Karl Linn Community Garden (Berkeley, CA)

I didn’t realize it until recently, but this garden is one of the ones that has shaped the entire urban agriculture movement. Karl Linn, a mastermind behind the garden, was one of the preeminent advocates and architects of “neighborhood commons” in the United States.

He championed many of the design approaches to community gardens and urban open space that have gained popularity over the years: reusing materials from the city, building open space by hand with volunteers, integrating urban activities into a single space…All ideas Linn experimented with, embraced and promoted throughout his life.

Here in the gardens named after Mr. Linn, there is a lot to see (and even more history to explore). Garden features include a public water fountain, seating outside the fences, an adjacent demonstration eco-house, another huge community garden across the street, and a link with the Berkeley green belt. (Sorry I don’t have much in the way of pictures. The gates were locked and the light was waning. Maybe next time!)

Karl Linn Garden Commons

My Favorite Community Gardening Internet Resources

These are all email newsletters and list-serves that I've signed up for and found to be particularly worthwhile:

The list-serve run by the American Community Gardening Association is a golden resource. I also just discovered that it has an archive online, so you can search just about any subject that anyone has asked or answered about community gardening in the last several years. Wow!

A more general forum, the Community Food Security Coalition list serve, is currently on fire with passionate people interested in local and sustainable food systems.

The folks over at City Farmer are also some of the most excellent and experienced gurus of urban agriculture. Somehow they always find the most interesting and ground-breaking news stories on the subject.

Do you have any favorites?

City Slicker Farms (Oakland, CA)

After reading Novella Carpenter’s book, Farm City, I was excited to visit one of the places she wrote about: City Slicker Farms, located in West Oakland.
Ms. Carpenter raves about this hip urban farm in the middle of the city, and I’d been reading about it other places as well, so I figured, when I saw that they were having a harvest festival, that I better get  over there.
There were a ton of people in the garden, milling around, cooking bbq, playing African drums, selling produce and sitting along the sidewalk. I felt a little bit like an interloper, but I wasn’t the only curious outsider. A woman with a video camera (journalism graduate student) and some other students from Berkeley were also there. Somehow this little garden has become a larger concept that draws a lot of outside attention.

As far as I gather, the City Slicker Farms runs this demonstration site, as well as a greenhouse, a produce stand, an apprenticeship system, and a program to help people start their own backyard gardens.
The demonstration garden itself is packed into a tiny space with raised beds, grape vines, a vacant chicken coop (due to a recent raccoon assault), beehives, vertical grow-tubes (interesting), what might be a composting toilet, a dome-shaped shed, and lots of people.

City Slicker Farms lives up to the hype.
City Slicker Farms

Hanging Gardens of Philadelphia

I love this vertical, little garden in Philadelphia that caught my eye last summer. The potted plants are hanging by chains from the ledge of the roof, with larger planters below. A drip line “rains” water down on the whole thing.

It probably uses a lot of water (??) but it sure maximizes space and creates a cool section along the sidewalk. It was a great section of the street to walk past in the middle of the summer.

more gardens on walls

The Edible Schoolyard (Berkeley, CA)

Finally, I made it to the Mecca of school gardens: The Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California.

Wow.

I was not disappointed. First of all, the place is Enormous! Much larger than I had imagined—about a third of a city block. Plus, the space feels larger than it might (if it were, say, a soccer field) because there is so much going on. If I were a kid, I could imagine running around and exploring this place for hours.

There is a giant (purple) building to the south of the garden that houses an industrial kitchen, dining area, and offices for the staff. There is a solar-powered waterfall. A greenhouse. A cob tool shed. A poultry palace. A rainwater catchment system. There are water fountains, fruit trees, row crops, arbors with kiwi vines climbing over them, hand-tiled retaining walls, and of course, compost. Totally mind-boggling.

As my friend Maggie said, “These folks have a lot of funding.” Yes, they do, certainly in relation to other school gardens I’ve seen. Then again, this site is designed as a model classroom, and you can tell they are experimenting with anything and everything that can be done with a garden at a middle school. (Interestingly, the garden program is actually a non-profit run next door to the school, but obviously it’s a close partnership.)

I took about a billion photos, but here are some of the highlights from our visit:

A super tall arbor tunnel. I just love how they really went for it. This thing must be at least 12 feet tall!

The fluffiest chicken that I ever did see.

Asparagus fruit in the evening light. Happy Holidays!

The Edible Schoolyard

Public Produce

I’m excited to read this new book by Darrin Nordahl. It’s about using municipal spaces with total public access to grow food.

Diane Rehm does an interview with the author here.