Lying next to a ravine, it has its own Garden Center that sports a green

roof and is used for children’s activities such as cooking the food that they have

grown. Jane through her organisation ‘Garden Jane’ joined forces in 1998 with

Cutting Veg. to create the Children’s Garden. It was brimming with native wild

plants growing higgledy-piggledy out of the planters and over the ground.

New Horizons Community Garden

Zora Ignjatovic and I travelled to her community garden New Horizons, set in a

park, created by Bosnian Seniors and their friends, who had fled the war in

Yugoslavia. Every part of it was put together with love and in memory of families

lost. One corner was shaded by a quince, planted by Zora for her mother, a non-

native yet still good forage for bees. In another corner, a children’s garden

bloomed. Miodrag Zakonovic, a Bosnian Senior, first sowed the seeds for the

garden idea because he wanted to start one for his people. With the driving force

of Zora behind it, herself a Serbian immigrant, the garden took shape in Tom

Riley Park. I sat down to tea and a couple of slices of the Bosnian speciality honey

cake, while Gordana and Sekica, two dedicated community gardeners, pottered

about me. Despite its Bosnian origins, New Horizons is very much a multicultural

space involving families from Portugal, Poland, the Ukraine and Chile.

Ben Nobleman Orchard

The orchard planted in Ben Nobleman Park, an underused green space just

across from Eglinton West Subway station in Toronto, is the first community

orchard planted in a Toronto public park.

Spearheaded by the eco-gardening group Growing For Green in partnership with

the fruit harvesting project Not Far From The Tree and its educational partner is

Orchard People the orchard planted by volunteers, who carry out all the work

including irrigation, mulching, pruning, and harvesting and cleaning the orchard,

as well as planning activities and upcoming events. The orchard has 14 fruit trees

including five apple, three plum, three apricot and three sweet cherry trees. There

are also lots of Serviceberry trees around providing that wild touch. Once the

trees are old enough to produce a good harvest, the fruit will go to volunteers and

local agencies like the Food Bank.

The Ben Nobleman Orchard Park has become a place for the community to

volunteer and socialise, organise blossom and fruit festivals, hold pruning

workshops, orchard picnics, children's educational workshops and other

community events. There is a shed with a lovely wild floral roof and an

impressive pollinator garden. I volunteered at the park with Susan Poizner of

Orchard People, to help her and Liz, put socks on the baby apples to prevent

worm attack. These little apple socks look like the cut off ends of tights. We pulled

them over the apples and twisted them round the little stems. Being made of

stretchy material they will expand as the apples grow. What a good idea!

Having orchards in public parks is such a great idea. In the UK, Manchester has

already planted up some of its parks with fruit trees. I have already shared the

concept of Not Far From the Tree with Carina Millstone, who was the co-founder

of the London Orchard Project before moving to Boston and starting fruit

growing projects there. So I like to think Toronto has pollinated Boston through

the River of Flowers!


44

‘I sometimes forget I am in New York City when I am on

the Highline’

Johnny Linville The Highline


45

7.2 Parks Go Wild

The Highline

Every time I come to New York, I climb the Highline and with good reason. As a

magnificent landmark on a par with the London Eye and the Eiffel Tower, with

the additional value of being alive, I think that the Highline makes a fantastic

statement about New York as a city. I love the fact that the High Line's planting

was inspired by the self-seeded landscape that grew on the former elevated rail

tracks which can still be seen embedded all around us. Plants were chosen for

their ability to survive the harsh environment of the Highline as well as for

colour, texture and diversity.

The Highline is owned by the City of New York but it is managed and operated by

the nonprofit conservancy, Friends of the Highline, which works with NYC Parks

& Recreation to maintain it as a public space. Piet Oudolf (again!) designed the

planting scheme for the Highline in collaboration with two architectural firms,

James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio & Renfro to bring about this

spectacular park above the streets.

What is interesting from a River of Flowers’ perspective is that the High Line's

planting was inspired by the self-seeded landscape of native species originally

found growing on the High Line's rail bed and the out-of-use elevated rails are

still to be seen embedded in the ground around us. The other plants were chosen

for their ability to survive the harsh environment of the Highline as well as for

colour, texture and diversity. The plant that most intrigues me is the fascinating

Compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) related to the sunflower but taller, with

masses of smaller yellow flowers.

Compass plants can orientate their leaves to lie at right angles to the strongest

light, usually North to South, and so avoid the intense direct sunlight of midday.

At its start, the Highline juts out in midair over Gansevoort Street, crosses over

10th Avenue and after a mile or so reaches the Railyards of W 30th Street where

more construction is taking place that will eventually extend the Highline to W

34th Street at some point in the future. A former freight rail line before it was

abandoned for 25 years to a scrabbling wilderness before being threatened with

demolition. Rescued in the nick of time, the Highline was renovated in 1999 and

restored as a public park for Manhattan’s West Side.

Johnny Linville, manager of horticulture for the Friends of the Highline,

accompanies us. He walks and talks us along part of this iconic park in the sky,

heady with verdant fragrance, and floating high above the busy streets. We also

meet up with the director of horticulture Tom Smarr.

The plantings start at the Gansevoort Woodland section where we pass a lovely

linear stream of birch and Serviceberry trees leading on to the Washington

Grassland section. Here native Chokeberry (Aronia spp.) and Sassafras

(Sassafras spp.) bloom high over W 12th to 14thStreet. We move on to the

Sundeck Preserve, a place for visitors to relax among wildflowers, grasses and

Sumac trees. From there to 20th Street, we pass a couple of spurs jutting out over

the streets below. The Northern Preserve spur appears to enter the building

opposite and has plants growing between the original rails.


46

After this, we are taken under the Falcone Flyover to the Highline's secret place, a

hidden, shaded, lower area that the public can view below their feet, and look at

either side of the eight foot high walkway but not visit. It's a sanctuary, a place of

cool relief for the eight horticulturalists and the volunteers exposed to the intense

New York City summer heat, on the double-deckered Highline floating high

above the streets of Manhattan.

The Chelsea Grasslands that follows is full of plants with spectacular names such

as Azure Sage (Salvia azurea) and Prairie Blazing Star (Liatris pyncnostachya)

that I meet again many times on my travels. The perennials, grasses, shrubs and

trees all bloom at different times so that the Highline is always in flower whatever

the season. It really is a River of Flowers in the sky!

Gerritsen Creek @ Marine Park

In Marine Park, the glimmering sky meets the glittering sea. An osprey glides

across the translucent blue sky to its nest perched on a pole. Below him, the water

gleams deeper than blue until he passes over pallid sand dunes sprinkled with

coastal plants. It is a vision of serenity, a seemingly pristine and natural wetlands

scene in the southern tip of Brooklyn but Gerristen Creek hides a surprise deep

below its surface. The islands of Brooklyn and Manhattan are much larger now

than they were hundreds of years ago. The edges have been crayoned in with

trash and rubble over the years to create a solid base on which to plant houses

and streets, grow industries and cultivate schools. Beneath the sand dunes,

created from sand dredged up by the US Navy to keep the Rockaway channel

wide enough for ships to pass through, is the waste of generations including

intriguingly demolition debris from bombed British cities such as Coventry,

brought over during the war as fill material – so a little bit of England now lies

forever beneath the sandy stretches along the creek.

Mike Feller, Chief Naturalist for the Natural Resources Group, New York City,

took us around, us being Marechal Brown and Crista Carmody of NYC Parks, who

were my guides during the three weeks I was in New York, and me. Mike

explained that because Gerritsen Creek, lying in south-east Brooklyn and part of

the Jamaica Bay region, was a dumping ground for so many years, alien plant

species were brought to its shores. A carpet of Common Reed (Phragmites

australis), had choked the Gerritsen Creek waterways, crowded its soil and

blocked out sunlight and therefore life for other plants. In Europe, this reed

causes less of a problem because it does not take over and animals graze on it but

here in North America, there are areas where it has reigned rampant for years.

By removing the invasive plants, replanting with native species such as Marsh

Golden Rod (Solidago sempervirens), and removing the fill material so water is

able to flow in at salt marsh levels (which also helps to control the reed),

Gerritsen Creek has been restored over a period of ten years to a aquatic and

costal grasslands habitat of such variety and beauty that it is a designated nature

trail and a Forever Wild Preserve. The adjacent White Island has been surfaced

with sand dredged from the sea.

We wander along the track finding gems along the way, a tiny white flowered

native Foxglove that I don’t recognize and a non-native buttery yellow Birdsfoot

trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) that I do, Milkweed not yet in flower, a row of Black

Poplar trees and nearby hundreds of new trees planted as part of the MillionTrees

NYC program. Mike Feller points out some of the problem plants along the way

and these surprise me – who would have thought Garlic Mustard (Allaria

petiolata), such an innocuous British shade loving and edible plant, would be so

destructive in the woods of North America?


47

The wetlands of Gerritsen Creek are a River of Flowers of its own and link up with

the ribbons of forage found in the private gardens on streets that lead up into

East New York where a number of small urban and community farms have

proliferated, guided by the auspices of the East York Farms!, which celebrated its

15th birthday in 2013. Its mission is to organise youth and adults to address food

justice in the community by promoting local sustainable agriculture and

community-led economic development.

Central Park Meadow

Afterwards, we pay a visit to Central Park, the iconic green heart of Manhattan, to

search for a wildflower meadow. Who would have thought it? I imagine that most

people would associate Central Park with naturalistic landscapes, formal gardens,

ponds, lakes, boathouses, joggers or even the Strawberry Fields Mosaic created in

memory of John Lennon. But a wildflower meadow in the centre of Central Park?

Sounds too wild! But it's there!

Central Park spans from 59th Street up to 110th Street and the meadow is located

at the bottom half of Strawberry Field, on the west side of the park. By entering

the park at 72nd Street and 8th Avenue, beside the famous Dakota Apartments,

we followed the roadway south. We meet up with Val Lavid, director of

operations for the Central Park Conservancy, who takes us to look at the

wildflower meadow fenced in by posts and Sumac trees.

Most of it is not yet in flower, but I see Evening Primrose (Oenthera spp.),

various vetches and goldenrods, here and there native coneflowers such as

Blackeyed Susan (Rudbekia hirta) and Purple Coneflower (Echinaecea

purpurea), which seem to pop up everywhere.

Later on I find out that the Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis), Bee Balm

(Monarda spp.), Boneset (Eupatorium spp.), Smooth Blue Aster (Aster laevis),

New York Ironweed (Vermonia noveboracensis), Rose Mallow (Hibiscus

moscheutos), Joe-Pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum), and Mountain Mint

(Pycnanthemum spp.) are popular plants in Central Park to attract the

butterflies. We wander down the path beside the meadow to find ourselves beside

a stream bounded by dense thickets. It’s a blazing hot day yet no needle of

sunlight filters through to the trickling water. It is extraordinary. The city seems a

million miles away. There are other places where wildflowers can be found in

Central Park but we have no time today to locate them because we have another

visit to make. Central Park is such a feature of Manhattan, it is hard to believe

that it was not created in its heart from the beginning butt Central Park once lay

on the city's outskirts for many years before Manhattan grew around and

eventually surrounded it!

While in New York, I set myself a mission to find the wildflower associated with

New York City. I am told it is the Carolina Rose (Rosa carolina), a native wild

rose but everywhere I keep on finding the Japanese Rose (Rosa rugosa), a

species of darker pink rose originating from North Eastern Asia, and that grows

profusely all along the Brooklyn shoreline. I find wildflower meadows flourishing

at the East River State Park, where the East River kisses the fringes of the tiny

Grand Ferry Park, and on either side of a shady ‘forest’ path in Brooklyn Bridge

Park, lying close to the Brooklyn Bridge. It is at Brooklyn Bridge Park where I

finally discover the wild Carolina Rose.


48

East River State Park

A park that I visit more than once because of the evident respect paid to

wildflowers is the East State River Park, the closest green space to where I am

staying in Williamsburg, and the only State park that I get to see in NYC. All the

other parks I visit are managed by New York City. At East State River Park, I

meet up with park director Christopher Cushieri and park designer and engineer

Chip Place who managed miracles on a shoestring budget. The East State River

Park lies adjacent to the East River Ferry at the end of N 6th Street and Kent

Avenue. A former rail to barge shipping terminal, the park was acquired by the

state following the efforts of the Trust for Public Land (TPL), a national nonprofit

organisation, working in inner cities and rural hinterlands to conserve land for

the community as parks, gardens, playgrounds and historic sites.

Like other shoreline edges to New York City, the landfill has been extensive and a

few of the log cabins filled with rubble that were buried so long ago have surfaced

following the ravages of Hurricane Sandy. The surprise that I find at East River

State are natural looking, long, grassy meadows growing around and about the

remnants of the past that still stand, old railway tracks buried in cobblestones

and concrete foundation blocks for some long forgotten building poised upright

in the grass like monolithic monuments.

In the park and all along Kent Avenue, Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) another

invasive plant, is abundant, growing in clumps as well as fringing the water line.

