A lack of lush, rolling hills doesn’t mean organic farming is out of the question.

More humans are moving to cities than ever before in history. This trend is only expected to continue, with 70 percent of the world  population expected to live in cities by 2050. This will require drastic changes in how we develop our urban areas, and how infrastructure is planned.

According to some experts and forward-thinking designers, cities of tomorrow will see a resurgence of farms: not the vast tracks of crop land we currently associate with the word, but sophisticated urban farms that use closed-loop technology to make organic farming vertical instead of horizontal.

FarmedHere is a Chicagoland-based vertical farm that many consider to be the nation’s largest. Housed in a 90,000 square foot post-industrial building in Bedford Park, IL, the urban farming company grows fresh, vibrant produce that’s free from the bugs, diseases, pesticides, and weather-based challenges that plague outdoor farms.

The facility uses a combination of aquaponic and aeroponic growing technologies–often stacked on top of each other–to grow USDA certified organic greens. “Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (raising plants with nutrient rich water) in the same water system,” explains the FarmedHere website. “Aeroponic growing systems are an innovative way to hydroponically grow plants by keeping their roots in a nutrient rich mist. The aeroponic mist most efficiently supplies roots with all needed nutrients, required hydration, and adequate amount of oxygen.” This system ultimately allows the organic farming operation to recycle 97 percent of its water.

FarmedHere’s harvest goes directly from the warehouse farm to local restaurants and grocery stores. Instead of traveling more than 1,ooo miles from farm to table, the herbs and greens grown at FarmedHere typically travel less than 20.

And that’s not the only thing to love about this abundant organic farming operation secluded in a nondescript warehouse: FarmedHere recently became a zero organic waste facility by converting all of its organic waste into compost. The compost is then used in landscaping, horticulture and agriculture at other urban farms across Chicago.

Related on Ecosalon:

Foodie Underground: Should We Care About Organic?

The Stories (And Money) Behind 10 Of Your Favorite Organic Brands

Image: FarmedHere

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Windowfarms founder, Britta Riley, is turning a complex question, ‘How can city dwellers can grow their own food,’ into a social enterprise. With help of more than 12,000 individuals, Windowfarms has perfected the vertical farming for everyone to grow a farm in their window.

It’s easy to dream about growing your own food.  Anyone who has had fresh local produce likely can relate to the superior quality, both in taste and nutrition. What’s more appealing than growing that food yourself?  How can people caught up in the digital age of the Internet and instant gratification get back to nature? (And what if, like me, you have a black thumb?)  Vertical farming and automated, hydroponic gardens that simply hang in your window fuel the simplicity of the revolutionary product. Meet the Windowfarm.

The ingenious business model evolved out of founder Britta Riley’s itch for more green space while living in her tiny fifth-floor walkup in Brooklyn. She started by rounding up some plastic water bottles and plumbing supplies to create a jerry-rigged vertical hydroponic garden. After uploading the design onto a community web platform, she asked members to build and improve on the initial design.

After months of tinkering, Riley patented the perfected (stylish) design of the Windowfarm, consisting of a wire frame that fits four light grey units standing in a column complete with a quiet pump for circulating nutrient-filled water to the planters.  The water gentle trickles down throughout the soil-less medium of clay pellets and coir (coconut husks), depositing the unused water back into the base.

Delivering year-round produce like – kale, chives, salad greens, cilantro, strawberries, peppers and a dozen more options—the Windowfarm takes advantage of sunlight from your window and your home’s indoor climate control.  You can garnish your chicken with fresh rosemary or make pesto from your window-grown basil. Yum.

One kit doesn’t produce enough food to feed a family (or really even one person), but the Windowfarm isn’t about sustaining yourself only on what you produce. It’s about the inherent education, patience and the shear satisfaction of eating something you grew. The indoor vertical farming system is a simple solution to a complex problem, and every citydweller-seeking-nature’s dream come true.  I’d say, welcome to the future of food, where space (and time) might not be an issue.

Don’t miss Windowfarm’s display at the American Museum of Natural History’s “Our Global Kitchen” exhibit going on now through August 11.

images: Windowfarms

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As Doug Aitken’s Living Words text sculpture indicates, these vertical gardens are dripping in sex appeal.

Vertical gardens and living walls have become an upwardly mobile artform, a sustainable way of incorporating the natural wilds of groping greenery into our contemporary living spaces, and adorning our urban streetscapes. A living wall is easy to install, if a bit more complicated to irrigate. They can exist soilless or are nourished by hydroponics, both indoors and outdoors.

Following are a dozen examples of vertical drapery, i.e., suspended ivies, succulents, herbs and woody installations. Several are from Patrick Blanc, of course, the botanist who branded the living wall Le Mur Végétal.

The Musee du quai Branly, Paris, France by artist Patrick Blanc.

