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Wow! Where do we begin? For lack of a better definition, we guess you could say the Greensgrow Philadelphia Project is an urban environmental solutions idea farm. Sounds like a mouthful, but when you get right down to it, that about says it all!
We can safely grow produce on abandoned industrial sites and use our green roofs to provide a natural insulation barrier and help control storm water runoff. We can turn grease from restaurants into bio diesel fuel and garbage into worm castings into fertilizer. We can cultivate honeybees and make Honey from the Hood, we can host farm lectures, master classes and organic gardening workshops and sit down farm dinners for 70 of our closest friends and supporters. We can build a commercial refridgeration unit from an old trailer and a used air conditioner. We can and will take that old storage container of yours and convert it into office space, your old cabinets and turn them into a staff kitchen and your old underutilized church kitchen and turn it into a certified commercial incubator where jobs and futures are born..
All these crazy and green ideas are brought to you fresh from our idea farm. Why?
To help meet our goal of creating viable green reuse of urban space.
Our goals? To push the ‘green' envelope, to explore concepts, projects, visions and dreams. To build, rebuild, and then re-engineer the ‘green' models until they work.
And - to build a model of urban environmental sustainability, one that can be easily adopted in cities across America.
To do this, we make it a habit of spreading the ‘green' word, so-to-speak... to anyone who will listen. We conduct tours of our ongoing project sites, make ourselves available for speaking engagements at schools, universities and sustainable living organizations and contribute to environmentally-focused publications.
See below for a brief summary of just a few of our many projects. And we give the small projects the same attentions as the big ones. Because we know that every single green initiative undertaken in our urban communities... makes a difference.
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Urban Agriculture
Greensgrow Farms is a pioneering urban farm in North Philadelphia. Since 1997, it has served the local Philadelphia communiy with fresh produce, nursery plants, and farm goods. Located on a city block that was once the site of a galvanized steel plant, the land has been revitalized and repurposed into a thriving farm that now produces flowers and produce in hydroponically or in raised beds. |
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Philadelphia Incubation Community Kitchens (PICK)
New to Greensgrow this year is our incubator kitchen project. As with many Greensgrow projects, it started off with us simply trying to fill a void. For years Greensgrow Farms had been turning out our famous pesto, roasted lemony eggplant dip and cilantro-schirazi hot sauce in the small kitchen of our Firth Street office. As the CSA and Farm Stand grew so did the demand for more and more of our farm made products. So we began hunting for a space to build a kitchen for canning and creating value added products. St Michaels Lutheran Church, located just a few blocks away heard about our search and sought us out. |
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Green Design and Re-use
When Eugenia Perret and Elizabeth Oliver from Minima Gallery (www.acleanbreak.org) in Philadelphia approached us to take part in their critically acclaimed A Clean Break design show we did the proverbial ... "Who? Us?" But the curators were insistent that we were their choice to make use of a cargo container as part of the exhibition featuring innovative design solutions addressing issues of urban infill, 21st century development and sustainability. "It is our aim," says Eugenie Perret, owner of the Minima Gallery "to go beyond merely proposing innovative housing solutions, but to provide the opportunity for Philadelphians to experience them firsthand." |
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Bio-Diesel
We all like a good basket of French fries now and then and many times we feel guilty about eating them afterwards. Enjoy those pommes frittes from our local restaurtants knowing that you are contributing to the local food system even if you might be also contributing to your waist line. For instance, when you order the fabulous fries at Standard Tap, you are supporting local farmers that supply the restaurant. Did you also know that the grease those fries were cooked in will now have another life? Yes it is true that grease becomes the fuel used to run Greensgrow truck that goes out into rural farms to pick up that food. You are totally part of the food chain. And you thought you were just finding an excuse to eat ketchup! |
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Green Roofs
The construction of Living or "Green" Roofs on every one of the buildings at Greensgrow Farms helps provide each building with a thermo barrier for cooling, and a natural storm water runoff control mechanism by capturing, filtering and controlling the flow. |
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Education and Consulting
Green Speak. That's what we like to call it. Speaking, teaching, educating, touring, demonstrating. About what? All that is good and green....and how we can all help grow our communities, urban and beyond. |
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Water Reuse Systems
Water is a major concern for the city of Philadelphia, and how we conserve and protect our water supply will only increase in importance in the future.
Philadelphia maintains a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) system throughout the city to deal with all the household sewers and street drains. A CSO system works very well during normal days, but in periods of heavy rain the system can be overloaded and discharge raw sewage into our rivers.
It's critically important, therefore, that we try to reduce the amount of water entering our sewer systems as much as possible. In fact, all new buildings constructed in Philadelphia are now required to produce a rainwater management plan that addresses run-off and water conservation. |
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Consulting: Assisting Cities and Municipalities Start Their Own Urban Agriculture Programs
Greensgrow and Brownfield Redevelopment Solutions Form Partnership to Assist Cities and Municipalities Start Their Own Urban Agriculture Programs
In many cities, getting food markets and healthy foods into low and moderate-income neighborhoods has been a priority for community food activists and local residents who see a link between food accessibility and overall community health. Urban Agriculture, with its ability to produce, process, and aggregate healthy and locally produced food is one of the best management practices available to increase the flow of fresh food being distributed in low and moderate-income neighborhoods. |
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Hydroponics, Honey From the Hood, vermi-composting, bio diesel, school tours, on farm lectures, organic gardening workshops, green roofs, The Neighborhood Urban Agriculture Coalition (NUAC) community gardens and senior markets. A laundry list of crazy ideas? Absolutely.
