Planting Green Roofs and Living Walls: Reduce Water Runoff - Offset Carbon Emissions - Increase Biodiversity- Create Beauty

The authors are experts not only in the construction of green roofs, but on the history of the green roof movement, and have detailed its progress from the early days to contemporary times well. Nigel Dunnett and Noël Kingsbury have revised this book from an earlier edition, adding over 80 new pages. The result is a very authoritative tome on every aspect of green roof and wall creation.

The introduction spends a number of pages looking at different countries and discussing the policies and green roof advances in each of these places. There are many technical details in the book, enough to easily create small scale projects using only the information inside.

Green roofs are becoming an increasingly common sight, on innovative new buildings, on buildings with pre-existing design challenges and very frequently on commercial buildings with flat roofs. Many roofs are prepared as a habitat for local vegetation, and are not intended to grow any species other than those found naturally in the local flora. Still others have wetlands built into them, and become a familiar place for birds to land and nest upon.

Planting on roofs and walls is becoming a discipline of its own in the realm of ecology, as it creates a complex system of habitat for many creatures wherever it is constructed.

This book is beautiful and has a colour photograph on almost every page while most have two or three. For anyone new to the topic, discussions about retrofits required for supporting different types of roofs and networks, planting and watering systems, run-off questions and the integration of living roofs and walls into new buildings are all within these pages. The book was originally listed as a gardening book, but is now listed as architecture. It is a mix of both those disciplines, as well as a strong connection to urban ecology, and a discipline in its own right.

There are now many identifiable hybrid types of roof greening, as buildings are being created to support elaborate green roofs while others are merely adapted, some being extensively greened while others only contain a few green areas. Those green roofs involving high-input garden technique have been covered by several books, while this book is more interested in introducing these low-input roofs and their accompanying living walls.

Bioengineering is a term which describes constructing walls with the intention of integrating planting. Chapter 2, titled Why Build Green Roofs, explores in-depth the environmental benefits of green roofs, or bioengineering in action, including such positive spin-offs as increased biodiversity, which is also represented in graphs. Run-off and roof types are also represented, as are the benefits of green roofs regarding air pollution and carbon sequestration.

It is clear green roofs radically diminish the urban heat island effect as well, provided the buildings are sufficiently irrigated with a source such as recycled rainwater irrigation. The authors cite one particularly interesting study involving a hypothetical green roof coverage of 50% for Toronto's "downtown heat island," a study which found irrigated green roofs reduced the heat effect by a whopping 2 degrees, while unirrigated roofs were discovered to be of far less benefit but still created cooling. Information about recycling and irrigating roofs dispels the suggestion that green roofs and rooftop gardens become water intensive. Other analysis included noise reduction as a positive compliment, and the discovery that solar panels increase an uptick in effectiveness when placed on green roofs, as "the output of (photovoltaic) cells is higher at lower temperatures." The analysis also found that there has been insufficient effort in truly promoting green roofs at a city scale, despite multiple and even cost-offsetting benefits.

Chapter 3, titled Constructing Green Roofs, explores the almost limitless possibilities for construction, and forever dispels the idea that a flat roof is a requirement. The challenges of wind, types of irrigation, and concerns of fire risks are also discussed. Adding one of the better myth-busting facts, while thatched roofs are for instance a fire risk, a green roof is actually the opposite of a fire risk. There are no known green roofs fires in Germany, where there are millions of square feet of green roofs.

Green roof structural requirements are discussed and include underlying structural supports, a green roof deck, a vapour control barrier, and a "waterproofing layer or membrane." Additional covering protects this membrane brilliantly. Green roof materials are explored as methods of planting, growing medium, soils, soil depths and types of systems. The materials section Components of a Green Roof includes several excellent case studies with interesting photos and excellent designs explaining plant combinations for various purposes.

The second half of the book is dedicated to facade greening, the fine art of planting on walls. This was the section that interested me the most. This section begins with a discussion of climbers, something which humans have used for ages but only recently studied. Climber vines often require very little encouragement where there is brick, but a much more dense facade can be made using lightweight steel trellis panels and coconut fiber, as one example, which allows a mix of plants that establish quickly and penetrate the panels well. Different types of trellis such as grids and steel cables are designed for different plants, for instance bougainvillia has adorned buildings for millenia and loves a widely spaced grid. Steel ropes as well as glass fiber are materials which are durable enough to support plants on walls. The authors write, "for heights greater than two stories, choosing supports for climbers and their installation moves into an engineering rather than horticultural territory." However, the book does move into this territory, and I noticed that the earlier version of the book was listed as a gardening book, while this newer edition is listed online as on the topic of architecture. The book encourages plant facade builders to carefully consider design factors, aesthetics, and whether the plants need horizontal as well as vertical supports. As well the book adresess the condition of the wall receiving load bearing fixings, and various tensioning methods.

The authors then proceed to a number of incredibly beautiful case studies, where their limitations and challenges are analyzed in detail. One of the keys to success in creating a living wall is a constant source of water and nutrients to the plants. As the book remarks, "some extremely varied and visually attractive plant communities can be found growing on cliffs where there is a sufficiently constant supply of nutrient-laden water flowing over and down the rock surface. Often these plant communities are highly distinctive, frequently offering refugia for locally rare or highly specialized species. In the temperate zone, some of the best known are the 'coastal bluff' communities of cliff and canyon walls in the Cascade range in north-west North America." Natural hydroponics are occurring when nutrient-rich water trickles down cliff walls from decaying material above. Recreating this through an irrigation system is key to success. The book reinforces to us that green roof runoff is more than merely "a useful resource" and is nutrient dense water that belongs in an integrated plan. Water from roof run off, for example, can be used to irrigate wall plantings to a very positive effect.