Vertical succulent gardens from the San Francisco florist with the perfect name, Flora Grubb.

The vertical garden on the Parisian department store, BHV Homme. (Image via Cormac; garden created by Patrick Blanc)

More Patrick Blanc, here the courtyard of the Pershing Hall Hotel in Paris. It’s 30 meters high and is comprised of over 250 different plant species.

A vertical herb garden care of Design Squish.

A living wall from Lushe.

Yet another Patrick Blanc, who clearly dominates the European living wall scene: the CaixaForum in Madrid, Spain. (Image via Turismo Madrid)

Last year’s Trafalgar Square installation “Living Masterpiece” bears mention. Commissioned by GE and the National Gallery to improve its carbon footprint, the wall was inspired by Van Gogh’s “A Wheatfield, with Cypresses.”

The Athenaeum living wall in London is an oxygen-rich beacon of biodiversity right in the heart of the city.

From GSky Plant Systems, a vertical exterior:

And a vertical hallway, also GSky.

The gutter garden by Suzanne Forsling.

The post If These Walls Could Talk: 12 Luscious Vertical Gardens appeared first on EcoSalon.

Rooftops as sustainable, functional and gorgeous green spaces.

Around the globe, more focus is being put on utilizing the vast square footage of the roof. People are creating private, green havens of relaxation or gardens that provide fresh, pesticide-free fruits and vegetables.

Take, for example, the rooftop pictured below.

Add a little green and watch it grow into Eagle Street Farm, an organic rooftop vegetable farm (image below) created by Goode Green, a New York City green roof design firm.

In some European cities it’s required by law that any new, flat-roof building have a green roof. The image below was taken in Stuttgart, Germany.

Green roofs and roof gardens act as natural cooling systems and help improve air quality. Basically all you need is a strong, waterproof roof with a good drainage system and plants with shallow roots. The roof garden below is at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York City.

And if you thought something so functional and sustainable couldn’t be plush and pretty, you thought wrong. (Image below is Chris and Lisa Goode’s (of Goode Green) downtown New York City residence roof garden.)

Look at these further 10 beauties:

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Goode residence, New York City.

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Rooftop garden, downtown Singapore.

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Private residence, Fifth Avenue, New York City.

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City Hall, Chicago, Illinois.

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California Academy of Science, San Francisco.

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Goode residence, New York City.

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Hospital rooftop, Basel, Switzerland.

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Private residence, Milan, Italy.

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St. Luke’s International Hospital, Akashi, Tokyo.

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Goode residence, New York City.

Images: vinczha, National Geographic, Goode Green, New York Magazine, HenryLeongHimWoh, New York Magazine, tomvw, Ian Muttoo.

Note: Top image is the Gary Comer Youth Center Rooftop Garden in Chicago, Illinois.

The post Gardener on the Roof: 15 Gorgeous Green Rooftops appeared first on EcoSalon.

Dubai, Kwait, Qatar, et al: a Disneyworld of senseless “innovation.” Don’t they have the world’s tallest buildings over there now? Or was it the largest? Neon aquatic hotels? Indoor skiing in the outdoor desert? I suppose the fact Kuwait is about to get a new restaurant that grows its own produce in its dining room shouldn’t be mind-blowing news. But it is a delightful idea, sitting down on the farm in the Arabian Desert, dining in an organic oasis. (Is it also not absurdly ironic that the world’s largest oil-producing countries are leaders in so many things green?)

Dubai-based restaurant consultancy, Thomas Klein International and its Chicago architectural office, PS Studio, have been contracted by Prime & Toast to adapt the vertical farming concept for its new outlet in Kuwait. The release attributes the idea to American professor Dr. Dickson Despommier, who has brought some cred to the idea of farming in crowded urban areas (see our story, “Encouraging City Growth: Urban Farming Grows Up“).

The Prime and Toast’s farm is pretty green for its desert venue. It will be watered with condensation from the restaurant’s air conditioning system. (I suppose if you require a cooling system that has to be fired up pretty much around the clock, you might as well get some offset benefit.) The hyperlocal organic herbs and vegetables will be used to feed what’s promised to be a healthy menu “based on the fresh produce available on a particular day.”

The “farming section” (and the kitchen, as well) will do more than actually feed patrons; it will also be designed into the place so that diners will have a true eating out experience with “direct views into the production area.” In keeping with the sustainable approach, all wood used the restaurant’s furniture will come from sustainable forests.

While hardly a true urban farm benefiting a local community, or a back-to-the-land movement for desert dwellers, the restaurant is good example of how the approach’s novelty can actually fit into a marketing scheme. Says Daniel During, TKI Managing Partner, “The main feature of the restaurant is … the vertical farming section, and the rest of the restaurant was designed around this unique and innovative concept.”

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