UW Tower Patio Demonstration Garden Project

10/12/2016

While growing food and other crops beneath the forest canopy isn't new — it's been practiced by indigenous and traditional cultures around the world for centuries — a new focus on forest farming is highlighting the possibilities of forest-based production of non-timber crops in Western North Carolin...

08/10/2016

Eat more vegetables!!

It’s long been clear that reducing meat consumption is one way to enable our planet’s farmland to feed more people. Now, in the case of the United States, we have an idea of by just how much. In a first its kind study, published recently in the journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, research...

07/27/2016

As cities expand, farmland is often pushed farther and farther away from markets for city dwellers. Transporting vegetables across long distances increases their costs and environmental impacts. What’s worse, some veggies—particularly leafy greens—simply don’t travel well. Growing these veggies wher...

06/22/2016

We got a $59K grant from the UW's Campus Sustainability Fund to further develop our project! :D

Through student-led innovation and design, the UW Tower Demonstration Garden team aspires to transform the Tower plaza by enhancing the appearance of the expansive red brick with an attractive oasis of green urban food production. The garden will demonstrate University of Washington's sustainability...

04/13/2016

In order to bolster the ecological value of city food gardens, researchers must first understand their cultural significance.

03/23/2016

Interesting calculations on how your food choices impact the environment!!

Changing our diets would make a big difference in the fight against climate change, says a new study.

03/21/2016

It's National Farmworker Awareness Week

03/14/2016

The UW Farm recently was approved to install a composting toilet at the UW's Center for Urban Horticulture! Read more about composting toilets here....

Here's the scoop on composting toilets, including the environmental benefits, how much they cost and how well they work.

02/15/2016

Vacant lots, city squares, a former highway, and even regular city streets are going to be filled up with trees and plantseverywhere you look.

02/03/2016

01/27/2016

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs.Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enough

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the 'milky way'

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide

We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause there's bu**er all down here on Earth
-- IDLE, ERIC/DU PREZ, JOHN

Seattle could likely grow enough food within its city limits to feed just four percent of residents at most.

01/19/2016

A wall of plants in Wallingford. Imagine if these were alpine strawberries instead :D