I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and a relaxing weekend. I spent a few fun days in Michigan where it was cold and they got their first snow. It also made me thankful that we are entering our “green” season, when the hills are verdant from a bit of rain, the air is clear and the mountains pop out like the latest 3-D release at the cineplex.
While food is so much on our minds at this time of year, I wanted to share this article from the LA Times about new housing developments that are being built around functioning organic farms. I guess it’s not a brand new idea, since the first such development they describe in the article was founded in 1992 and it’s an update to the Garden Cities movement founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the U.K. in 1898 (which is an update to how people have been living since agriculture was invented, I suppose). I wonder if a version of this idea can be applied to urban infill areas instead of only rural and exurban areas. Hmmmm, maybe that is a potential subject for a thesis project for a budding landscape architect in Los Angeles?
For some semi-related photos, so this post doesn’t look naked, here are shots of some sunflowers, on Balboa Island in September. It seems that the owners of this house are waiting to collect the seeds to eat. I don’t know if I would classify Balboa Island as “urban”, but the housing density is pretty intense (at least the houses themselves, if not the number of people within them). Most houses have only a few inches of “land” to grow anything at all and I love that this family chose to grow something both beautiful and productive.
On a side note, Los Angeles is raising the price to rent a plot at one of its community gardens from $25 per year to $120 per year. That is certainly going to make it much less affordable for some people — probably the people who need it the most — to grow their own fresh, healthy food. Here is the LAT article on that subject.