Like the Japanese Rose (Rosa rugosa) this alien plant has taken the salting from

seawater that rose up over the park during Hurricane Sandy much better than

most natives. Mugwort is a medicinal plant in both Western and Chinese

Traditional medicine so I have a good idea of why and how it has emigrated to

North America.

The wildflower meadow at East River State Park is rich with native white and

yellow Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) with its strong sweet Chrysanthemum scent

and the purple pea flowers of the native vetch, (Vicia americana). Dotted round

in the grass, I see many bright yellow heads of the introduced legume Lesser

Trefoil (Trifolium dubium) but not the dreaded, damaging and invasive alien

Crown Vetch (Securigera varia). Tough non-natives such as Catmint have been

planted all along the entrance path. The lush, unmown grass hides another of the

park’s secrets. I watch as a young child runs up to the long meadow grass and

startles a flurry of tiny birds that whirr in a winged blur up and out of it to

decorate the branches of the neighbouring trees. The expression on her face is a

delight to see.

Grand Ferry Park Retreat

Further along Kent Road and at the end of Grand Street, lies the Grand Ferry

Park. Once a place where only rusting cars and drug dealers lurked back in the

day when Williamsburg harboured gangs as well as ferryboats, Grand Ferry Park

is a testament to those dedicated individuals who inspire their neighbours to

clean up the neighbourhood by planting up the vacant lots. This little gem of a

park is one of the few places along the shoreline where people can actually walk

into the water, where lovers holding hands can see the sunset flood the river,

where families can picnic in peaceful shade, where cyclists can pause to catch

breath and where old men can sit on park benches and talk all evening long.


49

Brooklyn Bridge Park Forest Walk

Marechal Brown and Crista Carmody of NYC Parks and I visited the Brooklyn

Bridge Park on a day when the heat was at its most intense and the soothing

shade of the ‘forest path was most welcoming. Thin wires hold back the trailing

stems and branches that brush against us just as on a real forest trail. At the start

of the walk, Rebecca McMackin introduces us to the native Serviceberry

(Amelanchier spp.) a small tree or shrub, also known as the Shadberry or

Juneberry bush. I am told that the light red berries have a different taste to the

purple-red riper ones. I collect a few of each to taste and it’s true.

The path winds ahead and behind us until we turn the corner and it widens up to

a sun filled lane, where I glimpse the orange-red Columbine flowers that

hummingbirds love – the first time I have seen either since neither pollinator nor

wildflower are native to Northern Europe.

Further down we come across a small pond fringed with many milkweeds and I

am entranced to be shown the milky latex sap that oozes out when you break a

leaf or stem. It is kind of glue, a protective device to protect the leaves from being

eaten gumming up the mouthparts of various insects in a sticky trap so they

starve to death.

The aforementioned Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) eats as well as

pollinates this native wildflower but it has a trick of its own. The life cycle of the

Monarch has adapted to the extrusion of toxic latex so despite the first group of

larvae dying even though they chew out only a small portion of the leaf,

subsequent groups of larvae survive by avoiding the chewed parts and nibbling

around the leaf to avoid releasing much more latex.

The Monarch larvae can store the toxic chemicals in their bodies and keep on

storing them, even as adult butterflies, which makes them bitter and unpalatable

even potentially toxic to predators such as birds. The conspicuous colouring and

patterning on this beautiful butterfly act as a warning to predators. It’s just as

well because the Monarch has an extraordinarily lengthy migration starting from

Canada and the States right down to Mexico where they overwinter.

Seeing wildflowers in a park that had been specially planted for pollinators, as at

the Brooklyn Bridge Park, was an unbelievable joy and surprise until I found out

that its horticulturalist, Rebecca McMackin, is a pollination expert. I return three

times to the BBG, looking at all the different areas where native wildflowers and

wild trees have been planted with such sensitivity and awareness of the needs of

pollinators as well as plants and people, so I could take these amazing ideas back

to inspire Friends of Parks and city officials back home.


50

8. VACANT LOTS

A vacant lot is land that has no building on it and no designated use, and in New

York this includes community gardens. The geometrical grid system of roads and

density of building in New York City conceals a secret of over 450 little flowering

community gardens tucked away in the corners and angles of the city. Many

groups have been involved in their creation: the Green Guerillas, New York

Garden Preservation Coalition, New York Restoration Project and NYC Green

Thumb, the largest community garden program in the States, and over time these

gardens have transformed New York City. Of course, they are well known to their

communities but to strangers in New York, it is a delight to discover their

existence.

The Community Garden Movement may have started in New York but the

growing communities, having appropriated their vacant lots, can be found in

every major city. Since keeping animals is illegal in most North American cities

and keeping honeybees has only recently been permitted in a few cities, the only

‘livestock’ tend to be bees and occasionally chickens. The productive community

gardens and urban farms could be better described as ‘market gardens’


New York Growing Communities

Garden of Union

Gil Hodges Garden

Liz Christy Garden

Community Gardens of Alphabet City

Drew Gardens

596 Acres Brooklyn

Tenth Acre Urban Farm

Red Hook Added Value Farm

Bed-Stuy Farm

Prospect Community Farm

Toronto Growing Communities

Carrot City

Perth Dupont Community Garden

Food Share

Not Far from the Tree

Rye’s Home Grown Garden

Bain Housing Co-op

Chicago Growing Communities

Sweetwater Foundation

Global Gardens Refugee Farm

Milwaukee Growing Communities

Alice’s Garden (Milwaukee)

Growing Power

San Francisco Growing Communities

The Edible Schoolyard

Hayes Valley Farm & 49 Farms


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8.1 New York Growing Communities

Garden Of Union

The Garden of Union lies in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It is a jewel of a garden and full

of life. My senses were filled with a sea of native wildflowers meandering

delicately through the luscious edibles and a heavenly buzzing and whirring of

multitudes of pollinators. Garden administrator Claudia Joseph helped to set up

the garden's distinctive ‘honor system’ for harvesting, which she explained to me.

Individual members do not have ‘ownership’ of specific beds or crops - all of the

plots are communal because the members work them and share the produce,

quite a feat to achieve in the territorial sensibilities of a big city. The planting of

the organically grown produce—spinach, squash, radishes, lovage, chamomile

and lots of leafy greens, to name a few by the garden stewards is with a surplus in

mind. Specialty edibles include figs, pink champagne currants and chokeberries,

and the garden now has a mushroom patch, where oyster and shiitake varieties

will be grown.

It was where my first encounter up close and personal with one of North

America’s few native hydrangeas, the Oak Leaf Hydrangea (Hydrangea

quercifolia), took place, it’s a plant beyond gorgeousness and a perfect paradise

for bees. By providing habitat and forage, the Garden of Union reveals a balanced

intermingling of nature with nurtured edibles. The Garden of Union has also

become the heart of composting in the area, and the deep richness of soil in this

special garden says it all.

Annie’s Garden was the original garden space of the Garden of Union. It is a

stretch of greenery and quiet nestled between two buildings just a few paces up

the street.

It was named in honor of its founder Annie Thompson, who lived across the

street with her husband John, and who worked with neighbours to have the site

of a burned down bakery legally turned into a garden in the early 1970s. We sat

on a shady bench while Claudia told me that one of Annie’s primary concerns was

that the children of the neighbourhood should have a green space to explore,

enjoy and spend time in.

A few years later, two nearby five-storey unstable buildings were bulldozed

leaving a pile of rubble. Residents of the immediate area and members of the

Park Slope Food Coop (PSFC) cleared away the mess and began composting to

create and expand the gardens. A grant in 1991 from the NYC Department of

Sanitation encouraged them to start composting using waste material from the

local neighborhood, and this has turned into a passion for many of the residents.

When Jo Foster arrived, Claudia showed us around the Garden of Union and then

took us to Annie's Garden, and further down the road to Washington Park in the

grounds of the Old Stone House, another wild treasure trove that she was

planting with native plants.

I noticed that quite a few street trees and sidewalk gardens lying in between the

Garden of Union and Washington Park, providing forage and habitat for the

pollinator gatherers to fly along. This wonderful trail is a blueprint of how a city

community should be, supporting one another by growing food, flowers and

friendship!


52

‘I say love, it is a flower and you its only seed’

Bette Midler ‘The Rose’

New York Restoration Project


53

Gil Hodges Community Garden

Also in Park Slope, a couple of blocks down from the Gowanus Canal, lies the Gil

Hodges Garden, named after one of Brooklyn’s baseball heroes. Once an

unassuming quiet corner community space on Carroll Street, founded over 30

years ago in what is now a rapidly changing neighbourhood, this garden has

recently undergone a dramatic facelift. Like so many gardens in New York, the Gil

Hodges Garden had served its Brooklyn community well for many years as a

place to meet, play, relax and grow food and flowers. Composting, New York’s

latest passion, had started up in conjunction with the local Root Hill Café. But

over the years, the city changed around the Gil Hodges Garden, it was time to

give it a new purpose and identity.

Hurricane Sandy was the trigger. The Park Slope residents were shocked when

the formerly placid, green-scum waters of the Gowanus Canal swelled to bursting

with polluted water. The canal is affectionately known as ‘Lavender Lake’ due to

its ‘not-so-fragrant’ emissions on hot summer days but this was something new.

Following Sandy, the aim was to prevent flooding by creating places around the

canal where excess water could be absorbed by planting schemes. So this slice of

old Brooklyn was transformed into a 21st century state of the art rain garden or

more accurately, a ‘river‘ of rain gardens. It is a beautiful space complete with

pathways, stepping stones, raised beds for edibles and etched slate signs

depicting the fragrant and often native plants and has its own rain gardens

alongside, two specially constructed long bioswales in the sidewalk, designed to

absorb any future flooding. By accident or design, this arrangement has created a

perfect little River of Flowers eddy or circular pollination stream revolving

between the native ornamentals and edibles in the garden and the sidewalk,

providing forage and habitat for urban pollinators and other wildlife.

One sign in the garden marks the spot where the native wildflower Carolina All

Spice (Calycathus floridus) will eventually bloom. This plant, with its unusual,

dark-red, waterlily-shaped flowers, combines the scent of strawberries, banana,

and pineapple, and its leaves and bark release a clove or camphor-like scent when

crushed. It lies alongside another native wildflower, the Eastern Blue Stars

(Amasonia tabernaemontana) - although I am not sure whether this is scented at

all - as well as aromatic asters and the fragrant Orange Azalea or (Rhododendron

austrinium), a native of Florida. Dotted around are places where the perennial

Indian Pink (Spighelia marilandica) rears its beautiful head.

The Gil Hodges Garden makeover came about as the result of a partnership

between Jo Malone London, a fragrance company, the New York Restoration

Project (NYRP) and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP),

which was undertaking a major program of rain garden and bioswale

construction throughout the city. The Gil Hodges Garden is a showpiece

extravaganza of what can be achieved when key organisations such as the NYRP

come together with city government to improve urban amenities. Of course, a

decent amount of funding helps too! I was invited to the Gil Hodges Garden re-

opening, and there was a bit of a razzamatazz when I arrived, with people jostling

past a herd of blunt nosed cameras to try to catch sight of Bette Midler who will

be cutting the green garland. Outside of the USA, I wonder how many people

know of Bette Midler’s role in founding the NYRP, which over the past 15 years

has stepped in to clean and restore parks and community gardens in many of the

impoverished areas of New York City. It takes a particular kind of determined

and impassioned individual to found an organisation and then stick at it. There

are many celebrities flying the flag of ‘green street-cred’ today but when Bette

Midler founded the NYRP, it wasn’t that fashionable an idea to save or restore

community gardens or create new ones.


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‘Rebellion with a shovel’

Liz Christy

Green Guerillas


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Liz Christy Garden

Twenty-five years before the New York Restoration Project (NYRP) was more

than a twinkle in its founder’s eye, another redoubtable woman had begun to

transform the decaying Lower East Side in Manhattan, blighted by the financial

crisis of the 1970s. A new resident of the neighbourhood, Liz Christy had been

walking past an abandoned lot on the corner of Bowery and Houston to her

studio for weeks, constantly upset by the ten-foot high piles of rubbish. One day,

after seeing a little boy nearly seal himself into an upturned fridge, Liz decided

that enough was enough and things had to change. She and a group of neighbors

and friends formed the rebel Green Guerillas, and they set out to clean up the

mess and transform the space into something resembling the Dutch ‘bouwerij’,

the term for the farmland that once covered colonial Manhattan.

It took the Green Guerillas over a year to clear the space, plant the Bowery

Garden, and fight off the local drug dealers with pitchforks and shovels, but when

the garden was finally planted up and looking beautiful, its greatest threat came

from the city. Officials tried to shut the Bowery Garden down on the grounds that

it lay on city property. The move failed and the city leased the lot to the Green

Guerillas for a dollar a year. Liz Christy started to help other community gardens

to flourish in the East Village and a ribbon of community gardens began to flow

through the area known as Alphabet City so call because it is traversed by

Avenues A, B and C. Liz and the Green Guerillas started off by experimenting

with different ideas in the garden. One of her concepts was to place curving and

meandering paths through the garden as a counterpoint to the grid structure of

the city roads.

These wandering paths helped visitors to find peace and relaxation in the islands

of shade in the garden by slowing the pace at which they were able to walk around

it and softened the view for those who preferred to rest in it. It was also

discovered that the Liz Christy Garden was lying directly above the F subway.

