THE MOST URBAN ORCHARDS YOU CAN IMAGINE

We at Gardenprue have known about an initiative that is revolutionizing the rooftops of New York. Today we want to share it with you so that you can see how far the desire to create urban gardens around the world reaches. Brooklyn Grange, an initiative that outside of being something recreational has become a great project with many possibilities. Keep reading and find out what it is!

AN APPARENTLY SIMPLE IDEA, A PROJECT OF GREAT MAGNITUDE

Its president and co-founder, an industrial engineer with the simple and at the same time complicated idea of ​​growing vegetables where cement and steel reign. Neither more nor less than in New York. If you’re thinking of Central Park, I’ll tell you how cold cold. The idea of ​​Brooklyn Grange is to cultivate on the roofs of buildings with a clear objective:

Ecological urban gardens that produce serious amounts of product to supply businesses, restaurants and ordinary people with a small detail. The supply will never be further than 5 km around . With this, the already known carbon footprint is greatly reduced.

The idea is very good but carrying it out had its buts. The building to choose had to be a well-waterproofed building with sufficient structural strength to support the weight of the earth. They then had to carry bags of soil up the stairs of the building to create the substrate on the roof of the building. Even if the building supports the load well, the soil should not be too heavy and in Brooklyn Grange they use a porous and light stone base with compost that provides everything the plant needs with a low density of soil.

AND THE POLLUTION OF THE BIG CITY?

It is true that there is pollution but they say that it is the same that you breathe second after second every time you inhale air when you live in a big city. They also affirm that the most problematic of pollution are the heavy metals that remain a few meters from the emission of cars, so that a 7 or 10-story rooftop surely has better air quality than the one that is at ground level. We particularly think this is debatable to some extent because smog clouds reach quite high altitude.

BROOKLYN GRANGE RESULTS

They were profitable the first year of implantation in 2010. Today they have almost 2.5 hectares of rooftop land in Brooklyn where they grow tens of thousands of kilos per year of horticultural products such as tomatoes (the main one), lettuce, peppers, cabbages, Swiss chard, carrots, and new projects such as laying hens and even organic honey. During the winter they grow cereals. All this on rooftops! They organize dinners and events on the rooftops, have agricultural training workshops and of course educational days and workshops for young children and adults.

The very idea of ​​imagining collecting the eggs from the layers or caring for and collecting your own lettuces with the image of Manhattan in the background, is at least bucolic. If you want to know more information about the project, go to their website BrooklynGrangefarm.com