Farming in Skid Row...Vertically

"Each 30-foot-long-by-6-foot-high wall contains 4,000 plants growing in 180 square panels made of stainless steel; the panels, in turn, are divided into 4-inch-by-6-inch dirt-filled cells. Drip lines irrigate the crops from above and water drains through X-shaped slits on the underside of each cell. A fully loaded wall weighs roughly 15 pounds per square foot and can attach to an adjacent building or a freestanding metal framework.

'Bees and butterflies arrived within seconds after we put the walls up,' says Joyce Lewis, Urban Farming's L.A. project manager, who organizes local volunteers to tend the vertical gardens. 'They greened an environment that would otherwise just be concrete and steel.'"

"'There's been a definite shift across the country in understanding the value of locally grown food, but as a society we're not very good about giving up valuable urban real estate for parks,' Osler explains. 'The advantage of vertical farming is that it doesn't take up a lot of space.'"