Once when the Green Guerillas were digging to plant a redwood tree, they

accidentally broke through to the subterranean depths, and found themselves

staring straight down at people standing on the subway platform below!

Liz Christy has been described as an artist who knew more about garden design

than practical gardening. Her mother, Patricia Law, was related to the legendary

landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead, the designer of Central and

Prospect Parks. From the work of the Green Guerillas work came the term

‘guerilla gardening’ and the Liz Christy Garden became the catalyst for the

Community Garden Movement, which not only spread to other cities in the US

including Chicago and San Francisco but to other parts of the world. However

ironically, the very popularity of the community gardens had resulted in the

revitalisation of their neighbourhoods. With property prices then rising, the

community gardens became desirable real estate.

Due to its location about the subway, the Bowery Garden could never be built on

but in the 1990s, once again the city intervened in the shape of Mayor Rudolf

Giuliani who tried to shut the Bowery Garden down on the basis that community

efforts to improve their neighbourhood were ‘communistic’. After over 2,000

people signed the petition to save the Bowery Garden, it stayed open permanently

and was re-named the Liz Christy Garden after its legendary founder. Other

community gardens were not so lucky and many were bulldozed over.


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The gardeners banded together to form the New York Garden Preservation

Coalition and, supported by State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, were able to

hold off the auctions until Guiliani’s successor was in place. Then with 250,00

dollars from Bette Midler, two nonprofit groups including the NYRP bought 114

gardens and the rest were transferred over to the Department of NYC Parks &

Recreation (NYC Parks), and so the wheel came round full circle

I went to visit the Liz Christie Garden recently and by comparing it with old

photographs, I could see that it now lies in a much changed and distinctly more

up-market neighbourhood of Manhattan. The garden is still being taken care of in

a tender and thoughtful way and is a haven for wildlife. The community that it

formerly served has probably moved out to the suburbs or retired to Florida, and

it has a new group of visitors including those who desire to eat their lunch in

peaceful surroundings. The Liz Christy Garden shares an intersection and an

ethos with Whole Foods store, which has run a couple of projects in the garden

including workshops by taking over one of the plots in the garden to farm. The

Green Guerillas still exist today, albeit in a different format, training and

mentoring teenagers to grow food in their community gardens.

Community Gardens of Alphabet City

Other treasures around Avenues A, B and C of Alphabet City can be found hidden

among the skyscrapers and busy roads including the Secret Garden, perched at

the corner of 4th St. and Ave C, and the 6th and B Garden, which has eco-friendly

features such as a rainwater-collection system and an area for composting fruits,

vegetables and garden waste. More than 100 local gardeners maintain the 75 beds

where Concord grapes, tomatoes, beans, corn, roses and even orchids are grown

organically. Sculptures and other bric-a-brac, ranging from Tibetan prayer flags

to a mosaic-and-mirror-tiled doorframe, are all around.

The 9th St. and C Garden is closed when I arrive so I wait a while walking around

the green chain link fence covered in Moonflower and Honeysuckle climbers with

two native Mulberry trees overtopping it. Just as I am about to give up, Anna

turns up and lets me in. She takes me first to the pond, where the goldfish oblige

by leaping high into the air, and then lets me walk around by myself looking at

the many different beds. What strikes me is that most are filled with edible and

ornamental and often native flowers. The garden is dazzlingly 1960s. There is an

enormous willow tree decked out with signs of the Zodiac. At the end of the

garden is a large wooden decked open structure, the walls of which are covered in

photographs, a place to make tea, prepare food and chat, and past that lies a

leaning sculpture of the Twin Towers. The 9th St. and C Garden is one of the

largest and most diversified gardens on the Lower East Side but many of the

smaller community gardens are on the endangered list, earmarked for future

development. Some have already been demolished. Like many other cities, New

York has acres of vacant lots – around 5,000 at the last count where more

community gardens could be created - but it seems such a shame that so many

years of work by the community can be wiped out in as many moments.

The issues around whether community gardens or farms survive or not, is of

great importance when creating trails of forage for pollinators so I wanted to find

out about how local organisations are able to secure their land. New York is one

of the most densely developed metropolises in the US, and so site availability and

land values are primary factors limiting the expansion of community gardens and

farms and the provision of forage. Many of these gardens had a checkered history

of insecurity and a reliance on public funding and organisations such as Green

Thumb, the community garden arm of NYC Parks, and the nonprofit Trust for

Public Land.


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Drew Community Garden

Jo and I met up with Ursula Chanse while she was composting at the Drew

Community Garden, a lovely, two-acre, wooded site in West Farms in the Bronx,

named after activist and founder Drew Hyde, who rescued it from being a

dumping ground. The Bronx River runs at the edge of the garden so the garden

has become a living classroom to study river life and the urban forest. Drews

Gardens is planned to be part of the proposed Bronx River Greenway, with

organisations including the Bronx River Alliance, NYC Parks, New York State,

Westchester County Planning Department and the NYC Natural Resources Group

all coming together to make this plan to re-wild the city happen. Ursula showed

us around the educational garden beds where community members and students

plant their vegetables and herbs. There was a huge composting area, an

enormous circular water-filled tub where lettuce was growing free from slugs on

floating pads, a native butterfly garden, a stage built to overlook the river and

wide grassy area. As with gardens elsewhere in the city, refugees from around the

world, including the Burmese, tend this garden.

Other intriguing community gardens and urban farms in the Manhattan and

Bronx areas worth a visit are the Garden of Happiness on Prospect Avenue in the

Bronx, co-founded by activist Karen Washington, the doyenne of urban farming

in New York City, and created on three former trash filled city-owned lots. The

Garden of Happiness is one of the original gardens in the largest urban farm

complex in New York, La Familia Verde Community Garden Coalition. Other

unusual places are La Finca del Sur, the first all-female farm in the south Bronx,

and Taqwa Community Farm, where children look after the vegetable plots and

over 40 fruit trees. One place I could not visit lies on Rikers Island in the Bronx;

the GreenHouse is one of two sites cultivated by the prison’s inmates!

596 Acres Brooklyn

Brooklyn is not to be outdone by Manhattan and the Bronx! One the most

vociferous groups in the city is 596 Acres Brooklyn, which has a map that shows

would-be urban farmers where land is available in Brooklyn. In 2011, Paula Segal

and a group of Brooklyn gardeners identified all the vacant lots in the borough

with the aim of helping the neighbourhood residents take them over as

productive spaces. Paula has a legal background and is the Legal Director of the

NYC Community Land Access Program, and the group is named after the total

area of unused public land in Brooklyn according to city data at that time. 595

Acres now has a mobile App. as well as an online map loaded with information on

the plots and the names and contact details of the agencies that own them.

Tenth Acre Farm

Misters Jordan Hall, Bennett Wilson, and Adam Wilson started 10th Acre Farm

in Hall's backyard back in 2009, which has now expanded to the abandoned

basketball court at St. Cecilia's School Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Their goal was to

provide the freshest, healthiest, and most beautiful vegetables to the residents of

NYC but it has been tough going. The farmers are very principled and use 100%

organic methods grow all their vegetables, although they have not yet applied for

the USDA certification since makes the produce more expensive in the end.

They have plumped for raised bed gardening, firstly because they maintain that

artificial soil substitutes do not allow for a healthy microbial and worm

population essential for a long term, sustainable, highly productive farm. With

raised beds, the soil does not need to be stepped on so the roots of plants can

spread wherever they are allowed to. Walking paths between rows in

conventional gardens puts stress on the plants and forces them to use their

energy in fixing their root systems instead of producing fruit.


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Another advantage of the soil being all above the ground, means it takes less time

in the spring to heat up, and longer in the winter to cool down, which can

increase the growing season by up to 3 to 5 weeks every year.

Added Value - Red Hook Community Farm

The Added Value Farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, is a community farm that

occupies a 2.75-acre lot a stone's throw from the Ikea store at the far end of Red

Hook. The store, and the open water behind it, forms the backdrop of the farm,

from which the area's narrow cobbled streets as well as its towering New York

City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residences are also visible. It started as an

ordinary city park with neglected and under-used soccer and baseball pitches but

in 2003, after working with a diverse group of organisations, which included the

New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets and the anti-hunger

group Heifer International, Added Value partnered with the NYC Parks to open

the site as an urban farm. The park's concrete surface was covered with six inches

of composted leaf litter, and crops such as collard greens, arugula, cherry

tomatoes and cucumbers were planted. Added Value became the largest

community-composting organisation in the city that includes the waste food from

GrowNYC’s Greenmarket collection. Before the punishing impact of Hurricane

Sandy, the Added Value farm was a full-spectrum market garden training and

employing local youth to grow and sell crops at its own farm stand, but after

Sandy, there was no farm. The superstorm had washed it all away and the farm

was still recovering by the time I was in New York. The waters had surged

through the metropolitan area, overwhelmed Gowanus Bay and the Buttermilk

Channel, swept away the shipping containers where the latest crops were stored

drowning the farm's crops under three feet of polluted water.

Bed-Stuy Farm

Bed-Stuy Farm lies at the back of the Brooklyn Rescue Mission (BRM), a

community-based organisation in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, concerned with

developing creative solutions to food justice, community health and the economic

challenges endured by the local community. The neighbourhood is a low-income

one with many elderly people. The work began in 2005 when volunteers from the

Brooklyn Rescue Mission (BRM) started cultivating an abandoned lot behind the

Mission in order to grow fruits and vegetables for a Food Pantry for those at risk

of hunger. The once a neighborhood garbage dump, was transformed into an

urban oasis. Bed-Stuy farm became a community gathering space and a

classroom to teach localyouth about food growing and community service, and a

Bed-Stuy Farm Share was set up. However, it did not operate in 2013 although

the Food Pantry has continued with produce brought in from other farms.

Prospect Heights Community Farm

Bed-Stuy is not very far as the bee flies from Prospect Heights Community Farm

(PHCF) but the latter has had a very different history. In the late 1990s,

community leaders and gardening enthusiasts including nine teachers

transformed three adjoining vacant lots to create a vibrant and dynamic public

garden. As with the other community gardens in New York, the gardens became

vulnerable and threatened with development, so in the early 2000s, the three lots

were deeded to the Trust for Public Land and then in 2011, transferred to

the Brooklyn Alliance of Neighborhood Gardens (BANG). Despite its checkered

history, PHCF seems to have gone from strength to strength, and it celebrated its

15-year anniversary in 2013. It now has 50 members, 30 plots and a long waiting

list. This garden is described as being in the ‘heart’ of Brooklyn on St Marks

Avenue between Vanderbilt and Underhill Avenues.


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‘Feed the bees that feed us – especially the wild ones’

Kathryn Lwin River of Flowers


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8.2 Toronto Growing Communities

Carrot City

Toronto was the first city in North America to join River of Flowers. I first

contacted Professor Joe Nasr, Associate Professor of Urban Agriculture at

Ryerson University early last year, having read about Carrot City, an urban design

project and touring exhibition that he had co-curated, which was travelling the

world. The projects at the Fairmont Hotels and those carried out by Islington-

based What If in London are featured in Carrot City.

Joe put me in touch with Susan Berman, the co-ordinator for the Toronto

Community Garden Network (TCGN, a support network for community

gardeners, which was pure serendipity because Susan was not only keen to start a

River of Flowers Toronto, she was able to connect me with many food growing

groups, gardeners and beekeepers in the city. Activities carried out by the TCGN,

includes Seedy Saturdays, an annual seed exchange, sharing of information,

exchange of garden practices and garden tours. I was amazed to be put in touch

with so many people who had founded key organisations or who were managing

them. I realised that the community network in Toronto is just that, a truly

integrated network and, despite the fact Toronto is a vast city, most growers

know or know about each other. It was also when I found out how useful the

River of Flowers’ city maps could be. When I knew that I would be coming to

Toronto, Susan had warned me to avoid criss-crossing the city when planning my

itinerary; I should stick to either east or to west sides during the course of a day.

By mapping all the projects I wanted to see, I could plan my week's stay, visiting

organisations on the west side such as the Perth DuPont and New Horizons

community gardens with FoodShare.

On the next day, I could travel to the east side to visit the Bain Co-op, Big Carrot

Green Roof and the Access Alliance on another day. I realised that anyone who

wanted to find growing groups in Toronto, could use the map to guide them. It

was the start of the idea for a River of Flowers Guide to the Wild City.

Perth Dupont Community Garden

My first day in Toronto started with a small breakfast meet and greet at the Perth

DuPont Garden, which sits in a park as many of the community gardens do. It

was intensely hot and I wished that I had brought a hat. People kept arriving, the

people I met up with included Susan Berman who had organised the event and

where she was growing wildflowers native to Ontario with her edibles and was the

start of the new River of Flowers Toronto. Also present were Maria Kasstan, a key

member of the Toronto Bee Cooperative, Susan Poizner, founder director of

Orchard People, advising on planting orchards in parks, and founder and

coordinator of Growing for Green, a voluntary organisation founded in 2007 that

advocates urban gardening, as well as Fern Mosoff, founder of the Toronto

Balconies Bloom, and Becky Thomas, who was standing in for Laura

Reinsborough of Not Far From the Tree. We all tucked into Susan’s delicious

garden produce and drank lots of tea.