The rest of the book is an extensive list of some of the best and most appropriate species for wall and roof gardening. It is an extensive plant directory including plant height and drought tolerance among other details and makes the rest of the book extra indispensable. I wished the book had a bit more detail about food that can be grown on roofs and walls, but the emphasis was a bit more on creating habitat, on reducing urban heat issues and on aesthetics, something the authors acknowledge at the introduction. I recommend this book strongly to anyone interested in green roofs and walls, not as a read but as a permanent fixture to their library.

Dunnett, N., & Kingsbury, N. (2010). Planting Green roofs and living walls. Timber Press.

Urban Biodiversity: From Research to Practice

This is a comprehensive volume edited by Alessandro Ossola and Jari Niemalä, packed with interesting essays from an array of leading researchers. There are forty contributors in all, including, in the tradition of all great edited essay compilations, several essays by the editors themselves. The book contains contributions from universities all over the globe, and include contributors from places as far-flung as Norway, Chile, Australia and South Africa.

The book is designed to underscore the extent of the research that is happening worldwide. Now that researchers have embraced urban biodiversity as a science, "its vast richness" and the importance of urban biodiversity "for the ecological functioning of cities" as well and innate value of urban species biodiversity for citydwellers, has created more research activity in the field than ever before.

The first essay, a collaboration with the editors and researchers, displays a chart with a rise in the numbers of papers published today containing the words "urban," "animals" "plants" and "biodiversity" in the same piece. It remarks that because of this new spike in research activity, cities are able to derive exciting new data. As a result, these new and more detailed studies cause cities to implement action policies, ensuring that urban biodiversity research does connect to real life practice and change.

The next essay discusses urban soil questions and soil management with many illustrations. The illustrations help describe the natural diversity of soil conditions found in urban settings, and highlights a trend where cities often need better functioning biota.

Chapter six, titled Urban Biological Invasion: When Vertebrates Come to Town was a chapter I found particularly interesting. This essay examined the role of mice and rats historically, the problem of grey squirrel invasions in Europe, and looked at a number of other species invasion trends. The essay presented various concerns as well as offering quite a number of solutions, and in general contained a lot of information in a short piece that was well-composed.

Chapter eight addresses biodiversity and social values and preferences, something that is rarely considered. It seems the public often prefers certain species of urban wildlife over others, and the interconnectedness of species is easily forgotten. The essay discussed challenging these perceptions and preferences, guided by awareness campaigns and integrating social sciences. To address biases that lean in favour of some urban wildlife above others, campaigns are built to encourage conservation appreciation in the broader public.

Chapter nine carries on with the examination of human roles in more depth, addressing biodiversity and psychological well-being. The essay asks how to deliver ecosystem services to people. The essay links biodiversity and wellbeing, presents stress reduction theory and highlights the way that biodiversity evokes an automatic positive effect. In reading this chapter I felt as if they were somewhat using the word "biodiversity" where nature might have simply sufficed in the past. However, it was done well and the intentions were of the highest. The authors also described strategies for enhancing a sense cultural good in cities while ensuring higher wild species diversity longterm. To imprint upon the public imagination the concept that "nature" requires "biodiversity" and that enhanced environmental literacy is worthwhile is an on-going effort that seems to be garnering results. The author also cites studies in this chapter, talking about the restorative emotional effects of biodiversity. Inviting more research, they also highlight gaps in information around biodiversity and its impact on public wellbeing, a topic requiring further study.

The final chapter, Urban Green Spaces: An African Perspective, was especially insightful. The chapter claims there are two ideologies at play in some parts of Africa, one derived from South African studies and universities, and those that intuitively develop close to the immediate bioregion in question. For creating biodiversity-friendly cities, conservation and ecological services, attention is required. The essay emphasizes that active citizen engagement is key, as well as some public acknowledgement that urban ecological studies in Africa still show a clear bias towards South African cities. The essay argues that bias has led planmers to overlook different management practices that might be quite essential for the success of services in places with requirements distinct from the South African model. The authors propose urban green spaces be integrated into the urban green infrastructure in a way that is planned and co-managed by all stakeholders...where both people and nature win."

There were quite a few more excellent essays in this small book and I really enjoyed all of them. The research was well-conducted and extremely well referenced. These are essays by scientists all over the world devoted to taking quite a grassroots approach to urban biodiversity. Their inclusion of so much input from social justice concerns was very encouraging. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the health of the cities in which they live.

Ossola, A., & Niemelä, J. (2018). Urban Biodiversity: From research to practice. Routledge.

Design Like You Give a Damn (2): Building from the Ground Up

This photography-dense 335 page follow-up to the earlier book of the same name is a punchy and unforgettable read. Edited by Architecture for Humanity, the book speaks to architects, designers and artists like myself who want to build projects, desings and installations sustainably, placing community at the fore. There are literally hundreds of inspiring case examples inside this book, all of them full of life and optimism.

