Edible Rooftop Gardens

Homegrown Neighbor here:

As long as we are asking our readers for ideas, I have a few projects I could use your help on as well. I am looking for an edible rooftop garden to visit. Ideally it would be in Southern California, but I may also visit Austin, Texas. So either L.A. or Austin gardens would work. I’d love to hear from anyone who knows of a great rooftop edible garden, but I’d really like to find ones that I can visit.
The picture here is of an urban farm in Chicago that I visited this summer. It isn’t on a roof, but it is smack dab in the middle of the city and was pretty impressive.
And since I may be visiting Austin, I’d like to know of any cool projects or people I should visit there. Anyone who brews beer, builds bikes, does some serious composting, is an urban farmer or raises chickens would be great. And I’d love to see some community gardens. So Texas, I want to hear from you.
Leave a comment or email me at [email protected].
Thanks,
Homegrown Neighbor (Lora)

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9 Comments

  1. Des Moines, Iowa guy here. I don’t know of any rooftop gardens in your area but did wonder where in Chicago you recommend checking out, re: urban gardens?

    I’m hoping to start urban gardening this spring (once we get rid of the snow here) and really enjoy the movement that’s growing.

  2. In Austin try to visit Sunshine Community Garden (sunshinecommunitygarden.org). They’re organic and have been around since 1979. Have a sizable chicken coop, too. The nice folks at fccooptour.blogspot.com (Funky Chicken Coop Tour) can also lead you to some backyard chicken enthusiasts.

    If you head this way, have a great trip!

  3. Isn’t the Rhizome Collective located in Austin? I think they wrote a book you might have heard of. I haven’t been to austin for 10 years, but I was friends with a Rhizome Collective member when I lived there

  4. I did a story for the LA Times a while ago on the rooftop edible garden at the Avalon hotel which you can find by googling Deborah Netburn and rooftop garden. It sounds fancy because it’s a hotel, but it’s actually pretty homegrown. A young restaurant manager had this idea, asked his bosses to let him have a couple hundred bucks to get started and made it happen.

  5. Hi there Eric,

    I used to live in Austin but here in LA now. I’ve got a number of friends out there, one about 30 minutes outside of town with an impressive garden and a flock o ducks and a rouge murderous rooster.

    He also knows a lot of people associated with CSA, farmers markets and local chefs which use organic produce grown by small urban farms. send me an email and I’ll give you his contact info. He might know what is going on around Austin at this moment.

    [email protected]

    Cheers

    John

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