Thankfully, it was not a tidy garden so wild bees were everywhere. Susan

encourages her edibles to go to seed in her garden to provide seed for the Seedy

Saturday event, and Maria Kasstan was a mine of information about seeds. She

gave me a leaflet on Seeds of Diversity, a national charitable organisation trying

to preserve the rich biodiversity and heritage of Canada’s food plants.


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Full of vegetables, fruit, wild flowering trees and wildflowers with bees and other

pollinators dancing around everywhere but the question constantly running

through my mind was - how could I persuade community gardens in other cities

to form an independent network as the TCGN has. The Grow Mayow Community

Garden in south London, has started an online Lonely Planet of Community

Gardens, but it is not quite the same. Having seen the strength of the TCGN, I

would like to convey my thoughts about the Perth DuPont Garden and the TCGN

to Grow Mayow and maybe come up with a plan.

Prior to my arrival, Susan put me in touch with Scott MacIvor of York University,

Toronto, who was carrying out a doctorate study on the habitat of urban wild bees

and we began an email conversation. Scott had set up one of his experimental

nest boxes at the Perth DuPont Garden. The nest boxes are short lengths of PVC

piping stuffed with foam in which tiny cardboard tubes are embedded for wild

cavity loving bees to lay their eggs in. Unsurprisingly, I found Scott’s nest boxes

at almost every community garden and food-growing place that I visited but Scott

told me that he had also put them up on trees in remote ravines and downtown

traffic stop signs to find out which of Toronto’s 100 or so species of wild bees

were adapting to the urban landscape and which were not doing so well. From

some of his early results, it turns out that the alfalfa leafcutter bee is thriving

because it can live in lots of urban spaces including old nail holes, mail boxes and

even barbecues. Lawrence Packer, Scott’s professor at York University and a

renowned mettilogist, believes that climate change is affecting many bees by

causing the bees to emerge early in spring when their flowers of choice have not

yet bloomed. As the weather fluctuates and populations decrease the ratio of

worker females to males decreases leaving bees more vulnerable to extinction

despite the fact that they have been around for 100 million years.

FoodShare

Although it was a wrench to part company and leave Susan’s wonderful growing

space to travel to our next stop, I soon enjoyed my time at the FoodShare Center

where Maria and I met up for lunch with Zora Ignjatovic, my guide for the next

few days, and Mary Roufail, Urban Agriculture and Community Food Animation

Manager at Food Share at the Good Food Café supplied with scrumptious

produce from FoodShare’s Market Garden. Needless to say, I had seconds!

During lunch, I met an English woman, Liz Kirk who had joined FoodShare as

Supervisor of the Growing Green jobs program at the Center for Addiction and

Mental Health (CAMH) and was working as Garden Animator at the CAMH

Sunshine Garden.

FoodShare Toronto is Canada’s first social enterprise nonprofit food hub and has

operated for nearly twenty years, helping thousands of people to access healthy,

affordable, local and sustainably produced food through a variety of social

enterprises. The ‘Field to Table Community Food Hub’ buys food from farmers

and the Ontario Food Terminal, reselling it at wholesale prices to families

through the ‘Good Food Box’ and ‘Good Food Markets’, and to schools, child care

centres and community agencies, serving school children weekly through the

Fresh Produce to Schools program while the ‘Field to Table Catering’ sells

affordable, culturally based and healthy meals yearly to community agencies and

individuals, and supplies the ‘Good Food Café’.

FoodShare was influenced by the work of food activist, chef and author Alice

Waters who founded the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California. At the

FoodShare Community Garden, I saw two raised beds, a new medicinal herb

garden growing in the shape of a footprint as well as many native wildflowers,

and several communal plots where biointensive growing was being carried out.


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There was a Native American ‘Three Sisters’ hillock of corn, beans and squash,

one of the earliest forms of companion planting. To get the highest yield of beans

they need something to clamber up and the corn’s tall and straight stalks are ideal

for that. The beans in turn capture nitrogen from the air to enrich the soil. Squash

with its long winding vines that stay close to the ground and large leaves provide

ground cover to keep the soil moist and shade for the corn’s shallow root system.

Other companion such as marigolds, were flourishing in any free space in the

edible beds. Caroline Crawley, a local herbalist, had planted a medicinal herb

garden in the shape of a footprint. Mary told me that the Center’s healthy soils

are created with double digging and lots of compost from the onsite mid-scale

composting operation.

Rye’s Home Grown Garden

My next visit was to Rye’s Home Grown Garden at Gould Street. Created in the

spring of 2011 in partnership with a group of students from Ryerson University’s

Department of Architectural Sciences, the brief was to design a garden that

demonstrated the beauty of food production in an urban setting. The students

made use of donated materials, oak from which they made trellises and benches,

and concrete boxes, which they transformed into planters with self-irrigation

systems or SIPS.

I met up with Catherine Lung, the Programming and Partnerships Co-ordinator,

who escorted me around the garden and showed me the crops including some I

had never seen let alone eaten before such as yard long beans, tomatillos and

bottle gourd. There were also rows of aubergines, callaloo, chili peppers, okra,

tomatoes, kale, beans, garlic, swiss chard and several varieties of lettuces.

Nasturtiums accompanied the peppers offering orange to the green and red.

I spotted and munched off a Serviceberry tree too, its fruit purple-red, ripe and

sweet. Catherine took me to several sites at Ryerson University including the

Edible Roof Garden on the top of the Department of Engineering building. Yellow

Toadflax (Linaria vulgaris), an introduced, tiny, snapdragon-like but bee-friendly

plant, that has popped up everywhere among the squashes, basil and peppers. I

have noticed that peppers do exceptionally well on roofs.

Rye’s Home Grown Garden at Ryerson University was an inspiration because

encouraging students at universities to grow their own food and have food

celebrations would be an amazing way to capture the interest of this age group,

the hardest to entice. River of Flowers has developed links with a number of

universities in the UK including Roehampton, Manchester Metropolitan, York,

Bristol and of course Middlesex, which helped launch the River of Flowers North

London, so it was helpful to connect with Ryerson University through the food

connection and with York University through the bee connection.

Not Far From The Tree

When a homeowner cannot keep up with the abundant harvest produced by their

tree, Not Far From the Tree, founded by Laura Reisenberg, will mobilise a group

of volunteers to come and pick it. The harvest is split three ways with one third

going to the owner, the second third shared among the volunteers and the final

third delivered by bicycle to be donated to food banks, shelters and community

kitchens. In one fell swoop, Not Far From the Tree make use of healthy food,

reduce wastage and build community links by sharing the urban abundance.

There are a few Abundance groups in the UK such as Abundance Manchester,

which do a similar thing with their city orchards.


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Bain Housing Cooperative

Zora lives at the Bain Apartment Co-operative in Toronto, which provides

housing for about 500 members and we went to visit it the following day. It is

very culturally interesting and popular place to live in with Arts and Crafts

apartment buildings surrounding inner courtyards, very lush green and

attractive. The residents designed and take care of the beautiful, open green

spaces, and there is a long waiting list to acquire a home at the Bain Coop. The

Bain Gardens came alive in the early nineties through the activities of a local

resident Dagmar Baur, who eventually won an award ‘for best native community

garden’ from the North American Native Plant Society (NANPS).

The Bain Coop attracted many other awards throughout the years, and people

have continued Dagmar’s work since she died. Members planted over ten

varieties of Heritage Potatoes from Seeds of Diversity and various beans, peas

and salad seeds acquired at Seedy Saturday. This is TCGN Seed event usually held

in March at Scadding Court at the Bain Coop. It was lovely wandering through

this verdant and rather eccentric estate. Every front porch seemed to frame some

work of art or artful arrangement of plants. The Bain Coop would be an

inspiration to those living on suburban housing estates in the UK. The plants and

trees tended towards the chaotically overgrown so were not at all neat and tidy.

The profusion of foliage, a overspilling of flowers and exuberance of heady

fragrance, constantly attracted clouds of insect pollinators.

This would be an inspiration to those living on suburban housing estates in the

UK. A great little park in Hackney London known as the Poppy Park, has already

tried this out, I would love to see other do it. We d have a bit of an obsession with

being neat and tidy on such estates that this kind of environment is anathema to

pollinators.

8.3 Milwaukee Growing Communities

River West Co-op Café

The innovators of the Milwaukee Renaissance were at the River West Co-op Café

next to the store in what used to be the building’s garage. In the early morning

light, several plaid clad tall men with big shoulders were clustered around a tiny

table for looking for all the world like truckers hunched round mugs of tea in the

local caff waiting for the fry-ups to arrive except that the fry-ups turned out to be

delicious organic blueberry pancakes and tea was filter coffee. Larger than life,

James Godsil aka Godsil, my key contact in Milwaukee and the founder of the

Sweetwater Foundation that operates in Milwaukee and Chicago, introduced me

to his ‘ecopreneurs’: Vince Bushell, who has been involved in revitalising the

Milwaukee River Valley, Charlie Koenen, the Beepod man and Tim McCollow

who had been developing a HOME GR/OWN initiative in Milwaukee. HOME

GR/OWN Milwaukee empowers residents to transform neighborhoods by re-

purposing foreclosed properties into community assets that spark new economic

opportunities around local, healthy food production and distribution. Janine

Arseneau came along later. The conversation bounced around from aquaponics to

bees, from wildflowers to river restoration.

Janine emailed me to say that when she went back to her neighborhood farmer's

market in Hartung Park after our meeting, she saw it again with fresh eyes ‘as

where the wildflowers blaze with golden and purple fire’. The park that houses

the market had been a quarry at one time, and then a clean land fill, but in recent

years, it had been transformed into a place where children of all ages could spot

‘herons, bluebirds, dragonflies, fireflies, butterflies and bees all flitting about in

urban prairie of native wildflowers’.


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Alice’s Garden

We arrived rather late to Alice's Garden so there was no time for more than a

whistle-stop tour. Alice’s Garden, an independent non profit organisation,

partners with many local organisations and businesses, is a two-acre, urban,

community garden in Milwaukee, WI, nurturing families and organizations to

restore cultural and family traditions connected to food and the land. It has

provided locally grown teas and herbs to the Milwaukee community, among them

over 90 families including some of Hmong, Burmese and Puerto Rican origin.

The garden offers herbal education and workshops such as ‘Reclaiming &

Nourishing Family Traditions’ and ‘Healthy Moms Healthy Kids’ as well as

running events such as ‘Juneteenth Day’, and ‘cultivates a value of give and give

to the soil and to community’.

An herbal product line was created in 2012, and in 2014 Alice’s Garden Healing

Herbs will be offering an Herbal CSA. I know very few community gardens in the

UK apart from St Mary’s Secret Garden in Hackney, which run commercial

enterprises such as growing herbs or running herbal cream making courses

successfully but this would seem to be a good way forward.

Alice’s Garden was named after Alice Meade-Taylor was a former Executive

Director of Milwaukee County Extension whose vision for building

neighborhoods and gardening programs for children, youth and their families has

been acknowledged in this lovely garden. Alice’s Garden has a famous history.

It was once part of the farm belonging to abolitionist Deacon Samuel Brown, the

first farmer to help a young slave, Caroline Quarlis to reach freedom in Canada.

This led to the eventual establishment of an Underground Freedom Railway,

giving safe passage to slaves through Wisconsin.

Alice’ Garden also has a history of inventive partners. In 2010, Resilient Cities

carried out soil remediation, enhanced drainage and constructed a pavilion, tool

sheds, benches, picnic tables and grills, and in 2011 as part of its 100th

anniversary, the Lake Park Lutheran Church funded and helped install a

labyrinth, which nurtures spiritual health and promotes cultural healing.

Growing Power

Will Allen is nearly seven foot tall (he is a former basketball player) and I am only

just five foot high so it was easier for him to sit down with me than to walk me

around although at our parting, we attempted and just about managed a hug.

Will has gravitas and an incredibly strong presence. The room barely holds him

in. I am not surprised that accolades such as the McArthur Foundation’s ‘Genius

Grant’ have been showered on him because knowledge pours out of him like

water. He knew all abut the reasons to grow wildflowers on urban farms, critically

analysed the food issues facing cities in the US and commented on the problem of

maintaining soil health faced by many urban growers. Will was pleased to find

out that I am half Burmese, apparently the Burmese are great at growing food

and know how to work with diligence and care for plants. It was an extraordinary

meeting with another of the uniquely generous and genuinely wise founders that

I seem to be meeting in every city.

What I have noticed about many founders of organisations is that so often things

happen to them almost by accident but they have the foresight to take up these

‘happy accidents’ rapidly. Will Allen, the son of a farmer, had been impressed by

the intensive farming on small plots in Belgium that he had observed while

playing basketball for a league over there, and even he started a small garden

practicing those methods by growing food for his teammates.