The book is divided into sections, the first introductory section in light green addressing "lessons learned." All of the "lesson learned" examples represent projects that have been done in communities, in particular disaster recovery sites, which involve a team, an implementing agency and sponsors, a number of cases this being Architecture for Humanity, but many are the sustainablity projects of architectural firms and architectural schools as well. These teams represent variations of project management coordinators, design fellows, the actual designers, consultants, volunteers, a loan fund and numerous beneficiaries all working behind the scenes to bring a project to life.

Each section looks at various sustainability architecture gems, and examine many astounding case studies. The book is loaded with beautiful photographs that shine with excitement and hope.

Housing is the third section, underscored by the book's designers with forest green accents throughout. it is another exciting array of architectural design projects built to bring out the best in people and alleviate poverty in a sustainable way. The detail and effort that goes into each of these projects is evident, as these architects are trying to bring communities together and create positive living experiences and are somewhat competitive in meeting the challenge. Obviously the themes overlap.

The next and largest section is themed Community, but the efforts of the different architectural design teams in the Housing section now put Community under a high focus lens. There are also some very famous examples in the Community section, in particular the success story of the Highline in New York, The bridge school in China, and the Gimnasio Vertical in Venezuela with 15,000 users monthly. There are, however, many more examples in this largest section, all of them fascinating.

The slender section Basic Services and Materials follows, and these are shown in an installation place but have hundreds to thousands of version as they are designed for function, not architecture per say. Among these is the Emergency Water Bladder, a device developed in 1990 and still in use while being finessed, it is a life-saving way of storing potable water, and these bladders are used by Oxfam to serve thousands of people every day. It also has a section on ecological concrete additives, including the smog-eating concrete developed by a producer in Italy and used to design a church. Smog-eating concrete is infused with titanium dioxide and can trap and neutralize air pollution. Many photos showing the different concepts in action make this an interesting section.

The Politics, Policy and Planning section is almost as big as the Communities section and is the second last section in the book. It focuses on issues including paint and graffiti with fascinating statistics and maps, including where food deserts are most prevalent, how much the expense of removing costs taxpayers (Billions!) and how violence can be prevented through design. This section is as inspiring as the rest of the book, and is followed by the final Reference section, which is dense with information and links.

This book is like an entire course in gritty urban design in one book, with gorgeous photos and an energy that is super upbeat. I highly recommend it and I'm glad I read it. It provides excellent perspective and profoud inspiration to artists and designers, and I look forward to Design Like You Give a Damn 3.

Architecture for Humanity. (2012). Design like you give A damn 2 building change from the ground up. Abrams.

Design Ecologies: Essays on the Nature of Design

Edited by Lisa Tilder and Beth Blostein, this interesting book has twenty contributors comprising 16 essays and grew out of a symposium of the same name. The editors state that they have set out to explore how "ecological design" operates "synergistically across design disciplines." Blostein explain that while, "the nineteenth-century German biologist Ernst Haeckel defined ecology as 'the comprehensive science of the relationship of the organism to the environment,' they would go further and add, 'in which each living organism has an ongoing and continual relationship with all elements."

In the first essay, designer Bruce Mau describes his team's Massive Change project. The Massive Change project was a series of installations that was originally curated by the Vancouver Art Gallery as a project on the future of design. The show was such a controversial success thst they then toured. Mau remarks, "conditioned by an apocalyptic future, people lose their ability to imagine a future. They become self-interested. The most insidious by-product of this doomsday thinking is apathy." Mau states that "a project which sees the welfare of all life," and promotes Stewart Brand's "enlightened self-interest" thesis, is a path of "informed optimism" as well as information sharing and new solutions.

The next essay, by designer Cameron Tonkinwise, poses the question, "if we designed our way into unsustainability...do we have to design our way out of it...or do we desperately need new, other-than-designing ways of responding to these large-scale problems?" Tonkinwise suggests perhaps either argument is too stark. He asks, "can we redesign designing?"

In his essay, Weeding the City of Unsustainable Cooling, Tonkinwise writes a detailed and lucid examination of the unenvironmental window air conditioner issue in New York, and the impossibility of demolishing everywhere that requires them. Tonkinwise asks, "so what would it take to accomplish the task of quickly removing window box air conditioners from New York?" Reminding us that early New Yorkers sweltered often without complaint and that air conditioners may have 'conditioned' humans to a false reality of what is normal in summer, he acknowledges that some people cannot live without air-con, and it would be ableist to assume otherwise. Likening a.c. boxes to a weed species, Tonkinwise asseses the massive "artificial dependencies" that they represent, and poses that the cooling of urban buildings must then be seen as "a constellation of colliding desires." The task must not become "a determination of the minimum atmospheric conditions necessary for existence as a requirement for totally rebuilt sustainable cities," says Tonkinwise. Instead, he calls for a pressing need to change and to create "new desires, not less desire." He concludes that only "reversible moves" avoid designs that do not arrogantly scrap everything in the hope of getting it right.

I found the essays in this book intriguing and provocative, with a range of discussions and intense examinations of both materials and the historic excesses of design as well as the worthiness of excess in certain contexts.

In "Green Screens: Modernism Secret Garden," essayists Robert Sumrell and Kazys Varnelis shine a hard light on green design. Evoking the previously under-examined social role of the fern bar, which was a windowless space popular in earlier decades where singles could meet, they point out that singles were also emboldened to connect in an atmosphere where a collection of indoor ferns were actually slowly dying. "The fern acts as a mediator of the impersonality of modern life...as something between the living and an object." Remarks the essayists, "as an early moment of ecological architecture, the fern bar makes the moral duplicity of green design apparent...But in giving themselves up, the ferns allowed their patrons to do what they really wanted, to seek self-gratification. The green movement today allows us this too...ratcheting up consumption, green design makes the world our fern bar."

