Educational rooftop garden
My name is Paul Healey, I am a professional organic farmer and a former teacher with over 5 years experience in curriculum design. I am a director of Local Area Growers Society. Local Area Growers Society is a not-for-profit organization with a mandate to create educational gardening opportunities for low-income youth, seniors, and adults in Vancouver. Our passion is to engage and educate urban residents who have a desire to garden, and in turn create their own food security. The community where my Smart City Project would be located is on East Hastings St. in the heart of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. This neighbourhood has struggled with poverty and health issues for decades, and was known as Canada’s poorest postal code. My project is to build and run a community rooftop garden on a new mixed-use housing development being built in the neighbourhood. The development will house low-income seniors and young first-time homeowners. The developer has pledged the financing to build 90 ten-foot by four-foot rooftop garden boxes, a presentation space, and a commercial kitchen that would be available to garden participants. The construction of the building, Sequel 138, and its rooftop gardens is currently underway by the ITC Construction Group. My Smart City Project would include: 1. Recruiting Downtown Eastside Vancouver residents who are interested in learning organic farming methods. Local Area Growers Society would recruit participants through local organizations that we have relationships with (e.g., Neighbourhood House, local physicians, local churches) 2. Creating a detailed and easy to understand local curriculum to teach organic farming methods. a. Topics for weekly tutorials would be: • Garden basics • Direct seeding and starting transplants • Soil building and composting • Soil science • Root transplanting • Pruning • Grafting • Seed saving • Medicinal plants • Native plants • Chef training • Young chefs • Food preserving • Root vegetables • Biodynamics • Winter planting • Aquatic edibles 3. Workshops taught onsite by a variety of farming and food professionals with expertise in each topic area. Local Area Growers Society has already recruited many of the workshop instructors. The money available through the Smart City Project contest would enable us to develop curriculum, provide instruction, purchase gardening equipment and supplies, and perform community outreach. Local Area Growers Society’s rooftop garden is a Smart City Project because it will make the community: • Healthier, by providing fresh and nutritious food to those with little access to it and the emotional benefits of gardening and spending time in green space. It will also be a place for relationship building between seniors and young people. • Greener, as a source of local food and as a green roof on an inner-city building • More sustainable, because more people will have developed gardening and food skills that they will be able to share with other members of the community. Through teaching heritage farming and seed saving techniques, farming practices will be sustained into the future.