Edibles
What does the trend toward edibles mean for you? Grow them. Design with them. Put them in containers. Sell them. We will explore edibles and work to answer these questions.
Annie Mayrose: City Seeds: Growing Green Jobs and Food Security
Sunday, January 9: 10:00 - 11:00 A.M.
Come learn about City Seeds Urban Farm, located right here in downtown St. Louis. City Seeds is Gateway Greening's partnership with St. Patrick Center, area non-profits and landscape employers to provide horticulture training, landscaping and life skills to the underemployed. Hear the success story -- how people are learning the industry, getting jobs, growing thousands of pounds of produce and providing community education at the City Seeds Urban Farm! The farm is located in the 2200 block of Pine and Market, near the Pear Tree Inn and Union Station.
Andrea (Annie) Mayrose has been the City Seeds Coordinator at Gateway Greening Inc. since 2006. In this role she manages the City Seeds Urban Farm, program staff, St. Patrick Center clients and volunteers. She leads City Seeds program development, communications with partner agencies, grant reporting & evaluation. Before this, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Honduras working with sustainable agriculture, health, environmental education, and capacity-building workshops. She has a Bachelor's in Urban Forestry, Art and a Spanish minor from University of Missouri - Columbia.
Marsha Giambalvo
Sunday, January 9th; 11:30 - 12:30
Marsha Giambalvo is with Backdoor Harvest, a St. Louis area company that
specializes in creating and maintaining vegetable gardens for their
consumers. Creating a 6 step process, Backdoor Harvest has seized on
the opportunity of consumer demands for edibles. Marsha is the President(officially) of Backdoor Harvest, and co- founder. She is functionally, on a daily basis, a gardener. She has been organically gardening for over 20 years, starting young with her parents' garden. The desire to have more gardeners in the area, growing delicious and nutritious veggies, really catapulted their business idea into a working business. One of their goals is to educate people on how to grow food that is worth eating, in hopes they will spread their knowledge to as many people as possible.
Mary Deweese; The Business of Edibles in City Planning, Site Design and Production
Sunday, January 9th; 2:30 - 3:30 P.M.
LA CES approved.
Trends towards local food and sustainable cities are fueling the increasing integration of agriculture within our cities, commercial developments and home landscapes. Opportunities and challenges await those who lead this industry in a transformation of our food production system. Find out how the demand for urban agriculture can lead the way towards economic growth, resilient green cities, and better health and welfare for you, your business and your future.
Learning outcomes:
Attendees will review the broad definition of Urban Agriculture
Attendees will analyze the myths of urban agriculture
Attendees will compare case studies / examples of successful integration of edibles into commercial and residential projects
Attendees will examine the economic benefits of Urban Agriculture
Attendees will consider the constraints of urban agriculture in our current zoning laws
Attendees will reflect on their future opportunities for supplying, maintaining and designing for urban agriculture
Mary Francois Deweese is a registered Landscape Architect who received a Master's Degree in Landscape Architecture with highest honors, and an emphasis in Regional and Community Planning, from Kansas State University in 1998. She is currently the owner of Acorn Landscapes, www.acornlandscapes.com a commercial and residential Landscape Architectural firm in St. Louis, Missouri. Along with her traditional commercial and residential site planning and landscape design sercices, she specializes in LEED and Sustainable Sites developments, Site Integration of Edibles / Urban Agriculture, and Native and drought tolerant planting plans. Her hobbies include stock photography, playing the violin, gardening and blogging about her journey to create a more sustainable suburban lifestyle at www.sprawlstainable.com.
website / blog
Sally Benson: So where's the opportunity?
Sunday, January 9th; 4:00 - 5:00 PM
An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but will it help support your bottom line? The current craze for growing edible plants in the landscape offers some interesting opportunities for every segment of the green industry. Whether you grow the plants, incorporate them in your designs or sell directly to the gardener, there's a way to take advantage of this healthy interest in edibles.
Sally Benson has been editor of American Nurseryman magazine since 1994, and currently is editorial director / horticulture group for Moose River Media, which acquired the magazine in 2010. Her roots in green industry communications reach back to 1988, however, when she published Colorado Green for the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado - and freelanced for far too many other organizations. In her current reality, she lives and works in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
