Inside Urban Green

My Hope Is That The Fat Lady Hasn't Sung

Tom Friedman who perhaps speaks for me more than any other journalist thinks the fat lady has already sung. I hope he is wrong, but am fearful he has it right.

My life spans the period of time he talks about in his op-ed piece of February 20. My emotional immaturity as a teenager led to a very untimely pregnancy while still in high school. Yes, I know it is quite common today, but not at that time.

Thanks to an evening school training program by Grumman Aircraft, I became a machinist while earning my degree at Hofstra evening school. I bought a house at nineteen and had three children by the time I was twenty-one. Try doing that today.

Thanks to our post-WWII manufacturing economy, I was able to survive and eventually prosper. I think often today about the reality that I would not be able to do what I did then in today's America.

Two Dog Organic Nursery Teaches Too

Ready to go EarthBoxes at Two Dog Organic Nursery

Two Dog Organic Nursery not only offers fully planted EarthBoxes to go, they also teach about them. It's an excellent way to market a business and do some social good too by freeing people from dirt and drain hole bondage.

Based on my knowledge of how little is offered on this subject here in New York City, this could be a full time business. The two major botanic gardens offer nothing on the subject. Amazing, but true!

Via their blog: 2dog-blog.blogspot.com

Two Dog Organic Nursery announces Monthly EarthBox Planting Classes!

A Guide for a Certificate Program in Urban Greenscaping

Click on the photo to read the guide

We Need an Urban Greenscaping Community College Certificate Program

The Rooftop Garden Project in Montreal produced what many believe is the definitive guide to edible rooftop gardens. It is by no means just a rooftop guide. It is applicable for any urban garden whether rooftop or surface level. Scan through it and you will quickly see that it is a professional document.

This dedicated and focused non-profit group has done an amazing job of advancing urban greenscaping through the use of modern sub-irrigation methods. They are continually testing, modifying and improving their methods. My plan is to use their work as the teaching guide for a community college certificate program in urban greenscaping.

An urban greenscaping certificate program would teach all aspects of greenscaping in the city including edible, decorative and flowering plants. It is much more than just plants however. Urban greenscaping also includes subjects such as rainwater harvesting, composting, recycling, reusing, fabricating and solar power. There are many elements of construction work involved with urban greenscaping.

Make Your Own Green Collar Job

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

This is a photo from the front page of the New York Times this morning. Although I'm having a problem envisioning a $25,000 jellyfish tank, the message of the story is spot on. There are self-made jobs to be had right now if you have some entrepreneurial spirit. 

There is no doubt in my mind that there are new jobs involved with fresh food production. I avoid using the terms farmer and gardener because you do not have to be either to help urbanites grow fresh food in the city. This is not about tilling the soil. 

There is a need for people to build, supply and install sub-irrigated boxes, beds and buckets. Thanks to our education system there is little public knowledge about how to produce fresh food on pavements, balconies and rooftops without need for tilled earth. This lack opens the door for entrepreneurial creativity and initiative. 

This presents an opportunity to turn a disadvantage into an advantage, to turn a negative into a positive, to fill a void.

With little investment, you could start making sub-irrigated planters from the waste stream that includes food-grade buckets, boxes and lumber. The planters are easy to make for anyone with reasonable do-it-yourself skills. You could do a lot with just a power drill. 

An urban greenscaping service could deliver and install pre-planted planters to order, much like delivering boxes of fresh produce. The product in this case is a box of vegetable plants (or flowers) rather than a box of vegetables. 

As you can envision, this is a service business rather than a sweat labor business. You don’t need shovels and hoes. 

The need is there. I have seen it right here in my own neighborhood. 

Urban Greenscaping can Create Green Collar Jobs

This video is from the Van Jones founded Green For All organization. 

The Center for Urban Greenscaping is also about job creation while helping to feed people. Urban greenscaping can offer new jobs in recycling, repurposing and fabrication of sub-irrigated boxes, beds and buckets. 

There can be new service jobs in marketing and installing sub-irrigated boxes, beds and buckets. This is not dirt gardening with low paying stoop labor. This is a new technology-based way to grow food in the city without access to turned earth. 

There can be new green jobs in food production and decorative plantscaping both indoor and outdoor.  

There is also a need for architects and designers who understand urban greenscaping and how it relates to the built environment. This is particularly true regarding rooftop gardens and greencaping systems that include rainwater harvesting and composting. 

The top priority is education. We need to train new greenscapers and new educators to spread the word about modern methods of urban greenscaping. 

Bob Hyland

aka Greenscaper

urbangreenscaper [AT] gmail.com

Good Idea But the Tough Way to do it

There's a Bert and I story that ends with "right road, wrong direction". That's what I thought of while watching this video. 

How many urbanites would be motivated to do this either as a home gardener or service provider. 

Imagine this instead as a service providing pre-planted sub-irrigated boxes, beds or buckets delivered to your door. 

Here's a green collar job without the back breaking work you see in this video. My guess is that it would be a higher paying job as well. Horticultural stoop labor is a traditionally low paying job and not attractive to most of us. 

Creation of decent paying green collar jobs is a key objective of the Center for Urban Greenscaping.