Modern Age Rooftop Vegetable Gardens: Few and Far Between in New York City

Graze the Roof Garden - Glide Memorial Church, San Francisco

How is it that a New York Times reporter has to fly about twenty five hundred miles from New York City (population 8.3 million) to San Francisco (population .7 million) to report on rooftop vegetable gardens? See the excerpt from the Bay Localize newsletter below. This isn't quite what we mean by "local food" reporting.

I wonder why the New York Times has never reported about Brick City Urban Farms. It is a very significant urban agriculture project with 500 EarthBoxes on the ground and 500 on a commercial building rooftop. Why have they never reported on the Rooftop Garden Project in Montreal? It is an award winning project and one of the most unique urban agriculture projects anywhere in the world. These projects will prove to be landmarks in the history of urban agriculture and they're a lot closer than San Francisco.

What a sad commentary that there is not a plethora of modern rooftop vegetable gardens right here in the five boroughs to write about. New York should be the leader in the use of modern methods of urban gardening but isn't. The Times could be doing something to help make it happen but it does not. Instead, we get out-of-touch garden writing beamed primarily to upper income yuppies and suburbanites.

All of this is arguably a reflection on the out dated education from our local institutions.  
The first edition of the Center for Urban Greenscaping (CuGreen) newsletter will address the issue and offer some solutions.

From the current Bay Localize newsletter...

Bay Localize Organizes SF Rooftop Garden Tour for the New York Times!

Bay Localize recently organized a tour of San Francisco rooftop vegetable gardens for Marian Burros, a food reporter for the New York Times. Burros has been covering a nationwide increase in interest in growing food — consumer demand for seeds has dramatically increased this year, she says — and wanted to know how urban dwellers are faring in growing vegetables on rooftops.

The San Francisco tour focused on the Tenderloin and SOMA areas, visiting two private residences (see our Use Your Roof! web photo gallery for views of Lee Utterbach's spread) as well as the low-income housing development Curran House and Maya Donelson's Graze the Roof garden on Glide Memorial Church (see photo at right). The Times later sent a photographer back to Glide for some shots. Stay tuned for major NYT coverage on the nationwide rooftop veggie garden trend in coming weeks!