Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
In the City
Productive Cities
Most of us in Britain live in towns or cities. We may think there is little scope for growing
food in cities, but that is just what we need to do if any kind of city life is to continue beyond
the present cheap energy boom. Enormous quantities of energy are used just to transport
food into the cities, and it will not be available forever. We need to grow as much of our
food as we can right where we live.
The potential of parks is obvious. Over a period of time the purely ornamental trees could
be replaced with kinds which are also productive, such as fruit and nut trees, giving the parks
the multiple output of food as well as recreation. Allotments and city farms also show how
the city can be productive.
The rest of the city-scape looks less promising until we start looking at it in three dimen-
sions. We can train fruit trees against the walls, grow productive climbers up them and make
great use of both flat roofs and balconies. This is the principle of stacking applied to an urb-
an situation.
