The Concrete Jungle » There is a Better Way

There are many images associated with the term "the concrete jungle". The media often characterizes it with pictures of Manhattan skyscrapers. For me, the concrete jungle is what you see in the photos. The scenes above happen to be in my Brooklyn neighborhood but they could be in any row house neighborhood in the world.

There are many reasons why we have concrete row house yards. In my view, the problem is not income but rather education and access to affordable resources to create positive change. There are affordable ways to “greenscape” the row house concrete jungle but they are not readily available.

The old expression is to light a candle rather than curse the darkness. This blog has been my small effort to light a candle. It isn’t really a small effort. It takes a major amount of my time to research and publish this blog and I am not sure it is worth it. 

I have come to the realization that there needs to be a bigger candle, a bigger flame because I have learned that the darkness is much darker than I ever imagined. It is almost pitch black.

The darkness I am alluding to is ignorance caused mostly by our broken horticultural education. It is almost devoid of creativity, imagination and modernity. It is stuck in the dirt both literally and figuratively speaking. It is long past time for a bigger candle and change.

The bigger candle is going to be a community-based business. There will be one location to start but it will grow to be a multi-neighborhood venture. The need is obviously there and I have a plan based on four decades of experience. It is time to just do it. The biggest need is young energy. Is that you?

Comments

[oldgrowth]

I feel your frustration at the lack of information issued by our antiquated horticultural system that continues to hold fast to nothing more than just "digging in the dirt" ideas.
I too live in the "urban jungle" and see many a miss-managed planting, drying in the heat, front scapes that could certainly hold pots, barrels, Earthboxes, or sub-irrigated buckets and window boxes to both feed and beautify. But, sadly, it's just not being done and there are many of US who see the need, see the potential, but know, in our society, without a fresh outlook on gardening by the makers and shakers of that horticultural society, that many areas of urban gardening - beyond the typical "digging in contaminated soil" practice, is all going to be ignored.
WE know about the alternatives, WE blog about it and try to reach as many as possible with that information, but unfortunately, WE are not even a speck in the horticultural journals.
But please don't feel you are wasting your time! Though my blog, gardentheurbanspot.com has been virtually ignored, I - and I know I'm not alone - find this blog spot and Green Roof Growers and others to be so informative, so interesting, it keeps us going and growing and maturing in the area of sub-irrigated gardening...please NEVER STOP!
There needs to be monthly periodicals on the subject...something I would love to subscribe to, that cover NOTHING BUT sub-irrigated gardening, from the passive to the active systems and how this all could bring major food and flower production to the urban landscape. We could call it simply "Urban Gardening" or "Urban Farming" as it could include raising chickens in urban areas for fresh egg production.
There has to be other ways to get the word out, maybe newsletters printed and passed out at nurseries or stuffed in mailboxes on our own streets or made available at hydroponics stores...something. But if the horticultural world as a whole wants to keep sub-irrigation on the back burner, there has to be a way to get more of the word out there.
Perhaps we need to preach to a different demographic! How about an aim at the more "affluent" in the urban areas that want nothing but the healthy, "organic" lifestyle, who are interested, financially capable, but again, because of the lack of information out there, don't know how to get it started. Those who have a bigger voice in our society, who, when THEY speak, others listen. Perhaps there's a "top-down" approach to this problem that we haven't considered? Newsletters available at Whole Foods Markets, health food chains and even gyms.
Just a thought.

[jlcastaneda]

Sorry for my english, i´m from Guadalajara, México and i´ve been following your blog for almost a year now. Since March i talk to people who want to garden organically but don´t have a garden to do it, so i teach them how to grow vegetables in SIPs, and how did i know about SIPs? well, because of you, i mean, i knew about Earthbox, but i thought of them as self watering containers and as an expensive, unpopular way of growing vegetables and then i found your blog and it blowed my mind!. I have used some of your ideas and teached them to people here in México, so please know that your work is reaching places and people outside US. Please continue with your great work, and keep being that candle.