Urban rooftop gardening a growing pursuit

Some cities offer incentives

Wendy Natt, Jun 17, 09.

Interest in using city rooftops for urban gardening is growing across the US, as more residential co-ops, neighborhood charities, businesses, and individuals are making use of the previously unused space right above their heads, and discovering the benefits of growing their own fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

The economic, environmental, and aesthetic benefits of planting rooftops with an attractive vegetative cover that reduces rainwater runoff and insulates buildings from heat and cold are well-known, but city dwellers are just beginning to explore the possibilities for transforming rooftops into urban gardens to produce locally-grown food for individuals, families, and communities, according to a New York Times article.

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, an association that represents companies that create green roofs, holds teaching sessions on urban agriculture in cities around the US, like Atlanta, where the organization’s president, Steven Peck, says they have been speaking to “standing room only” crowds. A survey by the association found that the number of green roof projects its members participated in over the past year increased by more than 35 percent from the year before, and their work during that year creating green roofs covered a total area of 6 to 10 million square feet. Green Roofs is currently forming a committee on rooftop agriculture.

Cities like Chicago, New York, and San Francisco now offer subsidies, tax incentives, and sometimes resources to encourage businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations to start their own rooftop gardens. A rooftop garden project called “Graze the Roof” at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco provides food for church volunteers and feeds neighborhood kids who work in the garden, who also get to learn to cook the food they grow.

In New York City, members of an apartment building co-op pooled their money to build large container garden beds on their building’s roof, where they now grow food for their own tables, and a new 6,000-square-foot roof farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn - made possible through a donation of money, materials, and space by an environmentally-conscious neighborhood business - will grow food for local restaurants and shops. The manager of the Brooklyn garden says orders are already coming in, long before their first harvest.

(Photo credit: Annie Novak)

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