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On returning to the US and a couple of corporate jobs later, Will ended up by

working on his wife’s family farm. Then by chance he bought the last urban farm

in Milwaukee on Silver Springs Drive, and Growing Power was born. Growing

Power is a non-profit organisation and land trust ‘supporting people from diverse

backgrounds and the environments in which they live by helping to provide

access to healthy, high quality, safe and affordable food for people in all

communities’, and it has initiated the Milwaukee Renaissance along with other

key projects that have transformed the city.

Will has become teacher and trainer to the young neighbours around Growing

Power, and he has taught his innovative techniques of composting,

vermicomposting, which uses worms to refine and fertilise compost, and

aquaponics all around the world. Will has become one of the foremost food

philosophers on the planet because he understands the soil and how it underpins

everything whether edible or wild. He constantly reiterates how we must not

continue to allow food to be produced as an industrial commodity and to ignore

the needs and safety of pollinators because food is the stuff of our life. He also has

a great respect for wild plants and in front of the warehouses at Growing Power

Milwaukee an extensive wildflower garden flourished.

I hope that Will Allen to come to the UK again to speak about his philosophy of

food growing. There are only two organisations that I know about using

aquaponics in London (I stand corrected if there are more) and a few dotted

around in various cities such as Salford, and plenty of places where people

suffering the effects of recession could grow food.

8.4 Chicago Growing Communities

Sweetwater Foundation

Emmanuel Pratt is the executive director and co-founder of the nonprofit Sweet

Water Foundation (SWF), whose mission in his own words is ‘to educate for

resilient communities through sustainable urban agriculture practices, but we do

it through intergenerational and interdisciplinary educational programming for

sustainability.’ James Godsil had put me in touch with Emmanuel before I came

to Chicago and we had a couple of conversations on the telephone and made a

plan to meet up that did not quite materialise.

Emmanuel is Professor of Urban Planning at Chicago University and the Director

of Aquaponics Center in Chicago. He coined the Sweet Water Foundation catch

phrase ‘there goes the neighbourhood’, a tongue in cheek play on how

neighborhoods improve once people start growing. It is the education arm of

Sweet Water Organics, a for-profit, aquaponic, fish and vegetable farm. In

Milwaukee, Sweet Water Organics and Sweet Water Foundation sit side-by-side

in a 10,000+ square-foot factory that once assembled mining cranes in the Bay

View neighborhood. In Chicago, these are housed in an old shoe factory at 96th

Street and Cottage Grove Avenue on Chicago’s South Side. The fish and crops

from here supply local restaurants.

Like so many others who have been captivated by urban farming, Emmanuel is a

protégée of Will Allen, who is almost certainly responsible for the rapid spread of

aquaponics farming throughout the mid west. Emmanuel sent me a video of

himself explaining ways in which urban farming is reviving blighted areas in

cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit.


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‘Creating soil from waste is what I enjoy most about farming’

Will Allen Growing Power


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Emmanuel says, ‘When you take the concept of blight and flip it on its head using

fish and vegetables, you can show that there’s new life in spaces that have been

idle for 20, 30 years!’

In one of his emails to me, Emmanuel comments that ‘the crux of the work is not

really about just urban agriculture or aquaponics. At the end of the day, it's

ultimately about transforming the way we live in cities and renegotiating our

relationship with the land, and ourselves, by integrating all aspects of natural

capital.’ It is these people in these organisations that River of Flower needs to

contact with because they are concerned with the change and transformations

that take place through contact with the land and community.

Global Gardens Refugee Training Farm (Chicago)

Another area of transformation is taking place at the Global Gardens Refugee

Training Farm, co-ordinated by farm manager Linda Seyler. The one-acre organic

farm sits on a city-owned lot just to the west of the river and Ronan Park exists to

help refugees, many former farmers, to fit into their new lives in Chicago by

training them in current farming practices so they can earn new sources of

income as well as eating healthily. The 83 individual family plots on the farm are

almost evenly divided between 75 families, which include to my great interest,

several Burmese from various tribes who fled war and persecution at home, and

ethnic Nepalese forced from their homes in Bhutan. The front quarter acre is

occupied by another organisation: the Peterson Garden Project, a three-year-old

community gardening initiative, inspired by the victory garden movement of

World War II’ where the plots were neater and more formal.

I wanted to meet the Burmese farmers but in the end relied upon reports. Global

Gardens is a colourful, if rather eccentric, community garden where the crops can

be seen growing out of all sorts of bizarre containers even a toddler’s blue plastic

paddling pool. The contrast between the methods of farming in the two gardens

was striking. The produce growing in the Petersen Garden was impressive but the

Global Gardens plots were simply teeming with bees and overflowing with juicy

produce growing higgledy-piggledy among lots of wild flowering weeds, which are

allowed to flourish because they are as nutritious as the crops themselves!

8.5 San Francisco Growing Communities

The Edible Schoolyard Project

Over twenty years ago, Alice Waters, respected America chef, activist and author,

was quoted in a local newspaper, claiming that the school she passed every day

‘looked as if no one cared about it’. Neil Smith, the then principal of Martin

Luther King, Jr. Middle School, contacted Alice about the acre of asphalt blighted

land in question on the school's grounds, asked her to come to see the school and

suggest a way to help it become less of an eyesore. Alice’s idea was to create an

‘edible garden’ and to build a teaching kitchen to teach the young students about

the origins of their foods, plant life cycles, and how to dig, weed, sow and reap

their own produce, and to link these to subjects in the school curriculum.

Two years after that initial visit, the asphalt was cleared, a cover crop planted,

and the first group of students spent the summer in the garden, making it grow. A

full time garden director, more staff and student input and many accolades later,

it tells a very different story now. Almost everything imaginable is now grown

here, from 20 different herbs and salad leaves to mulberry trees, raspberries,

plums, sweetcorn and aubergines, cabbages, tomatoes, courgettes and grapes.


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In the corner, rare breed chickens and ducks peck away at the vegetable

trimmings from the day before. The students even grow their own wheat to grind

into flour for the making of pizzas, which they cook in an adobe brick oven. They

sit in the shade of an arbour to take classes, and prepare and cook food for fellow

students.

Alice Waters had started her own journey by serving dishes to friends and family

inspired by the village markets of Provence, the fishing ports near Bandol, the

books of Elizabeth David and the films of Marcel Pagnol.

Her restaurant, Chez Panisse is known for its seasonal, locally-sourced food,

which Alice Waters helped to pioneer long before it became the fashion. During

her restaurant’s 40th birthday celebration, Alice Waters announced that the

charitable Chez Panisse Foundation would be re-launched as the Edible

Schoolyard Project. Her philosophy was encapsulated in a story in her biography,

‘40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering’. Alice when invited to a

conference at Le Manoir in Oxfordshire, was the only chef to arrive empty

handed; the others came laden with produce from their own regions because all

were expected to cook for their fellow delegates. Alice sourced local deliciously

fresh, seasonal food for her meal and prepared the simplest dish but it was the

dish of the day!

Edible Schoolyard (ESY) Berkeley become an integral part of life at King Middle

School as well a model of edible education that has inspired many national and

international programmes. There have been quite a few visitors to the Edible

Garden, including our own HRH Prince of Wales! A version of the Edible

Schoolyard was taken to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for the 2005

Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and visited by one million people.

The Edible Schoolyard has had a powerful influence on schools elsewhere in the

States and in the world including the UK. Alice’s long campaign to establish a

kitchen garden at the White House finally found favour with Michelle Obama,

who dug up the south lawn within weeks of her husband taking office as

President. Alice’s idea for the ‘delicious revolution’ expresses her conviction to

connect farm to table, sustainably and organically, and maintaining respect for

the land and the sea is fundamental. Like Will Allen, Alice shares the belief that

food can never be produced as an industrial commodity if we are ever to achieve

this ideal. A delicious revolution for people and pollinators is what we need.

Hayes Valley Farm & 49 Farms

The Hayes Creek is buried under concrete and tarmac so I can only imagine the

wildflowers that must have once grown alongside it and carpeted the Hayes

Valley. The Hayes Valley Farm, renowned for its central location in San

Francisco, was created on the former Central Freeway damaged during the Loma

Prieta earthquake but the land was scheduled for re-development. The co-

founders, Jay ‘Blue Tape’ Rosenberg, Chris Burley and David Brody had always

known its future was uncertain. I was not able to reach Hayes Valley Farm before

it closed on 3 June this year when volunteers gathered together to save the last of

the seed and parcel out soil, but I was able to research this remarkable farm

where for the past three and a half years, time and effort has been spent building

the soil by layering cardboard, horse manure and wood chips in it to encourage

micro-organisms and root-growth. This is great information that can be passed

on. The farm was also planted with edibles such as Fava beans to enrich the soil

with nitrogen. A community has been grown too but this has not been lost. The

farm will continue to fulfill its own legacy at other sites in San Francisco when

others apply the lessons learned, including 49 Farms, Jay’s own project.


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9.0 POLLINATOR PARTNERSHIPS

Partnerships between the community and the city are being brokered by non

profit NGOs such as the Trust for Public Land, educational and environmental

organisations, which is facilitating the process of greening the city and making it

more sustainable for pollinators. City wide partnerships have played a major role

in forming bridges between the community and private enterprise. There are also

extensive city government schemes supporting urban agriculture and urban

wilding schemes from community to commercial level, as well as community

networks in every city.


City Partnerships

Trust for Public land

Botanical Partnerships

New York Botanical Garden: Bronx Green-Up

Brooklyn Botanical Garden: GreenBridge

Chicago Botanical Garden

Wildflower Week

Pollinator Partnerships

Pollinator Festival

Pollinator Partnership

Bee Garden @ UC Berkeley

.


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9.1 City Partnerships

Trust for Public Land

Jo and I went to the Trust for Public Land headquarters in Manhattan to talk

with the President, Will Rogers and the Senior Vice-President Adrian Benepe. It

was a very encouraging meeting helped by the fact that Will Roger is a beekeeper

himself and supportive of pollination and Adrian Benepe is the former

Commissioner for Parks in NYC, and renowned for his prodigious work in

greening New York City.

The TPL, a national nonprofit organisation, started in San Francisco, and is

working from coast to coast to ensure that ‘everyone and in particular, every

child’ has access to a local play ground, park or open space. Its reach is

phenomenal, since 1996, TPL has helped to design and build more than 176

playgrounds in NYC programmes and created 150 acres of additional playground

space for 38,000 children and families. Many of these areas are now being

developed as ‘naturalistic playgrounds’ with opportunity for planting schemes.

The TPL is potentially a valuable pollination partner, having protected more than

3 million acres and completed over 5,000 park and conservation projects since its

inception. The TPL is also involved with creating green infrastructure such as

rain gardens and porous paving to help reduce excess storm water and sewer

overflow. The work that TPL is doing with parks in playgrounds is

groundbreaking. Free play - especially in nature or increative playgrounds is

essential to physical, social, emotional and mental development. Experts have

called attention to the issue, most famously author Richard Louv, whose best

seller ‘Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit

Disorder’ is read around the world.

Louv reminds us that, apart from younger people today who have grown up

largely without nature, whatever cultural or religious backgrounds we come from,

‘Passionate memories of a childhood spent in nature are nearly universal’.

Healthy risks such as climbing trees, stepping on rocks to cross a stream and

walking on logs can be mimicked in the playground and TPL designers have been

moving away from the old swings, platform and post playground structures to

introducing natural components that promote independence, resourcefulness

and achievement such as grassy fields, trees, or boulders, hopefully landscaped

with native wild plants. Children will learn how to get up after falling over,

become better co-coordinated and see pollination in situ.

We talked about the types of places that the TPL has rescued from development,

which have now become urban playgrounds, community gardens and parks, any

of which could be planted up with pollinator-friendly plants and be part of the

River of Flowers.

In the UK, when any city planting scheme is carried out, we advise that 10-20% or

more of the land should be left either to develop naturally, to find out which

native pollinator friendly plants already exist in the ground, or planted up with

native plants. Having more wildflowers in play areas in parks and playgrounds

would a great way to introduce children and their parents to their wildflower

heritage and enhance the natural ‘look’ of the playgrounds.


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9.2 Botanical Partnerships

New York Botanic Garden

At the New York Botanic Garden (NYBG), Metro Hort, an association of

Horticultural Professionals, was organising a tour of the Native Flora Garden but

sadly I got lost on the subway up to the Bronx and never made it to the garden. I

should have caught a train from Penn Station and avoided the subway altogether

during rush hour but that is wisdom gained in hindsight. I contacted two of the

key people on that tour, the Program Director of Bronx Green-up, Ursula Chanse

and landscape architect Darrel Morrison to meet up and talk with them later.

Bronx Green-Up is the community outreach program of The New York Botanical

Garden, providing horticultural advice, technical assistance, and training to

community gardeners, school groups, and other organizations keen to improve

their urban neighborhoods through greening projects. The NYBG runs

horticulture certificate programs and workshops for community gardeners

throughout the year, hosts a number of events such as the Harvest Festival, which

brings community gardeners together to celebrate their bounty, share

information, and learn from each other.

Bronx Green-Up also works closely with the NYC Compost Project in the Bronx to

provide compost outreach and education to Bronx community gardeners,

schools, residents, organisations, and businesses, and there is a Composting

Demonstration area in the NYBG.

