Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

Try this on for size: according to a recent article in the Guardian, “More than 98% of supposedly natural and environmentally friendly products on US supermarket shelves are making potentially false or misleading claims.” Hm. Gives you pause, right?

Second, here’s an interesting article from the New York Times about incorporating an agricultural component into planned subdivisions – access to locally-grown produce, wholesome family activities at the farm, etc. – in an effort to rethink the types of communities where people want to live.

And last, some updated pics of our garden. The flowers (and dill!) are taller than us, the zucchinis are growing like mad, and we’re about to have tomatoes coming out of our ears!

This was the view just three weeks ago:

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Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

Did you see the recent article in the New York Times about rooftop gardening and the movement to replace traditional roofs with green roofs? Not only does a green roof offer many environmental benefits, it also provides an opportunity, especially for people in urban areas, to grow their own food on a larger scale.

Paula Crossfield (pictured above) persuaded the board members of her co-op in New York City to put a 400 square-foot garden on the building’s recently renovated roof.

Crossfield says that the rooftop garden helps inform her work: she writes a sustainable food blog, Civil Eats, for the Times. See this interesting and useful post about sustainable food blogs she published on Mark Bittman’s “Bitten” blog. (more…)

Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

We’ve talked a lot about our three-story biowall on this blog and on our website – that it is a central aesthetic feature of our new office space, and how it embodies the connection between human health and the natural world.

It’s quite a privilege to walk past it each day and to hear the sound of the water trickling down the wall. We marvel at its beauty and its clever design, as it efficiently and naturally filters the air we breathe.

In fact, some visitors come to our office just to see the wall and learn how it works.

Lately, I’ve seen some other interesting examples of bringing nature indoors.

If you are interested in your own vertical garden, for example, ELT Living Walls sells kits that you can install in your home. How about one for your home office or kitchen, like these?

Check out ELT’s terrific photo gallery here.

Greenworks, based in Stockholm, recently exhibited their concept for a self-watering, mobile plantwall at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair. How would you like one of these for your home?

Also a prototype, this bathmat designed by Nguyen La Chanh of Switzerland is made of a variety of mosses planted in a type of foam called plastazote. The mosses get watered as you towel off from your shower or bath.

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Molly de Aguiar, Program Associate

Here’s an extra-curricular project we’re excited about at Dodge: our rooftop garden.

We planted our containers two weeks ago. We filled them with herbs (sage, rosemary, dill, parsley, cilantro, basil), flowers (zinnias, dahlias, sunflowers), strawberries, squash, and several kinds of tomatoes, including the Ramapo – the famous Jersey tomato that time almost forgot. Many of the plants came directly from Rutgers’ own greenhouses.

Two weeks later, our plants are growing like mad (note how the grass in the background has grown too).

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When you arrive by elevator on the 4th floor of our new office, you are greeted by this beautiful and unique wood wall:

What’s unique about it?

It’s made of wood beams from the former Epstein’s department store, which previously existed on this site. The beams were identified and salvaged by CitiLog, a New Jersey-based firm which specializes in reclaiming and recycling wood, such as trees knocked down by storms, or wood from soon-to-be-demolished buildings.

After Citilog removed the beams from the site, they sent it to Mifflintown County, Pennsylvania, where an Amish group repurposed the wood into two decorative woods walls for our office.

As the folks at Citilog will tell you, building material reuse diverts tons of waste from landfills and reduces the amount of raw materials that must be extracted and processed for use in construction.