The level of examination evident in the "fern bar" piece is typicsl of the essays in this book. Stylish and also at times vexing, it wasn't quite what I expected from writers critiquing the aims of their profession. The rest of the essays however are also like this, relentless and eloquent examinations of architecture and its role.

In the final essay, titled Towards a Productive Excess, author and editor Beth Blostein examines the days when architecture and power stations came together to create monumental designs celebrating the "glory" of energy production. In promoting new beginnings, Blostein proposes, "nothing short of a renewed architectural exuberance is required." Citing the example of energy-generating buildings that invite a new kind of city, she asks us to imagine the emergence of a "model of energy as an ever-convertible, fluid asset." Blostein couples this with her interest in movable and pre-assembled structures. She suggests we consider "HOK's stadium for the 2021 London Olympics," which was deliberately designed to be disassembled "after the games, and rebuilt for the next Olympic hopeful, Chicago." Says Blostein, "as a large-scale endeavor, this exuberant, pervasive energy production will allow contemporary culture and its technological needs to thrive and develop, and allow a place again for the delights of excess."

Tilder, L., Blostein, B., & Amidon, J. (2012). Design ecologies: Essays on the nature of Design. Princeton Architectural Press.

Urban Ecosystems: Understanding the Human Environment

The authors, Robert Francis and Michael Chadwick, are two King's College lecturers whose aim is to create a key resource for teachings related to urban ecosystems, have set themselves a difficult task. The book covers "both the physical and biotic components of urban ecosystems, key ecological processes, and the management of ecological resources including biodiversity conservation."

To do this within 220 pages seems impossible to me. The preface as well remarks that "the study of urban ecosystems and the field of urban ecology are growing at a fast rate, and it is difficult to keep up with the amount of published research around the world." The editors also explain, an "introductory book cannot be comprehensive," but is "synthesized from 600 sources."

Chapter one is an overview of the field and offers some key terms, explaining for the reader how to approach the book and the rate at which the fiel is growing. In the case of the term "ecology," the breadth of interpretations can result in some confusion at the best of times. The authors explain how the term urban ecology came to be defined as a biotic community that can encompass both an entire city and specific parks within the city as well. To make things more complicated, this introductory text points out that different places have entirely different definitions of what is "urban" s well. To emphasize this serious challenge in standardizing studies, there is a chart showing different countries around the globe and their different definitions of the actual term "urban." These variations also make standardization difficult, bringing the authors to emphasize how those new to the science must look at specific cases to define the particular ecosystem involved. As the book points out, context must be highlighted in every scientific study, but particularly that of urban ecology. The authors remark that context distinctions are essential when defining urban ecosystems functioning within a high proportion of built environments, or within a high population density. They also emphasize the need for drawing spatial distinctions between areas. The fluid identity of the  city is another special character of urban places that requires studies to explain context and spatial areas clearly, the authors remarking that shifting urbanization is a study in itself.

The book then goes on to elicit intrigue in those new to urban ecology studies, stating how underexplored the science of urban ecology still is and how each city is ecologically novel from the next and ever-changing. Diversity of species is also mentioned early in the book as a key issue conservationist researchers find vital to their studies. "Ecological novelty is also reflected in the types and diversities of species found within" any urban area of study. That these can exhibit "new ecologies and novel species assemblages," as well as "a 'recombinant' or 'mixo-ecology' that has not been seen before and which may be particularly dynamic and changeable," (p 14) makes urban ecological research all the more critical. Urban ecology is an environmental touchstone to species adaptation and supplies information about the mitigation of human impact that no other science can.

Chapter two and three talks about three dimensional structures of urban environments, inviting rewders to see them in all their dimensions, rather than simply the model on an architect's table without life. Form, structure and dynamics of both regions and landscapes define every urban environment. Essentially, the book tells us, urban ecology shapes and is shaped. Chapter four focusses on green space, including urban rivers. It was my favorite chapter. Urban rivers are often undergound, or buried by development, but they must not vanish from our awareness or our whole understanding of an urban place is in peril. Rivers are life. Paths and homes are often established along river routes first, as are animal dens and places that animals frequent, and these are creetures we share our world with. Chapter five introduces the importance of built environments, their impact, their success stories and their potential future design. Chapter six, urban species, and "assemblages," which is a term you will see used a lot in urban ecology, describes both those creatures that are well-studied in urban science, as well as those that hide well or are less observed by the human eye. Chapter seven, presenting issues involving the nature conservation of urban species, also presents the ideas involved in the science of urban "reconciliation ecology." Citizen science is also discussed, as in any city there is an army of potential observers and note-takers capable of studying ecological features of their immediate surroundings.

In chapter eight, urban and environmental engineering in urban regions is addressed. This is an interesting topic, if only because humans are often trying to manage the environment in ways that csn create significant changes to a pre-existing natural balance in an area. Chapter nine, a useful point of reflection towards the future studies we might see in the field of urban ecology, summarizes likely trends. I am very satified that the authors who set out on the difficult task of writing a key resource for interested future students of urban edology, have succeeded in their endeavour. The book is thorough and level-handed. It must not have been an easy task to compose such an in-depth book in such a short number of pages, and I beleive the authors have done a commendable job of presenting urban ecology to the public in a way that inspires potential new students to the science as well.

