The Urban Farmer

 Contributed by Shelley Miller, President NewGround PR & Marketing www.newgroundco.com

 

Being from Los Angeles, one of North America’s largest metropolitan areas, one of NewGround’s favorite new trends is urban farming. Growing your own food is not just for country folks anymore – city dwellers are getting their green thumb on nowadays too.

Los Angeles has over 70 community gardens, which serve nearly 4,000 families. LA has a history for growing its own – as recent as the 1950’s our fair city grew enough produce to provide for its population. What we are seeing is a resurgence of the urban green thumb.

Below are a few of our local heroes that help make the LA skyline a little greener.

 

Farmscape

Recently featured in the Huffington Post, Farmscape is dedicated to bringing homegrown goodies back to LA one garden at time.  Think of them as gardening consultants. Many urbanites are reluctant to start digging into the dirt simply because they have no idea where to begin. Farmscapes addresses that need quite adeptly. They swoop in from beginning to end. A Farmscape farmer will visit your urban farm weekly and help with plantings, pest and disease control, crop rotation, and irrigation maintenance.

     

 

Mud Baron

His name is Mud. Let us give you a crash course on our hometown hero who’s in the middle of a personal revolution – to teach kids how to grow (pun totally intended).

As a former policy deputy for the LAUSD, the Mud Baron has uses his expertise to personally teach thousands of students about gardening. His program oversees LA school campuses was a program that no one saw succeeding in the era of budget cuts and reduced school services, but Mud (or “Discovery Channel,” as his students liked to call him) persevered. His passion for gardening is infectious, and his message is at once clear and powerful: “Kids who grow good food, eat good food. Kids who cook good food, eat good food.” He is a whirlwind of activism, overseeing nearly a thousand school gardens with a deeply-felt passion for them as engines for environmental empathy and community, as well as drivers for better academics, and healthier choices for students. And Mud Baron doesn’t limit access to his knowledge and experience; he’s known for providing seeds and guidance to other districts and programs, and he frequently tweets to his 25k + followers under the handle @Cocoxochitl (ancient Aztec for dahlia). Garden by garden – he is helping our city kids grow.