Wildflower Week

Marielle Anzelone, who gives lectures at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and

writes for the New York Times, co-founded Wildflower Week with Jill Bressler

and Cindy Kridle. Wildflower Week is an annual May celebration where

wildflowers are touted and feted in talks and walks not just at the Brooklyn

Botanic Garden but in venues across all five boroughs including the gardens of

the Battery Bosque, Liz Christy Bowery Houston Garden (LCBH), New York

Botanical Garden in the Bronx (NYBG), Queens Botanical Garden and the

Greenbelt Native Plant Center in Staten Island, and involves the activities of the

Butterfly Project NYC and Bronx Green-Up/NYBG.

I talked with Marielle about my longtime passion to incorporate wild plants with

food growing, including planting wild fruit trees such as the Serviceberry tree,

which Rebecca McMackin had recently introduced me to, in orchards as well as

growing dandelions at the base of the fruit trees. Marielle agreed that growing

native wildflowers with food was one answer to the pollination issue, after all the

locavore movement was immense throughout North America and native

wildflower plantings could follow in its tremendous wake.

Brooklyn Botanical Garden

Originally a marshy wasteland, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is now one of

New York City’s most beautiful parks. Brothers Frederick Jr. and John Charles

Olmsted, the sons of Prospect and Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted,

designed the original Brooklyn Botanic Garden.


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The one-acre extension to the BBG’s Native Flora Garden was opened on 12 June

2013, just in time for my visit. After the opening ceremony, I was able to talk with

the designer, the renowned Landscape Architect Darrel Morrison, who has also

designed for the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). Darrel told me that the

Extension to the Native Flora Garden contains 15,000 new specimens of over 150

plant species that are native to New York City before being displaced by the

growth of the city. The seeds were wild-collected, using sustainable practices,

from within a two-hour radius of New York City by horticulturists and botanists

over the past four years. Uli Lorimer, curator of the Native Flora Garden, was

concerned about finding enough of the seeds to collect in an ethical way and at

the right time. The north edge of the extension opens up from the Native Flora

Garden, which was planted in 1911 and is now the oldest garden in the BBG. A

hawk resides in the wooded sanctuary no doubt attracted by the rabbits living in

the undergrowth. However, the indigenous flora in the woodland area has

become overgrown and dark, crowding out many native plant species that do not

thrive well in the shade. These will be reintroduced in the extension.

At the evening opening of the extension to the Native Flora Garden, I was

delighted to see the lovely green roof atop the Visitors Centre. The Native Flora

Garden was beautiful, still in its infancy. I had not been long in the States by then

and I could barely recognize any of native plants but the signage was superb.

I met up later with Nina Browne, the GreenBridge Program Manager who told me

about the Brooklyn Urban Gardener (BUG), the newest certificate programme.

GreenBridge is the community environmental horticulture arm of the BBG and it

promotes greening through education, conservation and creative partnerships

with the intention of creating a network of people, places and projects.

So in a way it is carrying out the work that River of Flowers does without the

added value of planting specifically for pollinators. One of the most popular

programmes is ‘Making Brooklyn Bloom’, a gardening event which kicks off the

season in March, on sustainable horticulture practices for first time and

experienced gardeners.

The longest running programme is the ‘Greenest Block in Brooklyn Contest’,

which started in 1994 with 50 blocks, one year after GreenBridge was launched.

This contest challenges neighbours and the owners of businesses to beautify their

blocks with window boxes, planters and street tree beds. Today, as many as 270

blocks enter annually and it is estimated that around half a million people have

entered over the years. New York like many other US cities is laid out in the block

system so there are many block associations, organisations and activities. It

would be interesting to see a native wildflowers category in the ‘Greenest Block’

contest to offer an opportunity to open up a dialogue about wildflowers and

pollination.

The care of street trees is a recent addition to their work given the citywide

MillionTreesNYC initiative. Keeping trees alive is equally important to planting,

so bedding them in properly and caring for them afterwards is vital. Many people

keen to plant a street tree tend to raise the soil too high around its base in their

eagerness but this can cause bark rot that in time will kill the tree. The ‘Street

Tree Stewardship’ offers free tree-care workshops to the public both in situ and at

the BBG. The strength of community gardens lies in their networks and alliances

so the BBG has set up the ‘Community Garden Alliance’ to promote sustainable

gardening practices. The BBG also offers home composting and Gardening for

Wildlife courses.

‘I would like to be a human pollinator of ideas’

Sabrina Malach Pollinator Festival & Black Creek Farm


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Chicago Botanic Garden

The Botanic Gardens in all the cities I visited were very proactive with their local

community and none more so than CBG, which ranged from running courses and

events to getting involved in urban agriculture. Gail Kushino of the CBG put me

in touch with its Green Roof Horticulturalist, Emily Shelton, who has planted up

the 16,000 square foot of the Green Roof in two distinct areas. Native regional

and national plants are grown in the Ellis Goodman Family Foundation Roof

Garden South whereas the Josephine P. & John J. Louis Foundation Roof Garden

North features a mix of native and exotic plants, some which are known to work

on green roofs and some which are still being tested for their rooftop potential.

The Chicago Botanical Garden also grows more than 400 different fruit and

vegetable varieties in its grounds at The Regenstein Fruit and Vegetable Garden.

This ‘living museum’ demonstrates the best practices for growing food crops in

the nearby Chicago region. CBG works in partnership on food growing projects

throughout the city and maintains the rooftop garden located on top of

McCormick Place West, the largest convention center in North America, and the

largest soil-based rooftop farm in the Midwest, which takes up 20,000 ft2 of roof

space to provide produce for SAVOR, the center’s on-site catering service.

9.3 Pollinator Partnerships

Pollinator Festival (Toronto)

Sabrina Malach is the founder and co-ordinator of the Pollinator Festival, which

has been going for three years. She is also the Director of Outreach and

Development for Shoresh Jewish Environmental Programs, describes herself as a

human pollinator (as I do!). Three of her jobs require that she buzz around the

city building new relationships and ensuring a healthy food and ecosystem.

Sabrina is currently a Metcalf Foundation intern for PACT, which stands for

Participation, Acknowledgement, Commitment and Transformation, at its ‘Grow

To Learn’ and Pollinator Project (PPP). The PPP is organised and managed by

PACT’s Schoolyard Gardening Program and Food Initiative. Sabrina told me that

since sustainable agriculture must benefit both humans and beneficial wildlife,

the PPP is going beyond existing approaches to food production by growing both

edibles and native plants together. At last!

The objective of the PPP is to create a model for urban agro-ecology that

systematically integrates pollinator habitat into food garden designs. Based on

established techniques translated from the Urban Bee Garden at the University of

California, Berkeley, PACT’s two Pollinator Gardens, adjacent to PACT’s food

gardens in Laurence Heights, have been designed to educate the public about the

essential role pollinators play in food production and simultaneously conserve

wild pollinator populations. Both the gardens have the following feature a

patchwork of native pollinator-attracting plants blooming at different points in

the season, nesting sites, water sources and educational signs made by local

students, so that the public can independently explore the gardens.


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‘Bee pastures – floral havens where bees can prosper’

Brynn Cook UC Berkley Bee Lab Garden


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Pollinator Partnership (San Francisco)

Vicki Wojcik, Research Program Manager, of the Pollinator Partnership (P2) met

with me at the Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen on 24th Street in the Mission,

where we had breakfast and talked about the work of the Pollinator Partnership,

which protects ‘the health of managed and native pollinating animals vital to our

North American ecosystems and agriculture’. Afterwards, Vicki took me to the P2

headquarters on Washington Street, and we met up with Executive Director

Laura Davis Adams, Marketing Director, Jennifer Tsang, and Kelly Rourke, who

is the Program Associate.

The P2 has launched signature initiatives such as the North American Pollinator

Protection Campaign (NAPPC), a private-public collaboration of more than 120

stakeholders including scientists, researchers, conservationists and government

officials. The P2 also initiated a National Pollinator Week held each year in June.

Through S.H.A.R.E. (Simply Have Areas Reserved for the Environment), the P2

invites the community to register their habitat sites from window boxes to acres

of farmland, which the P2 then uploads these on to a map of North America. In a

way, it’s like a gigantic River of Flowers but not focused on urban areas as we are.

The P2 have a brilliant set of literature and website tools, and therefore good

investment major commercial partners including Burt’s Bees and Häagen-Dazs®

to be able to pay for this. It launched the BeeSmart™ School Garden Kits during

2013 Pollinator Week aimed at younger generation by helping them get outside to

observe, plant, conserve and celebrate pollinators while learning. The

BeeSmart™ School Garden Kit is designed to connect students to plants,

pollinators, food and gardens. Also on the P2 website are its wonderful

EcoRegional Planting Guides but for the UK we would need city-based ones.

The Bee Garden at UC Berkeley

Professor Gordon Frankie, research entomologist at UC, Berkeley invited me to

meet some of his team and visit the experimental Bee Garden. The excellent

website ‘Help a Bee’ uploaded by the research group led by Professor Gordon

Frankie at the University of California, contains over 100 species of bee friendly

flowers, and is full of accessible information on wild bees for the general public.

We met in the Bee Lab at the Wellman Hall building and I was introduced to the

team, which included the Project Managers, Sara Leon-Guerro and Jamie

Pawelek, who also designed the website, and Brynn Cook, the Project Intern, who

took me to see the Bee Garden. Robbin W Thorp, Project Taxonomist and

Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis, was not present but I

had already read about his valuable work with bees.

Professor Frankie told me that he has been documenting bee diversity,

seasonality, and host plant preferences of most species at several northern

California sites for years. The team has had a few studies ‘on the go’ all of which

are of great interest to River of Flowers. The Urban Native Bee Survey, a

comparative study of wild bees in wilderness habitats and nearby urban

residential areas, and documenting native bees that use urban areas for their

floral resources as well as for nesting, has been extended to beyond the Bay Area.

Another study using experimental floral resource bee garden, designed to attract

diverse (generalist and specialist) bees has already been started.


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The team investigated specific plants to monitor native bee species and at writing

user-friendly bee gardening information for educational institutions. A field

guide on native bees and their flowers in urban California is now in its final

stages. There is also a project going on in Costa Rica where over 100 plants

attractive native bees, have been identified. There are many species of bees

around in California. These include leafcutter bees, sweat bees, cuckoo bees,

sunflower bees and carpenter bees. The team has already found about 90 species

of wild bees, mostly native to California, and they expect that once sampling is

done in other urban residential areas, that figure will rise to over 100.

Professor Frankie’s premise is that gardens have become increasingly important

places for not only growing nutritional food, for conserving biodiversity, for

biological and ecological research and education, and community gathering, but

can be planned and designed with the goal of attracting specific wildlife, such as

bees and other wild pollinators.

The concept of creating ‘green’ or ‘wildlife’ corridors in a city is hardly new and in

recent years, growing forage specifically for pollinators has become established in

the extension meadow planting programmes, which River of Flowers has

contributed to in an attempt to replace some of the 97% of wildflower meadows

lost since the 1950s. In North America, planting for pollinators has been put

forward by several academics including Professor Gordon Frankie in his work on

the wild bees of California and James H Cane, Chief Entomologist for the US

Dept. of Agriculture in his work with the Blue Mason Orchard Bee. Both have

advocated creating nectar intense bee pastures.

The bee garden on the Oxford Tract was a delight. A half-acre spread of

wildflowers, a mixture of native and non-native wildflowers, planted in clusters

so making it easier to identify them and monitor the visiting bees. The

University’s allotment garden lay next to it. For pollinators and plants, it was a

perfect paradise. For people, it could be the answer to a problem potentially so

serious it could eclipse every earthquake, forest fire, tsunami, hurricane, typhoon,

twister and world war, that would have ever come before it.

A world without bees!


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10.0 KEY FINDINGS

City audits are required for strategic growing

Identifying how much land could be suitable as multifunctional productive spaces

is the key to sustainable and strategic growing in the city, and in developing

partnerships between different stakeholders and the city. The city audit in New

York City revealed a surprising amount of available land. Rooftops are a vast

underused space in cities that could be transformed for food production and

nature reserves and become pollination corridors. Transport systems also have

underused tracts of land that could be used as pollinator throughways. Gardens,

both private and public, estimated to comprise around 25% of many cities have

the potential to become the new urban nature reserves together with urban

farms, and by providing both forage and habitat for pollinators, would add

pollination value to the city. There are innovative projects growing wild and

edible plants at all levels of the urban landscape, ranging from largest urban

rooftop farm to the smallest street garden, carried out by growers ranging from

tiny nonprofit groups to huge commercial organisations.

Diverse approaches are required to bring nature to cities

Bringing nature to cities takes place through three main approaches: (1)

conservation of habitat (2) restoration of natural landscapes and (3) planting for

direct human benefit both functional and design-led. All three approaches

bringing nature to cities are needed if we are to create healthy core of urban

nature to support pollination in cities.

