Eve's unusual food gardens

[smotlgardens]

Jaaga Creative Commons in Bangalore, India- 2010 I led a design team to design, and then stayed around to build, this vertical, hydroponic, reversible garden on swiveling panels, and adjoining rooftop food garden/lawn in downtown Bangalore, India. Was quite an engineering feat for lil’ ole me 😉 Artwork on reverse side by old friend Walker Babington.

[smotlgardens]

I designed / built this low cost “Wall of Salad” for the 27 person CouchSurfing.com Collective, in the Mission District of San francisco, CA in 2009. Made from 6 ply garbage bag plastic, doubled over and zip tied on a 10’ft by 20’+ chain link fence. Irrigation with a drip line that starts top row right, then traverses across to the left then down to the next row, etc. irrigation was easy- just "turn on the wall." Was an awesome experience all round, living in the collective and growing food in the city.

[smotlgardens]

Wichi School Garden- 2011-2013 with the help of various other traveling volunteers, and the students themselves, I designed and built a variety of experimental structures to grow food crops on the rooftop of Wichi Art School (now Vagdevi Art School) outside Varanasi, India. We made 3 sub irrigated raised beds, 1 vertical water-bottle garden, and a vertical garden made from empty milk crates (not pictured.) I lived in that awe-inspiring city of Varanasi for 2+ years and helped those adorable kids plant, maintain and harvest their own crops for school lunches. I've recently been told that the eldest child at the time, 14 yr old Amit, has since been accepted as an Ashoka fellow for organic farming!!

[smotlgardens]

2010 Anamaya Yoga Resort, Costa Rica- I designed and installed a vertical, aquaponic herb garden attached to the wall of an infinity pool in Montezuma, Costa Rica. The garden was fed by the nitrates and nitrites in the water pumped up from a tilapia fish tank we built in the room under the pool. The nutrient-rich fish water then fountained down through each planter on the wall, feeding the plants and then returning as plant-filtered, clean, oxygenated water back to the fish tank. (I wish I had better pictures of the tank)