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Making the city productive
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Background

• Sustainability (production not consumption)
• As a measure of efficiency
• Food production
• Peasant agriculture still the most efficient
• Local/small-scale
• All green space is a cost
• Or just wasted
• Limiting factors
• Plants cost money
• Slugs like eat our dinner

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Response

• Plant systems are the foundation of all life
• And every successful civilisation
• Remove limiting factors
• By creating eco-infrastructure
• Strategy for a plant based economy
• Make green space productive
• Plant harvest edibles
• 1000s of south-facing walls in the area

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Vision

• Plantings
• Micro forest gardens
• Edible shrubbery, edible border
• Distributed orchard
• Eco-base camp
• Nursery
• Composting
• Training etc etc
• Maintenance
• Eco estate teams

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Recipe for an Edible City

• Veg gardens
• Design, install, plant, maintain
• Fruit trees, edible landscaping forest gardens
• Planting, pruning
• Infrastructure
• Training and demonstration sites
• Nurseries
• Bare-root grafted trees, fruit bush cuttings
  -Bardon Grange
• Container veg plugs, -Cornerstone
• Rainwater harvesting irrigation -Cornerstone
• Composting -Cornerstone
• Construction bioshelters, solar dryers,
  polytunnels
• Info, workshops and skillshare sessions
• Composting, pruning, propagation
• Urban Harvest

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Opportunities for Edible Plantings

• Public green space
• Types
• Strips of land
• Little triangles of land etc
• Shrubbery, amenity tree
• Often multi-storey already!
• Next to car parks
• Too small for amenity
• Maintenance costs
• Stakeholders
• Residents
• ALMO, Council

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Community Edible Plantings

• Attractive productive
• Self-sustaining
• Low-maintenance
• Multi-storey
• E.g. shrubs under trees
• Eco-friendly
• Plants
• Fruit trees, fruit bushes
• Herbs, flowers, groundcovers
• A new take on the shrubbery/herbaceous border
• Edible border
• Edible shrubbery
• Micro Forest Garden

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Community Plantings
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Community Plantings
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Eco-infrastructure -Container nurseries

• Cheap/free plants
• High density 450 plants/m2
• Slug-proof
• Contract nursery growers
• Project provides
• Pots, compost etc
• Help and support
• 50/50 share with grower
• Standardised
• Issues
• Feeding, watering
• Relatively high set-up cost

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Eco-infrastructure Tree nurseries

• Bare-root tree nurseries
• Open ground
• High density
• 6 tree/m2
• Benefits
• No need for watering
• Low maintenance
• Fruit trees 1
• Outcomes
• Building capacity

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Fruit into the Community (Proposed)

• Distro fruit trees and bushes
• Trees trained against walls
• eg espalier, cordon
• Provide help and support
• Pruning, planting, feeding
• Create distributed orchards
• Org. neighbourhood events
• Pruning walkabout
• Apple days
• Jam chutney making

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MyFarm (Proposed)

• Backyard market gardens
• How does it work?
• Trusted growers do the work
• You provide some land
• Back garden/yard
• You get your weekly veg
• Grower keeps surplus
• Who is it for?
• Older disable people
• Busy families etc

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Services

• Design
• Edible gardens/landscaping
• Planting Services
• Community/participatory
• Composting advice
• Kitchen waste ect
• Mushroom cultivation
• Rain water irrigation
• Installation design
• Landscaping
• Raised beds, paths etc
• Training activities
• Comm groups, schools
• Consultation
• Presentations

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Niels Corfield Email ediblecities_at_gmail.com