Francis, R. A., & Chadwick, M. A. (2013). Urban ecosystems: Understanding the human environment. Routledge. 

Designing and Planting a Woodland Garden: Plants and combinations that thrive in the shade

This book is divided into eight sections, and each is richly filled with full-colour photographs. Into the Woods is the name of the first section of Keith Wiley's book, one he begins with the subtitle, "Discovering woodlanders." Delightfully, Wiley presents a story of himself at his first serious gardening post, head gardener at a place that needed radical changes.

Wiley is clearly a passionate person about gardening and knows more about his topic than almost anyone. His personal expertise on the topic of planting under canopies, in forested areas, and in woodlands make this more of an adventure story combined with the methods behind an unusual form of gardening. States the author, "for many of, woods and trees evoke a powerful, often deeply subconscious, emotional response," one that Wiley's writing helps stir as well.

Wiley writes, "a garden created below or among trees taps into these deep emotions to provide an uplifting and also gently protective experience that gardens without trees can never acheive." Wiley describes his first post, as head gardener at Garden House in the UK, where he established a nursery and threw himself into learning the special differences between woodland plants, their limitations and potential. It became clear to Wiley that each plant required special techniques and growing conditions and that studying them thriving in nature would provide much information. He has now been a woodland gardener for over 40 years and as a result the pages of this book are dense with information.

The author begins by emphasizing site assessment, not only how shady is your site, but what tree cover is providing the shade. "The light beneath the deciduous canopy is constantly changing, not just through different seasons but also through the hours of each day."

In his first experimental nursery, he used woody plants to provide understory for other plants, although he also added fast-growing birch trees, so that there can be layers upon layers. Layering is a major theme of his next chapter, The Woodlanders, which talks about bulbs, perennials and perennial growing habits, and a discussion of the almost limitless choices of woodland plants. In the chapter Creating a Woodland Garden, good self-seeders are listed and the process for preparing an existing woodland is discussed. There is a section titled, "creating miniture woodlands," that is extremely inspiring and based on his own projects with this work. Following this, Special Situations, covers a wide variety of challenges, including soil and limited space, and includes instructions for care as well as instructions and maps for creating a woodland border.

The second half of the book is considered the plant directory, but it has so much text next to each species, including the authors own commentary on times he has encorporated this species into a space and how it performed. In describing the various flowering dogwood types and how they respond to different soils and placements, the author in concluding his dogwood section which is rich with detail and information on over a dozen types, writes, "in truth there are now so many flowering dogwood varieties, if I had space I would probably attempt to grow them all."

The next section, Woodland Perrenials, is by far the largest section of the book, taking up nearly a third of the entire volume. and is as detail-dense a gift as the previous section. The last two sections, Bulbs, Corms and Tubers and Ferns, Grasses and Grass-Like Plants are also highly readable in this way, making the book a complete gem to anyone versed or newly interested in this important topic.

The plant directory half of the book includes zones and areas plants are native to, so that although it is a UK writer, he is well-travelled and has sought out understory plants in their native settings in order to study them before writing about them here, introducing much botany with any gardening directions with his vigour.

I highly reccommend this book to anyone at any level of gardening interest as reading it will enrich your knowledge enormously and give you tools to set out on your own exploration and hopefully gardening of the beautiful plants that thrive on the shady forest floor.

Wiley, K. (2015). Designing and planting a woodland garden: Plants and combinations that thrive in the shade. Timber Press.

The Community Gardening Handbook: The Guide to Organizing, Planting, and Caring for a Community Garden

This accessible, inviting book by Ben Raskin extolls the benefits of gardening in the introductory pages, reminding us it is also mood therapy and provides benefits by nurturing us as well as connecting us with nature. In this way it is aimed at potential urban gardeners and serves as a motivational and inspirational read from page one. Ben Raskin remarks that gardening can be a solitary activity or one that is shared, as the act itself helps nourish an emotionally healthy society. The first chapter examines some of the ways community gardens have been set up by gardeners, launching into a series of inspiring case examples with full colour photos galore. Individual space rentals are discussed as are their advantages and disadvantages. These include issues involving rules, having the advantage of other people if you need help or when you go away. Benefits of collaborating on gardening include social interaction, lots of volunteers to do larger jobs, and the potential to tailor each job to the individual.

He also beautifully discusses orchards. Orchards work well with work parties, are wonderful spaces, and can invite picnicking or to have a poetry reading there. Orchard considerations include how much fruit, is there enough space, and direct access to healthy fruit. There is nothing Ben Raskin doesn't see as doable in this urban gardening book.

Animals in community gardens are discussed, as they provide weed control, and pigs and goats can provide manure, while poultry eat insects, and again on the emotionally healthy front, Raskin adds that it helps mental health to interact with animals and care for their wellbeing. As a downside, bylaws sometimes prohibit animals, they can be a big-time committment, and require a continual and reliable source of clean water, as well as treatment for diseases. good fencing, and several other details which Raskin explores in surprising depth. There are even photos of community gardens with pigs, chickens and goats happily encorporated into their scheme.

Raskin then discusses community supported agriculture, i.e. the "CSA," which tend to be larger than community gardens, and involve commitment to upfront payment by members. CSA's also require members to work in many cases, something members often enjoy. Rooftop gardening is also addressed, including the planning of it, questions involving wind, water, access, roof strength and other logistics and safety questions. Moving quickly through these major topics, Raskin then tackles a brief overview of the challenges of temporary gardening: arrangements and water needs of portable gardens, pallet beds, one ton bags, trailer gardening and dumpster gardens.