Changing species selection adds pollination value

Rapid urbanisation and climate change have affected the quality of life in cities

and not only put a strain on ageing city transport, sanitation services and energy

infrastructure but also threatened pollination systems. Greening the

infrastructure of a city has been shown to benefit the city’s microclimate by

improving air quality through the removal of pollutant chemicals and the

sequestration of CO2, lowering high temperatures resulting from the heat island

effect and mitigating storm water runoff. Native wild plants can be planted in any

part of the green infrastructure, either with food, ornamentals or on their own so

if majority of these were native insect-pollinated species selected in preference to

non-natives this would add pollination value. Value added initiatives were found

in every city, which included organic food-growing organisations integrating wild

plants in a functional way as green manure, and companion planting for

pollination and pest control; commercial organisations keeping bees and planting

forage; and city-wide greening schemes with native, insect-pollinated plants to

effect storm water mitigation or neighbourhood beautification.

Changing planting practices adds pollination value

Changing to pollinator-friendly planting methods such as planting in clusters to

create pollinator pastures, urban orchards and urban forests, and reducing or

eliminating the amount of pesticides used in the city, would increase the amount

of forage available for pollinators throughout the year, protect pollinators and

add pollination value. The community could also support pollination systems in

their city by transforming their private gardens or rooftops into nature reserves

and kitchen gardens, and by selectively purchasing their food from local farmers

markets, farms or market gardens.


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Pollination corridors need partnerships to work effectively

As cities increasingly focus on how climate change will affect day-to-day lives,

public officials are thinking proactively about the ways they can deliver services

and food more efficiently in their city and how to improve quality of life in the

city for its citizens. Modifying the green infrastructure to make urban food

growing more sustainable and developing pollination corridors or ‘rivers of

flowers’ is one way to do this. Wherever partnerships or viable relationships have

been set up between city government departments, key nonprofits such as the

Trust for Public Land, and other key stakeholders including commercial

organisations, these have been successful in helping to develop more urban

agriculture or parks in the city so the same partnerships could be employed to

create pollination corridors. In every city, the botanical gardens, and many

schools, colleges and universities are playing a major role in fostering growing

projects benefiting the community.

Urban networks facilitate strategic planting

Where networks linking food growers in farms and gardens with distributors

have been set up, this has made food growing more efficient and better supports

agriculture in the city. These networks could also be used support pollinators in

the city by linking forage growers and habitat providers in the city with each

other and enabling them to engage in strategic planting. These would be great

links for River of Flowers to connect with.


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11.0 CONCLUSION

My trip to North America courtesy of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust as a

Travelling Fellow has generated extensive material to be used in a River of

Flowers Handbook (or Guide) on Growing a Wild City, more than has been

possible to show in this report. The Handbook would be an effective way of

disseminating the ideas and practices carried out by innovative projects in North

American cities to the UK, presented through maps, images and text to inspire

others to create similar projects in their cities.

The Handbook would explore different ways in which the landscapes of the city,

its buildings, transport systems, parks and vacant lots or community gardens can

be utilised to create forage and habitat for pollinators as well as food for people. It

would also highlight the role of partnerships in launching, facilitating,

maintaining and securing these growing projects for the benefit of the community

In this post-industrial age, there are many city buildings in UK cites where

former warehouses and factories have been converted into desirable dwellings,

which could have vast organic farms sprouting on their roofs. Rooftop market

gardens on stores growing vegetables and herbs with wildflowers on their roofs or

balconies are also prime examples for our cities to adopt.

Transport systems have great potential as pollinator throughways whether these

are planted up to shade and beautify the streets, grow food or support a city’s

storm water management systems.

By encouraging community urban food growing and/or urban wilding in open

spaces such as public parks, children’s playgrounds, amusement areas, by

beaches, stadiums, golf courses, cemeteries and nature reserves in the city, as

well as brownfield sites, educational establishments and vacant lots, cities could

vastly improve the amount of forage and habitat available for pollinators.

Partnerships are key to securing vacant lots as a community resource. There are

many activist and guerilla community organisations intent on increasing the

edible productivity of cities by planting up its vacant lots but without solid

partnerships behind them, these may fall by the wayside, as prey to the

vicissitudes of urban development.

Knowledge of where the vacant land lies in the city is essential. Mapping urban

places already growing forage or with the potential to grow forage gives an

overview of the industrial and green areas of the city, pinpoints the locations of

growing projects and enables connections to be made.

The experiences I underwent have led a change of direction for River of Flowers.

We will be advocating nectar rich bee pastures of clusters of native wild plants as

well as meadows, to wean councils away from selecting decorative non-native

prairie plants such as Cosmos or Tickweed in city centres and other city-owned

property, and motivate them towards using native perennials and wild trees.


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12.0 RECOMMENDATIONS

• Carry out a city audit of public land to identify land that could be used for

planting wild and/or edible plants and compile such information in a

publicly searchable database. This audit could be carried out in

conjunction with community organisations, which might already be

doing this piecemeal

• Redesign existing green roof incentives if required to encourage more

roof top agriculture and native horticulture.

• Create more incentives to encourage native wild gardening and

community food growing initiatives in new residential and mixed use

development areas, and protect these by giving them legal status

• Create incentives to encourage productive urban spaces on impermeable

surfaces such as the pavement/sidewalk and vacant lots.

• Create disincentives for leaving vacant lots abandoned for a lengthy

period of time especially if covered with impermeable surfaces such as

tarmac or concrete

• Disseminate information on planting native wildflowers and wild

flowering trees to provide habitat as well as forage including non

traditional ways, for example as pollinator pastures, rain gardens,

overspill water meadows, urban orchards and urban forests

• Disseminate information on the role that native plants play in providing

nectar, pollen and habitat for pollinators, food sources for the larval

forms of native pollinators and in attracting pest controllers more widely

to public officials, urban farmers, gardeners and managers of community

gardens to encourage the selection of native, mainly insect-pollinated

plants over non-natives.

• Develop partnerships between city government organisations, nonprofit

community growing organisations, for profit urban farms and other key

stakeholders to create viable urban pollination systems to support a

sustainable urban food supply and to establish composting facilities in

the city to dispose of food waste

• Integrate sustainability of urban pollination systems into all city

sustainability plans including the creation of a pesticide-free city

• Encourage exchange of ideas between cities on pollination issues

www.riverofflowers.org

@RiverofFlowers


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‘We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give’

Winston Churchill


83

13.0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My journey could not have been as rich, fulfilling or transforming without the

help and cooperation of a great many people especially my loving family. I am

deeply indebted to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust not only for

awarding me the Travelling Fellowship in the first place but also for the

enthusiasm and support its dedicated team has shown me from the start.

Researching for a Handbook on the Wild City has been a life changing experience

and my thanks goes to those who responded so well to the concept of a River of

Flowers and for their help in guiding me through their city.

In order of contact, these are:

NEW YORK

Stephanie Thayer Former OSA Director & North Brooklyn Parks

Administrator, NYC Parks & Recreation

Fritz Haeg Founder Edible Estates

Carina Millstone Founder Urban Orchard Project, London

Ben Flanner Founder & Head Farmer of Brooklyn Grange Urban Farm

Chase Emmons Special Projects Director & Chief Beekeeper, Brooklyn Navy

Yards

Marechal Brown Director of Horticulture City of New York, NYC Parks &

Recreation

Crista Carmody Co-ordinator Forestry & Horticulture, NYC Parks & Recreation

Kim Estes-Fradis Deputy Director of Education & Outreach, NYC DEP

Mike Feller Chief Naturalist with Natural Resources Groups, NYC Parks &

Recreation

Rebecca McMackin Park Horticulturalist, Brooklyn Bridge Park

Chip Place Engineer and Designer East River State Park

Christopher Cushieri Director East River State Park

William B Rogers President & CEO of The Trust for Public Land

Adrian Benepe Senior Vice President of The Trust for Public Land

Sean Kielty Manager of the Gardens of Remembrance & Battery Conservancy

Tom Smarr Director of Horticulture, Friends of the Highline

Johnny Linville Manager of Horticulture, Friends of the Highline

Gal Lavid Director of Operations at Central Park Conservancy

Artie Rollins Assistant Commissioner of Citywide Services, NYC Parks &

Recreation

Shawn Spencer Deputy Director, Land Restoration Project, NYC Parks &

Recreation

Darrel Morrison Landscape Architect and designer of native flora gardens at

BBG and NYBG

Ursula Chanse, Director of Bronx Green-Up and Community Horticulture,

NYBG

Claudia Joseph Founder & Director of the NY Permaculture Exchange & the

Garden of Union

Nina Browne GreenBridge Program Manager, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Sabine Stezenbach Board member of MetroHort

Marie Vijoen Author of 66 Square Feet Blog

Paula Segal Co-founder 596 Acres Brooklyn

Annie Novak Co-founder of Eagle Street Rooftop Farm

Carol Gracie Naturalist, educator and tour leader at NYBG

Kim Hartigan Whelan Director of Conservation Programs for Westchester

Land Trust


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John Canizzo Green Team Program Director, The Hort (The Horticultural

Society of New York)

Ed Toth Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Nursery & the Mid Atlantic

Regional Seed Bank

Anne Tan PR Officer, New York Restoration Project

Jason Sheets BK/Queens Regional Director, New York Restoration Project

Bette Midler Founder of the New York Restoration Project

Marielle Anzellone, Co Founder NY Wildflower Week

Polly Weigland Native Plant Symposium

TORONTO

Professor Joe Nasr Co curator of traveling exhibition of Carrot City Designing

for Urban Agriculture

Susan Berman Toronto Community Garden Network Coordinator

Susan Poizner Founder Director of Orchard People

Fern Mosoff & Paul Magder Founders of Toronto Balconies Bloom

Maria Kasstan Toronto Beekeepers Cooperative

Zora Ingjatovic, Co founder Green Carrot Roof, Toronto Community Gardener

Mary Roufail Community Food Coordinator FoodShare Toronto Catherine Lung Programming & Partnerships Co-ordinator Rye’s HomeGrown

Community Garden,

Jane Hayes Founder Garden Jane, High Park Children’s Garden and Backyard

Urban Farm and Market

Jode Roberts David Suzuki Foundation

Helen Mills Green Gardeners Community Collaborative

Aidan Community Canoes Project David Suzuki Foundation

Johanna Daoust Master Gardener Toronto

Miro Zawistowski Toronto Beekeepers Cooperative

Lara Mrosovsky Green Access Community Animator, Access Alliance

Multicultural Health & Community Services

Sabrina Malach Founder Pollinator Festival

Christie Pearson Co-Chair Friends of Alexandra Park

Laura Reinsborough Founder Not Far From the Tree

Becky Thomas Community Engagement Specialist Not Far From the Tree

Melanie Coates Toronto Beekeepers Cooperative Fairmont Hotel

Lorraine Johnson Writer

Lorne Widmer Pollination Guelph

Janna Levitt Architect and Member of Cape Farewell Foundation

Scott MacIvor Doctoral Candidate at York University

CHICAGO

Marjorie Hess Gardening Manager Gary Comer Center

Stephanie Kichler & Cora Marquez Teachers at Gary Comer Center

Michael & Helen Cameron, Founder Owners of Uncommon Ground

Jen Rosenthal Farm Director Uncommon Ground & Founder of Planted

Emmanuel Pratt Executive Director Sweetwater Foundation

Gail Kushino Executive Assistant, Chicago Botanic Museum

Emily Shelton Green Roof Garden Horticulturalist, Chicago Botanical Museum

Paula Companio True Nature Foods

Linda Seyler Global Gardens


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MILWAUKEE In order of contact:

James J. Godsil Co-founder Sweet Water Organics, Sweet Water Foundation, &

Indo American Aquaponics Institute

Ken Leinbach Director Urban Ecology Centre

Kim Forbeck Senior Land Steward Urban Ecology Centre

Vince Bushell, Founder of Riverwest Co-op, publisher of River West Currents.

Tim McCollow Home Gr/own Project Manager, City of Toronto Office of

Environmental Sustainability

Nick Montezon Facilties, Education & Tours at Sweetwater Organics

Janine Arseneau Co-founder Grandmothers Beyond Borders

Janice Christensen Editor River West Currents

Sharon Adams Director of Programs Walnut Way

Charlie Koenen Director Sales and Marketing Bee Pods

Will Allen Farmer, Founder & CEO Growing Power

SAN FRANCISCO

Professor Gordon Frankie Professor of Environmental Science, Policy,

Management, UC Berkeley

Jamie Pawlek, Program Manager Bee Lab, UC Berkeley

Brynn Cook, Intern Bee Lab, UC Berkeley

Sally Bentz Garden Manager Friends of the Urban Forest

Ben Carlson Public Relations Friends of the Urban Forest

Karla Nagy Friends of the Urban Forest

Doug Wildman Program Director Friends of the Urban Forest

Jennifer Isacoff Director of Parks for People, Trust for Public Land

Laurie Davies Adams Executive Director, Pollinator Partnership

Vicki Vojcik Research Program Manager, Pollinator Partnership

Alice Waters Food activist, chef and author

Mei Ling Hui, Urban Forest & Urban Agriculture Coordinator, San Francisco

Dept of the Environment

Andrew Axelrod, BA Lounge Manager, San Francisco Airport

Liam O’Brien Founder Green Hairstreak Butterfly Corridor

The River of Flowers Crew:

Daniel Brooks Designer River of Flowers New York

Coco Tsunekawa Brooks Photographer River of Flowers New York

Jo Foster Director River of Flowers New York

Piero Ribelli Photographer River of Flowers New York

Roger Thryselius & Justin So River of Flowers Chicago

Jim Burnett & Carolyn Burnett River of Flowers San Francisco

Violeta Roch & Fernando Magdeleno River of Flowers Madrid

Images

Bette Midler © Piero Ribelli

Compass Plant on the Highline © The Friends of the Highline

Johnny Linville © Liz Ligon

Liz Christy © NYC Parks & Recreation

Sunflowers on Brooklyn Grange Farm © Kellen Davis

Western Tiger Swallowtail © Megan Odonald

Will Allen © Growing Power

All other photographs © Kathryn Lwin

Thank you all!

