Ecolibrium
Gardening
Our main source of food in our city is gardening. Gardening is good for you to eat and for your health. Gardening is a good way to exercise, reduces your risk of cancer, and can help you get a better night’s sleep (Main). In our city we wish to incorporate gardening into a family activity. To do this we are making gardens in the parks for families to garden together making kids more likely to garden when they get older. Another way we are making gardening easier to do is by placing planter boxes and areas for shade gardens around homes and apartments. Shade gardens are gardens that grow in the shade making the moisture evaporate less quickly than a garden directly in the sun, but only certain types of plants can grow well there. Shade gardens also have fewer weeds and help people with heat issues get out of the sun. Planter boxes will also be placed around people yards to encourage gardening.
Excess Food
With all of this room for gardening an issues we foresee is an excess of food during the summer and the fall. A few different ways to deal with this issue are by canning, giving away, or selling. A good way to save the leftover food is to can or freeze them.
Canning food is a way of persevering them to eat later, while keeping the flavor and healthiness of the food. Canning food helps your health because it has no pesticides or harmful additives. Other reasons to can are that it is eco-friendly with minimal impact to the environment, it is better financial to can your food than to go buy food at the grocery store, and it makes a good gift too. Canning also helps you continue to eat healthy and local during the winter.
Another way to get rid of the leftover food is to give it away to the food bank. Giving food to the food banks helps keep those less fortunate full and healthy.
Another way to deal with excess food is to sell it at ecolibrium’s farmers market. Selling it at the farmers market will connect the city together by healthy food and give the gardeners a little more money. The farmers market supports local economy by keeping the money there and not going to out of the state or the country. Local food is also better for you and you don’t have to question where it came from or what’s in it because you can ask the farmers there.
Green Roofs
Green Roofs, one of our ideas for vegetation that also has to do with conservation of energy. Green roofs are gardens that are on the roof. Benefits of this are that they reduce energy cost by the natural insulation that the plants provide. Green roofs also provide a peaceful retreat and absorb rain water, lessening the need for drainage. With green roofs air quality is also improved and they also last longer than normal roofs. With Global warming the amount of water that your climate has will change to more or less affecting your roof and the food you eat making everything more expensive including food.
Green Houses
Another way to make gardening more accessible is that we are building green houses to rent out. These green houses will make it easier for people to grow crops that are difficult to grow in this region and will extend the growing season.
Food
Leighann, Angel, Allen
When we started our project we knew that gardening would be an important part of our city. What we did not know about gardening was the health benefits that come with it. Gardening helps lowers your risk for bone loss, diabetes, bloods pressure, and helps calms those with anxiety (Main). We also learned the growing season and plants that would grow well in our climate.Another thing we knew we needed in our city was green houses to continue the growing season all year. The last and most important of our ideas for our cities was green roofs. Green roofs have many benefits to the air and also to reduce energy cost.
