Greening our cities

There are many ways to make our cities greener. Planting trees and creating parks are lovely ways to produce shade, and clean our air,  add recreational spaces and embellish our urban life styles.

A new green trend is taking place in our cities and it’s gardening. I wish to see it more as and permanent change than a trend. “Growing our own food is the most radical act anyone can do in this day and age”, some one said to me. I believe it’s true.

There’s someone in my neighbourhood worth talking about and it’s the City Farm Boy.  Ward Teulon is turning our neighbourhood lawns into food gardens. As a fair exchange he will negotiate a percentage of food for your family and will keep the rest for selling at the city farmers market. I find his concept absolutely brilliant.

Lawns have there place according to a landscaper I was talking to. They too contribute a lot to air purification and for irrigation’s for trees and so on. And I think that we certainly don’t require so much lawns and so much energy into battling the weeds who fight their way, usually quite successfully in the end. Unless we use pesticide of course. Or we become creative with diversification. And such perfect and useful diversification is to replace lawns or portions of them into gardens. It’s not that we have not done it before. But it’s now become a movement.

Vancouver City Hall, initiated by our mayor Gregor Robertson, is actually making this statement by designing into their green lawn a community garden. A statement that speaks loudly of our times of change.

So kudos to my neighbour for his ingenuity and for his hard hard work.