For links to organisations and websites please visit: www.riverofflowers.org


86

14. REFERENCES

Text

Breeze et al./2011. Pollination services in the UK; How important are honeybees?

Agriculture, Ecosystems and the Environment 142, 137-143

Biesmeijer et al./2006. Parallel declines in pollinators and insect pollinated

plants in Britain and The Netherlands. Science 313 (5785), 351–354.

Butler et al./ 2012. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 11: 1–10

Buttery Colin et al./2008. Edible Cities, Sustain

Howes, F.N./1979. Plants and Beekeeping. Faber & Faber, London

Louv Richard, (2005) Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from

Nature-Deficit Disorder

Matheson. A. (Ed.) Forage for bees in an agricultural landscape. International

Bee Research Association, Cardiff.

Owen, J./1991. The Ecology of a Garden: The First Fifteen Years. Cambridge

University Press

Schaffer et al./1979. Competition, foraging energetics and the cost of sociality in

three species of bees. Ecology 60:976-987

Tallamy. D./2007. Bringing Nature Home. Timber Press

Thompson, Corkery & Judd/2002. The Role of Community Gardens in

Sustaining Healthy Communities Woodcock et al./ 2013. Crop flower visitation

by honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees: Behavioural differences and

diversity responses to landscape. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 171,

1-8

Waters Alice (2011) 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power Of Gathering

Electronic

http://www.theprairieenthusiasts.org/chapter/smoke/PrairieHayMeadows-

web.pdf

http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-conservation/native-bees/

ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/012/i0842e/i0842e09.pdf

http://www.calegacy.org/saving-bees-in-a-post-wild-california/

http://www.helpabee.org/best-bee-plants-for-california.html

http://beesalive.com/

http://urbanland.uli.org/default-category/urban-agriculture-practices-to-

improve-cities/

http://www.ruaf.org/node/513

http://ase.tufts.edu/biology/labs/orians/publications/Orians/2012UFUG_Butle

r.pdf

http://fuf.net/programs-services/planting/sidewalk-gardens/the-sidewalk-

garden-project/

http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2008/05/01/jech.2007.071894.abstract

http://www.naturewithin.info/Roadside/Tree&Driver_ITE.pdf

http://www.metrofieldguide.com/pollinator-pathway-bringing-pollinators-to-a-

seattle-neighborhood/

http://torontoist.com/2013/05/does-toronto-need-more-wild-bees/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/20/michelle-obama-garden

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303376904579137630

815409064

http://inhabitat.com/nyc/behold-this-is-the-greenest-block-in-brooklyn/

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2010/100804.htm

http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/95153/icode/


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Appendix 1

AGENCIES INVOLVED WITH URBAN FARMING IN NEW YORK

CITY

Federal Agencies

• The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) funds urban

agriculture research and program development.

• The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds the

GreenThumb program, a division of the New York City Department of

Parks & Recreation, through its disbursement of community

development block grants

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides programs and

technical assistance to transform land with contaminated soils into safe

sites for growing food.

• New York State Agencies

• The Department of Agriculture and Markets works to grow the state's

food and agriculture industry. The agency supports programs to assist

community gardens, enable low-income New Yorkers to purchase food

from farmers markets, increase market demand for New York State food,

and build the infrastructure needed by agricultural producers throughout

the state. Its district office in Brooklyn supports the development of

urban agriculture.

• Cornell Cooperative Extension, funded through a federal, state, and local

government partnership provides training in horticulture and ecology.

• Department of Environmental Conservation and the Office of Parks,

Recreation and Historic Preservation have provided funding for urban

agriculture.

New York City Agencies

• The Department of Parks & Recreation (Parks) runs GreenThumb, a

program that licenses the community gardens located on city property,

offers technical assistance, suppliers a number of different material

resources, and provides labor to help clear vacant lots for new gardens.

• The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has a program manager

and several staff who focus on supporting an extensive community

gardening program with some 600 gardens on Housing Authority sites,

including 245 that produce food.

• The Department of Education hosts an estimated 289 gardens on school

property. The department's SchoolFood division, in cooperation with the

nonprofit organization GrowNYC, supports the Garden to School Cafe

program, which uses produce grown in school gardens in school lunches.

• Several other city agencies, including the Departments of Housing

Preservation and Development (HPD), Education, Transportation

(DOT), and Corrections control city property on which individuals are

growing food.

• The Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability is involved in

strategic planning that includes open space and food production.

• The Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) is

responsible for all city-owned properties. Local Law 48 requires DCAS to

publish a list of all city-owned properties that are suitable for urban

agriculture.

• The Food Policy Coordinator is responsible for improving food quality

served by agencies and access to healthy food throughout New York City.


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• The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is responsible for

increasing the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables in underserved

neighborhoods and encouraging New Yorkers to increase their

consumption of fruits and vegetables.

• The Department of Sanitation (DSNY) funds community-based

composting programs and has offered leaf and yard waste compost to

gardens and farms. DSNY also provides assistance clearing vacant lots

that are being turned into community gardens.

• The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which runs the

city's water and sewer infrastructure, has adopted a green infrastructure

plan that provides financial support to increase permeable surfaces,

including community and rooftop gardens, that stem the flow of

stormwater into the city's sewage system, including community and

rooftop gardens.

• The Department of City Planning (DCP) addresses the land use rules that

govern where urban gardens, farms, markets, and other facilities can be

located.

• The Department of Buildings (DOB) issues building permits for

installations such as green roofs.

• The New York City School Construction Authority, which builds and

renovates schools, has been involved in building greenhouses and other

growing facilities on school property.


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Appendix 2 BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK PLANT LIST (East Coast) Flowering herbaceous perennials (not including native cultivars) Botanical Name Common Name Ageratina altissima White Snake Root Aquilegia canadensis Red Columbine Asclepias incarnata Swamp Milkweed Asclepias tuberosa Butterfly Milkweed Aster cordifolius Heart Leaved Aster, Blue Wood Aster Aster novae-angliae New England Aster Aster novi-belgii New York Aster Aster puniceus Swamp Aster Aster umbellatus Flat Topped Aster Caltha palustris Marsh Marigold Chelone glabra White Turtlehead Darmera peltata Umbrella Plant Eupatorium coelestinum Mist Flower Eupatorium fistulosum Hollow Joe-Pye Weed Eupatorium maculatum Joe-Pye Weed Eupatorium perfoliatum Common Boneset

Botanical Name Common Name Eurybia divaricata White Wood Aster Euthamia graminifolia Grass-Leaved Goldenrod Filipendula rubra Queen of the Prairie Filipendula ulmaria Meadowsweet Geranium maculatum Spotted Geranium/Wild Geranium Hemerocallis fulva Orange Daylily/Ditchlily Hibiscus moscheutos Rose Mallow Iris prismatica Slender Blue Flag Iris versicolor Blue Flag Iris Liatris spicata Dense Blazing Star Lobelia cardinalis Cardinal Flower Lobelia siphilitica Great Blue Lobelia Lupinus (mixed) Lupine Mimulus ringens Monkey Flower Monarda fistulosa Wild Bergamot Penstemon digitalis Beardtongue/Penstemon Pontederia cordata Pickerelweed Rudbeckia hirta Black-Eyed Susan Sanguisorba canadensis Canadian Burnet Silphium perfoliatum Cup Plant


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Botanical Name Common Name Solidago caesia Wreath Goldenrod Solidago riddellii Riddell's Goldenrod Solidago rigida Stiff Goldenrod Solidago sempervirens Seaside/Marsh Goldenrod Thalia dealbata Hardy Water Canna Thalictrum pubescens Meadow Rue Triadenum virginicum Marsh St. Johnswort Verbena hastata Blue Vervain Vernonia gigantea Giant Ironweed Veronicastrum virginicum Culver's Root Vinca minor Periwinkle Zizia aurea Golden Zizia


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Shrub Botanical Name Common Name Alnus maritima Seaside Alder Amelanchier arborea Downy Serviceberry Aronia arbutifolia Red Chokeberry Baccharis halimifolia Eastern Baccharis/Grounsel Cephalanthus occidentalis Buttonbush Comptonia peregrina Sweet Fern Corylopsis pauciflora Winer Hazel Cornus mas Corneliancherry Dogwood Cornus sericea Red Osier Dogwood Smokebush Cotinus obovatus Hydrangea quercifolia Oakleaf Hydrangea Ilex glabra Inkberry Lindera Benzoin Spice Bush Myrica pensylvanica Northern Bayberry Prunus maritima Beach Plum Prunus virginiana Choke Cherry Rhododendron viscosum Swamp Azalea Rhus aromatica Fragrant Sumac Rhus copallina Winged Sumac

Rhus glabra Smooth Sumac Rhus typhina Staghorn Sumac Ribes hirtellum Hairy-stem Gooseberry Rosa blanda Smooth Rose/Early Wild Rosa carolina Carolina Rose Rosa palustris Swamp Rose Rubus idaeus Red Raspberry Salix discolor Pussy Willow Sambucus canadensis Elderberry Spiraea tomentosa Steeplebush Symphoricarpos albus Common Snowberry Syringa vulgaris Common Lilac Viburnum trilobum American Cranberry Viburnum Xanthorhiza simplicissima Yellowroot


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Tree Botanical Name Common Name Amelanchier laevis Allegheny serviceberry Chamaecyparis thyoides Atlantic White Cypress Liquidambar styraciflua American Sweetgum Metasequoia glyptostroboides Dawn Redwood Pinus bungeana Lacebark Pine Prunus serotina Black Cherry Quercus bicolor Swamp White Oak Quercus coccinea Scarlet Oak Quercus palustrus Pin oak Quercus prinus Chestnut Oak Quercus rubra Northern Red Oak Robinia pseudoacacia Black locust Sassafras albidum Sassafras Taxodium distichum Bald Cypress Tilia cordata Littleleaf Linden


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Appendix 3 FRIENDS OF THE URBAN FOREST PLANT LIST FOR THE SIDEWALK GARDEN PROJECT (West Coast) Flowering herbaceous perennials (including native cultivars) Achillea millefolium Yarrow

Calamagrostis foliosus Mendocino Reed Grass

Calylopus hartwegii 'Texas Gold' Sun Drops

Dryopteris arguta Coastal Wood Fern

Eriogonum grande rubescens Rosy Buckwheat

Festuca californica 'River House Blues' Ron's California Fescue

Heuchera maxima Island Coral Bells

Iris douglasiana Douglas Iris

Lavandula angustifolia 'Hidcote'English Lavender

Mimulus aurantiacus Sticky Monkeyflower

Penstemon heterophyllus ‘Blue Springs’ Foothill Penstemon

Sisyrinchium bellum Blue-eyed Grass

Verbena lilacina 'De la Mina' Cedros Island Verbena

Salvia spathacea Hummingbird Sage


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Appendix 4 River of Flowers NYC Brooklyn

1. Gerritsen Creek @ Marine Park

2. UCC Youth Farm @ East New

York Farms

3. Hands & Heart Garden @ East

New York Farms

4. BK Farmyard (Fox Trot Farm

not mapped)

5. Bed-Stuy Farm

6. Prospect Heights Community

Farm

7. Prospect Park

8. Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

9. Garden of Union

10. Gil Hodges Community Garden

11. Added Value - Red Hook

Community Farm

12. Brooklyn Navy Yards

13. Roberta’s Restaurant

14. Tenth Acre Farm

15. Transmitter Park

16. New Town Creek

17. Eagle Street Rooftop Farm

18. East River State Park

19. Sidewalk Gardens of Williamsburg

20. Grand Ferry Park

21. North Brooklyn Farms

22. Brooklyn Bridge Park

The River of Flowers in Brooklyn is a mythical trail of forage that a bee might

follow flying from the southern reaches of Gerritsen Creek up through the

gardens and parks of Ditmas and Carnasie until it reaches the edible growing

projects in East York. Crossing Brooklyn towards Prospect Park and dipping into

the glorious native flora garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the bee is then

spoilt for choice between a host of rich forage before buzzing off up to sample the

bee delights of Greenpoint before coming back down through the sidewalk

gardens of Williamsburg and ending up at the delicious sanctuary of Brooklyn

Bridge Park. For interactive map please see: www.riverofflowers.org

FIND MY RIVER OF FLOWERS – NYC BROOKLYN

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