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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (4834)	10/1/2006 5:28:00 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24210

Urban farming: City pickers Jack Watkins, The Independent It was once a forgotten wasteland in east London - now it's a thriving organic farm. Urban areas consume huge amounts of food, so why aren't there more places like this? ---- Five years ago Allens Gardens provided a spectacle of dereliction all too familiar in the underprivileged London borough of Hackney. By night it was a shooting-up gallery for drug addicts, by day a dumping ground, choking with debris and burnt-out bins. A snip, you might think, for a property developer? Not so. Today the spot is host not only to a spruced-up children's play area but also a vegetable and fruit plot that is helping to breathe new life into the once common practice of urban food growing. It has the look of a tranquil urban idyll. There are four beds of vegetables grown under a crop-rotation system. A line of newly planted apple trees fronts an ancient brick wall, on the other side of which a young grapevine trails. Herbs such as salad burnet and mint fit into odd corners. As a reminder that modern growing needn't mean the elimination of all other forms of life, there's a tiny pond, inhabited by frogs and newts. The plot is one of three managed by Growing Communities, a local social enterprise group, and though they jointly amount to less than one acre, they comprise the first Soil Association-certified organic growing plots in London. Benign and small-scale as they might seem, they are a vital and ambitious component in a local box scheme run by the group and its determined founder-director, Julie Brown. "This is not about recreating The Good Life," explains Brown. "We are trying to show that cities can produce food as well as consume massive amounts of resources. There are lots of good reasons for urban growing, such as building communities, therapy and reconnecting with nature, and environmental reasons such as reducing food miles. But where we differ from others operating in London is that we are trying to show that growing here can also be economically viable." (28 Sept 2006) energybulletin.net