Comments on: Urban food production and urban agriculture

By: Whitney Hedges

Whitney Hedges — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:40:27 +0000

I hope food in our community spaces and homes will be not only nutritious for the body but enrich our spirits socially. forget prairies springing up all over Kent I think the wave of the future is most probably edible.

By: Christine

Christine — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:21:13 +0000

It is worth seeing the world of Californian modernism through the eyes of Julius Shulman.
[ http://www.juliusshulmanfilm.com/shulman-photographs/ ] Calfornian modernism adopted something of the idea of the peristyle in its treatment of the backyard – although two sides of the enclosure were usually [conceptually] architecture and the other two dramatic landscape…

I haven’t seen the film Visual Acoustics by Eric Bricker – but I certainly hope I get the opportunity to do so! [The opening screening is in New York October 9th 2009 at Cinema Village.]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:35:21 +0000

Wiki have not got this quite right. Roman gardens were ‘indoor’ in the sense of being inside the doors of the house but they were not ‘indoor’ in our sense of a glazed/walled/roofed and climate controled space. But YES we should certainly be making peristyle courts. They were a brilliant device and it is amzaing that they have fallen so far from popularity.

By: Christine

Christine — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:06:39 +0000

Yes – it would be great to see, amongst other trends, the revival of indoor gardens!
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_gardens ]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:46:54 +0000

It is possible that fruit was the main thing grown in pre-Roman gardens (though it somewhat depends what one means by ‘garden’)

By: Christine

Christine — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:55:24 +0000

You are right. The history of fruit growing takes you on a journey through social, political and religious history….to far away times and lands…[ http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-countryside_environment/w-nature/w-nature-orchard-restoration/w-nature-orchards-history.htm ] and eventually to the slow food movement which has caught the popular imagination in the present time.[ http://www.slowfood.com/sloweb/eng/dettaglio.lasso?cod=3E6E345B13a191AFD5sry3F9E9B4 ]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 05:36:32 +0000

Interesting point for research! – but I doubt if much difference between the two countries would be found, except perhaps that aristocratic Englishmen were more interested in fruit than in vegetables. I have been looking at the Kip and Knyff engravings recently. Vegetable gardens are fully integrated with the aesthetic layouts but what they appear to show is the crops grown were grain, fruit and rows of clumpy vegetables which, presumably, were beans, peas and cabbages. The potato reached Europe in 1536.

By: Christine

Christine — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 04:58:04 +0000

Kitchen gardens in the New World it seems are associated with liberty, fraternity, equality and the American way! Perhaps even a distrust of the Old World Establishment?
[ http://exhibits.mannlib.cornell.edu/kitchengardens/intro.htm ]

In Europe kitchen gardens are more typically associated with monasteries and villas.