From Parking Lot to Growing Plot: Asphalt Gardening
By Maggie Busser

Every rust-belt city – including Cleveland – has an abundance of vacant lots, often covered with asphalt. Every city – including Cleveland – has a need for increased access to fresh, locally grown foods, especially in economically depressed areas. In Cleveland, the New Agrarian Center recently worked with 15 community partners to launch City Fresh, an initiative to improve our local food system. With a focus on building a just and sustainable food system, City Fresh has instituted a program that turns abandoned lots into community-based market gardens.

Maurice Small, City Fresh program coordinator, often is referred to as an “action hero” for his dedication to the local-foods movement, with a particular focus on linking health with homegrown foods. “We need to address the food needs of large cities in the Great Lakes basin where there is a lot of poverty, abandoned lots, poor food access and diet-related diseases,” Maurice says. He further explains that urban gardens can have positive economic and environmental impacts as well.

Unlike larger farms in the country, urban farms rely on some unique practices to utilize the surprisingly abundant resources available in cities. For example, many urban gardens are built on top of an asphalt-covered, abandoned parking lot or a dead-end street. Maurice describes, “In asphalt gardening, we create a buffer layer between oil-based blacktop and plants. We put down layers of cardboard, woodchips, restaurant compost, worms and eight inches of well-aged soil. The wood chips and cardboard create a barrier. When plant roots reach the wood-chip layer, they do not grow further down.”

On a typical country farm, nutrient-rich compost for fertilizing the soil comes from livestock. However, Maurice says that in the city, “We have to outsource compost resources to build soil. There are many sources including food waste from restaurants east, west and south of downtown. In the fall, municipalities give away leaves. And the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo gives out ‘zoo doo’ (zoo animal waste) year round.”

In addition to providing inner-city residents with easy and affordable fresh, healthy foods, Maurice says, “Asphalt gardens also create a soft water-catching area out of what was previously a hard runoff surface. When it rains, the plants take up the water rather than allowing it to run into the ground.” This decreases the load on our local sewer systems, reducing flooding during rain storms. Maurice would like to see programs such as this go a step further to include gardens on rooftops, too.

Urban gardens also can help raise awareness about the connection of local farming to food while creating economic opportunities. Residents living near an urban garden often can help with the planting, growing and selling of the foods produced on the plots. “Cities sometimes pay up to $0.50 per square foot to mow a vacant lot. If food is grown there instead, $1.25 per square foot can go into someone's pocket,” Maurice explains.
Seeds for a healthy local-food system can be found in unlikely places – including blacktop gardens in Cleveland. By creating and cultivating these urban gardens, we can bring a vision of slow renewal to the city, an inspiration to communities across the rust belt.

To learn more about asphalt gardening, attend the New Agrarian Center workshop on May 5, from 9 a.m.– 3 p.m. in Cleveland near East 55th and Superior. The group will be starting a garden on a quarter-acre of blacktop with Wonder City Farms. Details posted on www.GotTheNAC.org.