Goodbye Grow
November 30th came quickly, and sadly the Grow project is now finished. The few remaining plants from the Bulkhead Urban Agriculture Lab have found their way to new homes. Our little anjou pear tree is being planted at the Evergreen Urban Orchard located at the Great Northern Way Campus where it will flourish and hopefully bear […]
Featuring Green with Jason Packer
On what was probably the worst rainy, cold, windy day this fall, Jason Packer, sustainability consultant with Recollective bravely took an eager group of people on a tour through the Olympic Village to point out the green features of the development. Many of these features are innovative but largely invisible unless someone such as Jason points them out.
Artists and Gardens: A Growing Concern
Schmidt is an articulate member of a new tribe of socially engaged artists who are committed to cultivating community gardens and urban agricultural plots as works of public art. Their creative roots extend into a number of postmodern movements, from Fluxus and earth art to relational aesthetics and new genre public art, and their role is often to co-ordinate and facilitate rather than manufacture and lecture. Excerpt from Robin Laurence’s article in Canadian Art on-line, “Artists and Gardens: A Growing Concern.” November, 2011.
Seeds From Grow
The Grow Seed Exchange brought about some seed sharing at the Creekside Communtiy Centre. If you happen to be the happy recipient of one of the Grow seed packages but don’t know a lot about planting and growing the seeds look for details below.
Grow Walk
Please join Jason Packer, sustainability consultant with Recollective for a lively walk through the Olympic Village. Jason will discuss the green features of the development and how these innovations reflect the changing landscape of sustainable design. How can sustainability be built into our urban environments and enacted in everyday life will be explored in this walking dialogue.
Potatoes and Tomatoes
It’s harvest time at the Bulkhead Lab. While many people have been helping themselves to the bounty there’s still ample amounts of produce to collect. This past Saturday Nigel and I dug around in the coffee sacks and were very surprised.
Swarming
The evening of the Swarm 12 event was pretty spectacular. The weather was beautiful and the sunset on the water incredible.
Alexander McNaughton local urban farmer, wild forager and cat about town prepared and served some fresh samples of organic food from the local foodshed.
Grow Seed Exchange
The nights are getting darker, the days crisper and the leaves are starting to turn. As fall is now here, we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the hard work and effort of all the people that contributed to Grow with a special event called the Seed Exchange.
Windermere’s Organic Garden
Windermere’s organic garden team joined us at Grow to share their work in aquaponics and urban farming. They also helped out with watering and gardening with on site. They are a knowledgeable crew, making a significant impact on the world. “Windermere Organic Garden was first created by two Leadership students […]
The Bug Lady
Maria Keating, an entomologist with City Farmer came by for lunch on Friday. She brought a basket of carnivorous plants and her extensive knowledge about plant/insect/human relations.
The Straight: Two Urban Agriculture Projects
In collaboration with other groups and individuals, Grow cultivates a wide array of vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers in reclaimed and repurposed containers, all sitting on recycled wooden shipping pallets. At the same time, it sponsors walks and workshops, and—against a backdrop of high-end condos and the nonconsultative hideosity that is B.C. Place—promotes dialogue around issues of “sustainability, food security, and collective initiatives in urban areas,” — excerpt from Robin Laurence article Two urban agriculture projects bring art to Vancouver’s gardens, Vancouver Straight
SWARM12
Join us at the Bulkhead Lab for SWARM #12.
1 metre to 100 mile organic food samples prepared by Alexander McNaughton will be served.
Grow is a public art project situated on the periphery of the Olympic Village in South East False Creek, Vancouver.
Mason Bees at the Bulkhead
Mason Bees are a native pollinator to BC. Unlike honey bees they are solitary so they don’t live in hives and produce honey. To nest they seek out holes in wood where they can lay their eggs. Typically a Mason Bee would find holes produced by woodpeckers, but this form of habitat can be created to attract Mason Bees to certain areas for increased pollination.
Green Graffiti with EYA
Kristina Parusel from the Environmental Youth Alliance met with me on Friday to help build a small-scale living wall at the Bulkhead. The living walls are part of the EYA Green Graffiti program which takes urban agriculture vertical. Using an aluminum unit that contains 24, 6″ x 6″ cubes, fruit, vegetables and herbs can be grown. I was surprised when Kristina told me that they’ve successfully grown tomatoes, beets and cabbages in these small 6″ x 6″ cubes.
Ladybug’s Lunch with Maria Keating
Bulkhead Urban Agriculture Lab (adjacent to Habitat Island in the Olympic Village)
Bring your lunch to the Bulkhead Lab and explore the macro world of our backyard ecosystems with Maria Keating. Learn about our pollinators, processors, native predators and companion planting, the natural approach to pest control for the home gardener.
Grow Workshop: August 13th, 2011
Please join Chloe Bennett, a student of Landscape Architecture at UBC for a lively discussion about mason bee habitat. Mason bees are small blue coloured bees that are important garden pollinators. They have specific needs for nesting and Chloe will be able to guide you in the proper methods of building a mason bee home. She will also share her experience in creating the Vancouver roundabout project Bees Please.
Upcoming Tour: August 6th, 2011
Please join lead artist, Holly Schmidt on a walk through Bulkhead Urban Agriculture Lab; located on the periphery of the Olympic Village. The Grow project has made a light intervention into this remaining section of undeveloped seawall, posing different solutions for growing in the post-industrial landscape while creating an informal space for sharing knowledge and ideas. Holly will share the process of creating the project while discussing what is growing on site.
Canopy/Water Collection
Over the past couple of weeks Kim Cooper and I have been creating a canopy that can also function to collect rain water. We initially met and looked over the site to see how we could take advantage of the natural slope and the different posts and poles already present.
We sketched out some ideas on how to use some of the remaining vinyl material from Eric Deis’s photo mural “Last Chance” to capture and funnel the water.
The Vancooper Hen House at the Lab
Duncan Martin from Backyard Bounty joined us on July 24th to give an informal workshop on raising hens in your backyard. He makes these tidy coops out of cedar and wire mesh. They are made to the parameters set out by City of Vancouver bylaws.
The “Vancooper” was installed at the Lab on the Friday before the workshop.
Kale Chips
O.k, so I probably planted way too much kale. I was excited about growing it and had no idea just how prolific it would be. I was trying to get creative about ways to cook and share the kale and I hit upon kale chips. If you haven’t tried them before, I highly recommend this tasty and healthy snack.
Green Wall/Bird Feeder
Elisa Yon discovered an interesting project by a Mona Hatoum called The Hanging Garden. For this project Hatoum filled 770 jute sacks with seeds to create a 10 metre wall. These sacks sprouted transforming this imposing barricade.
Bombs Away
We spent this weekend creating some seed bombs. If you haven’t made your own bombs before. It’s quite simple, you can use this recipe provided by Andrea Bellamy on her blog Heavy Petal or check out this video by UK guerilla gardener, Richard Reynolds. The basic ingredients are clay, seeds and compost.
Nets
Meaghen Buckley created a series of nets along the rusted steel elements on the edge of the Lab. She crocheted both natural and synthetic fibres into large asymmetrical shapes creating different tension points in the net which allows for the wind to move freely in and through.