Guerrilla gardening, or planting without permission is addressed after this, and is a particularly upbeat section. Leaving it better than you found it gardening, which is tidying up a neglected space and planting appropriately, planting in potholes, planting in areas under signposts, on the front yards of government offices and planting in places where people are cheered by the sitr of a tiny garden or a controversy occurs because of a garden springing up there are charmingly presented as possible gardening "activities" by Raskin.

The author also encourages gardeners to reach out and become more literate and aware of their communities, citing UK gardening activist sites online such as Community Networks, Transition Networks, and the Incredible Edible Network. Going further, Raskin in the second half of the book encourages readers to step forward from vision to reality. Here Raskin describes how building your gardening team can be done by creating the vision, having a public meeting, raising funds, and moving towards making it a reality. Raskin even had excellent details on how to run a public meeting that could apply to almost any meeting type, but was intended for communtiy gardeners. Raskin's suggestions on how to create interest include "get a local key figure or celebrity" to endorse and come to your meeting. He explains how to use the meeting to listen, to collect contact information, to develop a proof of need and future community and funding support, and how to be prepared to adjust your plans if you have not thought of everything at the start. Raskin encourages anticipation of possible issues such as questions around dogs, loss of wildlife, traffic and privacy concerns among others. The book then suggests a follow up organizing "with your steering committee" a week or two after the first meeting while the buzz is still fresh.

Here the book delves into "Building the team and sharing the workload," as well as "Finding the right people," which can involve finding out what skills people have, a process in itself. Raskin advises asking for expert advice, and remembering that everyday people have skills already, and any meeting may have a lot of undeclared skills prrsent in the room. Raskin also talks about "Voluntary vs paid" and when such projects have been rolled into part of a day job. "Organizational structure," including balancing strong and weak personalities, is discussed. Raising funds annual fees, informal fundraising, loans, share offers, crowdfunding, applying for grants, financial transparency are all explored. Gardens often survive by bringing in new members, creating a sustainable business model that will not rely on funding for everything.

"Community events, horticultural events, skill-sharing and seed swaps as well as plan-and-learn events" are all fundraisng ideas, and an "apple grafting course" as an example of an orchard learning event is described. Raskin mentions that in the case of a seed swap event, "practical demonstrations of cleaning and storage of seeds" is advised. The final part of the book delves deeply into ways to share and devdlop planning the layout of the garden, watering routines, water harvesting, compost, efficient use of space, and picking the right crops for the garden. Raskin also describes the balue of perennials that can take two or three years, crop rotation, flowers for pest control, and creating a task list based around seasons.

The very last third of the book is an in-depth description with drawings of different common garden varieties, with an actual whole page devoted to green beans, a page on asparagus, a page on ea h of the common herbs an so on. I commend Ben Raskin for creating such an activist book. Its pages are dense with excellent and motivating information and the book itself is laid out in a beautiful and accessible manner. I reccommend this book to be read and shared as widely as possible. A classic.

Raskin, B. (2017). The Community Gardening Handbook: The Guide to Organizing, planting, and caring for a community garden. Lumina Media.

The Community Food Forest Handbook: How to Plan, Organize, and Nurture Edible Gathering Places

Written by Catherine Bukowski and John Munsell, this important book deserves to be read widely. There is a renewed interest worldwide in creating places where nutured forest sanctuaries can thrive with edible harvests that change everything about how we relate to trees. These edible forests can solve both community and social problems, but they must be anchored in practical wisdom and solid strategic planning or the original charm of the idea will not take hold. ,p>This book is the type of planning tool that people interested in food forests will find timely. It is one thing to think they sound cool or find they look pretty, but forests change and demand a certain type of stewardship. As the introduction by LaManda Joy states, "planning and adaptation are particularly important for community food forests...Individuals, volunteer organizations, school clubs and the general public have helped establish community food forests...Many volunteers sign up to maintain a site, but a forest ecosystem matures slowly and visual change will gradually plateau. The same may happen to volunteer interest and even project leadership."

Part One of the book, Understanding Community Food Forests, talks about the rise of food forests and the concurrent societal shifts. The book then delves into interrelated systems. With a section titled: Systems Thinking and Community Food Forests, the authors build on the discussion of systems concepts. A the third chapter addresses community assets, finances and investing in the future. This chapter has a refreshing approach, by including discussions of social, human, cultural and financial capital, as well as ongoing food literacy.

Part 2 of the book opens with the title: Meaningful Planning, a section which supplies a number of photos and charts. It talks about independent vs nested projects, strategies for avoiding common pitfalls, safety issues, maintenance and issues around public policy, along with a number of other mini-topics of interest. The next chapter in this section addressed planning and creating a theory of change. Advocating for plans that walk backwards from the ultimate goal, the authors state, "by working in reverse, outcomes are not taken for granted but critically challenged before being included in support of previously determined steps." This chapter also discusses time planning and adresses "short-term outcomes and long-term impacts" for stakeholders. The next part of the book explores some history and examples, and is actually one of the better parts of the book in a way, because it is a really good primer on the movement itself.

