"The ladder is very rickety," Erin Petz, a Loyola senior and True Nature Foods employee, warns me. It's early on a Saturday as she leans a hazardous-looking 16-foot ladder against the side of True Nature Foods, an organics cooperative and community market in Rogers Park. We cautiously ascend, with Petz's rope of hair occasionally swinging behind her, to a verdant rooftop oasis: 960 square feet of vegetation in stark contrast to the cement-laden neighborhood below.
This is the True Nature Rooftop Victory Garden, the outcome of True Nature Foods' partnership with the nonprofit organization Urban Habitat Chicago. The garden, which has been active for about a year, has produced kale, romaine lettuce, potatoes, fava beans, buckwheat, tomatoes and, for fall 2007, green peas, buttercrunch lettuce and turnips.
"It's kind of an experimental process, but by this time next year we're hoping to double the size of the garden because right now it only takes up half of the roof," Petz said. "And then we'll probably be able to sell the produce in the store." All crops harvested this year were given away to members of the community.
The project began in 2005 after True Nature Foods joined forces with UHC and won a $5,000 green roof grant from Chicago's Department of the Environment.
"One of the reasons this was such a great hookup with them was because this was [UHC]'s specialty, it wasn't about millions of dollars in a projects, so it was a fit," True Nature Foods' owner Paula Companio said. In the 14 years Companio has been with the store (seven of them as owner), she has worked - in her own driven, intrepid manner - for a more green friendly building. The idea arose after talking with Mike Repkin, the co-founder and director of UHC.
"[Paula] came up with the question, 'how can I get fresh tomatoes?' and I said, well if you want I can help you grow them on your roof," he said. At the time, Repkin was searching for new sites for UHC to use as sustainable urban development projects. True Nature Foods, which had already established itself as environmentally savvy with its on-site recycling center and involvement in the Organic Food Co-op, was a perfect match.
The real challenge began after winning the grant. Along with the stacks of paperwork, UHC and True Nature Foods had to work with Chicago to not only apply for a permit, but to invent it.
"There wasn't a slot for us, there wasn't a permit on the books so we had to create one. We made the niche," Companio said, who explained that True Nature Foods was the first commercial venue to receive a roof permit for a rooftop garden. In October 2006 UHC constructed the Building Integrated Food Producing roof (BIFP) and started the "biocolonization."
"The idea is we're trying to break away from normal agriculture, which is very energy intensive and has runoff," said Repkin, who was also the mind behind the garden's innovative growing technique using ultra lightweight microbes. The beneficial microbes build an integrated food production system by simulating the process of a natural ecosystem, such as converting sand and rock dust to soil. The unique ability for the plants, along with providing food, fuel and fiber, to grow their own fertilization product has allowed the garden to remain independent from more commercial, chemical fertilizers.
"This system has plants feeding plants and bacteria feeding plants," he said. The garden protects the roof and helps regulate temperature making the inside naturally 15 degrees warmer in winter and 15 degrees cooler in summer.
UHC intern Emily Lake, 24, monitors the garden weekly, part of the garden's five-year plan. She encourages produce to grow by using leaf litter, a combination of decomposing leaves, earthworms and other insects.
"I look for bugs and insects and anything that is growing that we didn't put there," she said. This summer she helped True Nature Foods educate the community through public outreach at True Nature Foods' weekly farmer's market.
"I think the community is shocked that we could pull off something like this so affordably," Companio said. According to her, a typical Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification would cost thousands of dollars and $300,000 alone to replace windows. Yet on True Nature Foods' "shoestring budget" and help from UHC, she said the garden is truly a success.
Companio is currently working to install an organic juice bar in the store and hopes to start work on an observation deck this winter, hopefully aided by another grant from the city. The deck will shelter the recycling center while allowing people to view the garden without having to combat the ladder. Chicago's
Department of the Environment recently chose UHC as the face for 2007 Green Roof/Cool Roof Grants and put an image of the Rooftop Victory Garden on the cover of its brochure.
"We did it," Companio said, "and it's amazing, and it worked."
To find out more, stop by True Nature Foods at 6034 North Broadway or Urban Habitat Chicago at 5315 N. Clark St. #222.
Also, visit the Peace Museum's "An Oasis of Imagination" exhibit, which features UHC's work on the Rooftop Victory Garden. The Peace Museum has been temporarily relocated in the Congress Corridor, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 South State St. Free to the public.
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