Chapter 8, titled The Role of Agroecology, addresses how scientific practices that are "reflecting traditional ecological knowledge" inform both permaculture and agroecology. It explain how both practices, while different, resemble and compliment each other in a food forest project, as, similar to permaculture, "agroecology combines land management science, indigeneous knowledge, and traditional farming practice." The rest of the book is packed with inspiring case examples, presenting ideas such as collaborative leadership and other ideas presented in the earlier chapters in action with real people working on real success stories.

By the time readers arrive at the concluding chapter, Looking Back, Moving Forward, we are extremely well-versed in the food forest movement and hopefully engaged by the work needed to be done to meet it's challenges. I highly recommend reading this book, it will make you wonder how many ancient food forests may be hidden under forest canopy worldwide and how many past food forests are in danger or have already been turned into paper products and fuels by a society just awakening to the need to protect and nurture this indispensable food security solution.

Bukowski, C., & Munsell, J. (2018). The Community Food Forest Handbook: How to plan, organize, and nurture edible gathering places. Chelsea Green Publishing.

The Ultimate Guide to Urban Farming: Sustainable Living in your Home, Community, and Business

Beware this book, written by Nicole Faires, as it will pull you in and quickly create a conviction in you that you want to become an urban farmer. Surprisingly, for such a fun-filled book, there is a lot a lot of hard information between these pages that can support any person or group considering creating a project which involves cultivating land in a small-scale or larger way and even converting it from a local urban sustainablity focus to actual surplus and potential profit.

Prefaced with some beautiful quotes and charming photography, the book begins with a momentary history of the rise of supermarkets before turning its attention to Urban Farming Defined.

Divided into five chapters, by the first pages of chapter one it jumps right in. Describing the requisite levels of self-reliance and skills, it then explains permaculture ethics and the process of creating an agricultural hub. The book describes crisply what community is and isn't, and how to start one. Using a lot of pretty charts and beautiful user-friendly layout, it then delves into business structures, starting a farm co-op, and straight into break-down sheets for setting up a CSA.

The next part of the book introduces discussion of record-keeping, followed by a section that addresses acquiring land, rental or buying, making a farm plan and profitability planning. Different models of farming and a crop planting schedule are presented in this wonderful book, along with information on commercial greenhouses and on how to access funds.

Everything about this book is so hooky and cheerful, it's impossible not to feel encouraged to jump into something wild by the conclusion of these early chapters. Chapter 2 swings straight into designing your land, and explores permaculture in more depth, climate, water management, fencing, frames, trellises and greenhouses, as well as how to develop the final successful design.

Chapter 3 is an in-depth discussion of soil, soil health, where to get worms, save seeds, and how to reclaim and remediate soil. The second to last chapter discusses plants, immediately addressing cash crops in case you didn't think they were trying to hook you into becoming a farmer. This chapter also contains extensive plant tables and guides for the beginner.

The final chapter is titled Animals, and it is much more in-depth than one would expect from such a book for beginners. There's actually a helluva lot in this volume about raising chickens, what to expect and how to raise ducks and quails as well. It even includes a section on sheep, goats, succinctly explaining the challenges of raising them and how to process and market their milk as well as their meat.

I really enjoyed this surprising volume. I would recommend this book for its unintended revolutionary effect as readers will have a tough time not dreaming of farming by the middle chapters. It really was super interesting and every starting farmer would clearly do well to keep a copy of this book in their library, as there are a number of indispensable chapters. Recommended.

Faires, N. (2016). The Ultimate Guide to Urban Farming: Sustainable Living in your home, community, and business. Skyhorse Publishing.

Sustainable: Houses with Small Footprints

This large hardcover volume by Avi Friedman is packed with information and features full-colour photos and illustrations on each of its more than 300 awe-inspiring pages. The book is divided into 12 sections, each addressing a design element or a materials issue that defines sustainable dwellings. The first section, Verncular Design, design that is "spontaneous, indigenous, rural, primative and anonymous," is presented. Vernacular design is also proposed as a strategic solution to the "costly, inconvenient, and worst of all, environmentally damaging" housing design of the past. Friedman also comments that vernacular design encorporates modern technological elements, but cites clay, earth and low-technology features as well. These beautiful homes with small footprints adorn the book in various stages of construction and are accompanied by architectural cut-aways to help the reader envision the process. Examples of various homes of this sort, including floor design, are then presented in a case-by-case basis, until the resders mind is saturated with ideas and possibilties. Chapter 5, titled Raised Dwellings, is a chapter dedicated to houses placed up above the ground, and the benefits of this type of design element, showing examples in many places throughout the world of a successful implementation of this technique. Chapter 9, Indoor Farming, includes the use of earth overlay as insulation, creating a passive refrigerator as an example of the flexible coolong effect of this technique.

The book also showcases Maison Productive House or MPH in Montreal Canada as an exciting example of an urban design with sustainability features. These include the integration of permaculture agricultural systems. "On the roof, a greenhouse produces various fruits and vegetables, supplying food year-round and helping ensure local food security." MPH also has carbon offsetting plants on the outside to mitigate air pollution, and features "a communial living style, a community of self-sufficient residents." Each unit in MPH also has a private garden, and access to a fruit orchard is avaiable to all residents in the units. Rainwater entrapment is employed at MPH, as is grey water filtration, and there is a compost system in the building that minimizes food waste and cycles it back into the gsrden. The building has self-shading windows and has eliminated the need for air-con, a massive issue in big cities. Passive solar heating is used to the utmost effect at MPH, as are solar panals on the rooftop, which supply almost all the energy needs of the complex. Chapter ten, water harvesting and recycling, addreses sustainabilty issues around water overuse globally. It then demonstrates the alternative, that of sublime conservation, through a series of beautifully-photographed houses that have brilliant water-sustainability methods built in to their foundations and throughout their construction. These include include rainwater collection and grey water recycling. An interesting example in this chapter is the RainShine House in Decatur, Georgia, which has a butterfly-shaped roof that collects rain water in the centre, channeling it down the middle of the house to serve within. In conclusion, I am so grateful Avi Friedman embarked on this massive effort it must have taken a lot of coordinating to compose this beautiful book. it is loaded with information and great ideas, and without the author openly stating this goal, reading this book entirely challenges anyone who thinks beauty and sustainability do not go hand-in-hand. i highly reccomend this read. The "browsabilty factor" of this book as a coffee-table presence makes it a book to enjoy in one's home while the ideas springing from it remodel your dwelling space around you.

Friedman, A. (2015). Sustainable: Houses with small footprints. Rizzoli.

Small Gritty and Green: The Promise of Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World

Not a lot of people have done what Catherine Tumber has done, which is to travel extensively to small and mid-sized American cities researching the impact of industry withdrawal. The author traveled to 25 "rust belt" cities in the American Northeast and Midwest from Buffalo to Detroit, Rochester, Syracuse, Akron, Flint and many in-between.
This book is of value to Canadian readers in an age where so many Canadian cities suffer similar effects of manufacturer abandonment. This book is a relevant read to people concerned about the Ontario rust belt, where towns such as Peterborough, London, Sudbury, Sault-Ste Marie, North Bay, to name only a few, find decent jobs and even minimum wage jobs are scarce. In such towns good communities are plagued with strained services, with issues of unemployment, homelessness poverty, drug abuse and crime that were unheard of a few decades earlier. Such economics are turning hometowns into challenging places of brain-drain and talent flight where bright young people are eager to leave.
Small industrial cities deserve hope, and the book delivers this. Tumber provides excellent historic backgrounds on the challenges of these American cities, conducting extensive interviews with mayors, urban planners, and green entrepreneurs, as well as with local farmers and conservationists. These cities, once vibrant, “increasingly resemble urban wastelands.” The author writes how these American cities "gutted by deindustrialization, outsourcing and middle-class flight” were further battered by highway development, failed projects, the displacement of the urban poor, and the classic issues of crime and decay.
Yet these smaller cities offer many assets and the book is full of hope for such places. This was what I wanted the book to provide and it delivers. But it also delivers the vital details behind the broken cities we see sometimes only from the highway as we pass through. The book includes discussion of the earlier origins of beautiful city planning that seemed lost, such as The City Beautiful movement, Russell van Nest Black's 1934 planning for the smaller American city, and an era of snobbery over cosmopolitanism for cities that were a satellite of larger industrial metropolises.
Catherine Tumber has also included the relevant political history behind these once-proud places who suffered the brunt of Reagan's slashes to the Department of Housing and Development HUD which had concentrated on affordable housing, while Reagan disproportionately funneled money into larger cities and big metro projects. Tumber writes of the damage incurred during the Reagan era as “closely tied to this obsession with all things mega was an ethic of disposability, drawn from ramped-up consumer culture and applied heartlessly to any 'loser' that could not stand up to the inexorable forces of privatization and globalization...Their pride as home to America's producers, the world's breadbasket, and the shop floor heartland-already eroded by decades of deskilling and mechanization, now became a joke.”
However these proud communities do stand up, and Tumber also interviews some of the activists who for decades have pursued things like highway tear-down projects, where big money and political stakes are high. Beyond the local resistance to damage and squalor, Tumber and the larger new urbanist view have identified what local people have been desperately needing funding support to enhance- small to mid-sized cities have potentially unparalleled assets for sustainable living. Addressing urban fringe and agriculture in Chapter 3, Tumber remarks, “smaller cities had a lot of advantage in developing what new urbanists are calling agricultural urbanism in their rural and suburban areas.” Nearby fertile farmland for solar farms, windmills and urban but local agricultural assets are only the beginning.
Tumber then digs into the real-life examples existing in these towns, point-of-pride specializations that are competitive and homespun. Advances and changes to Toledo's glass industry have developed a solar panel industry innovating thin-film solar “with a serious national commitment to renewable energy." More than this, "other smaller cities that contribute to Auto Alley's second and third-tier levels of the supply chain benefit as well." Tumber travels to Akron, "the historic home for the tire industry and synthetic rubber" now reinventing itself as a research and production centre for polymers, and to Canton, Ohio where industry creates solar sealing and water filtration systems. The author remarks that these cities will require complex multi-layered regional economic development arrangements. China has subsidized its export business, making “clean energy and other green technologies” while keeping wages “crushingly low” leading to a massive US trade deficit.
By helping these domestic advances through subsidies and similar support that challenge trade with China, as well as empowering their special assets in urban sustainability, the American economy can once again experience a significant and positive impact from small city ingenuity.
Meanwhile, the small city advantage is gaining momentum as these gritty towns present a fertile ground for green entrepreneurialism welcoming low-carbon economic revitalization with farmland at their doorsteps. This book has a huge number of notes and sources at the back, making it seem almost like a handbook for action. It belongs in the library of every Canadian city with similar issues as a point of inspiration and common identity through adversity.

Tumber, C. (2013). Small, gritty, and green: The promise of America's smaller industrial cities in a low-carbon world. The MIT Press.