Oakland Youth, Community Come Together to Revitalize Rooftop Garden

This Spring, Oakland Food Connection, Bay Localize, teachers, students and members of the community gathered to revitalize EC Reems' school rooftop garden located in the heart of East Oakland. Students bustled about, transferring water to their very thirsty seedlings. Community members taught students how to saw wood in the courtyard, while others taught students how to assemble new garden beds on the rooftop. Members of Oakland Food Connection demonstrated the basics of permaculture, while teachers and students planted side-by-side among the garden beds. It was a beautiful day filled with people from all walks of life working towards a healthier, resilient community. Check out our flickr photo set from the workday!

Lessons Learned: Right-sizing a Rooftop Garden in San Francisco

The first consideration for rooftop gardening is how much weight your roof can hold. Bay Localize has been emphasizing this point for several years, but even so, we learned this lesson the hard way when one of our partner gardens on the roof of the Mission District office of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) began to sag! The planter boxes our team designed turned out to be too heavy, and would have been better placed around the perimeter of the roof instead of near the skylights.

In response, POWER held a workday in early May where Bay Localize and members of the community came together to help relieve the weight and redistribute the boxes for a more structurally secure design. Fortunately, POWER is using the excess soil to start a patio garden in their Bayview office. On June 5, we're inviting volunteers to improve the garden by helping to break down and reconstruct several of the beds and moving the excess dirt to its new home. RSVP Today!

Bethlehem Baptist Breaks Ground on Church Garden

Last month, Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church in Richmond broke ground on their garden plot, with some help from Bay Localize and Urban Tilth. Urban Tilth, a Richmond-based nonprofit, helps schools, businesses, government agencies, and community-based organizations learn to grow their own food in west Contra Costa County. Church members worked with Urban Tilth to create a garden plan complete with fruit trees, berry bushes, vegetables, areas for herbs and barrels for catching rainwater. Several of us from Bay Localize rolled up our sleeves with church members and youth from Urban Tilth to install the garden over several work days. The church hopes to share the food grown in the garden with a local shelter, the neighborhood and church members as a ways to strengthen community and promote good health.

Available Online and at Bookstores: Use Your Roof Guidebook!

Rooftop revolutionaries rejoice! Check out Bay Localize's popular publication, Use Your Roof Guidebook: Resources and Considerations for Rainwater Catchment, Living Roofs and Solar Power. The booklet draws from the groundbreaking research of Tapping the Potential of Urban Rooftops, as well as other research findings from the field, and offers guidelines for selecting an appropriate rooftop system and embarking on the design and implementation process.

GET YOUR COPY TODAY!
Use Your Roof is available at select bookstores around the San Francisco Bay Area — help us keep the sales going! Purchase your own copy for as little as $7.00! It's vital that we continue demonstrating the rising interest and help the local economy and the movement grow — so let people in your network know or buy a few copies for friends and family! Our growing list of stores includes:

East Bay

• Bookshop Benicia, 856 Southampton Road, Benicia, CA 94510
• Berkeley Horticultural Nursery, 1310 McGee Ave., Berkeley, CA 94703
• Berkeley Indoor Garden Hydro, 844 University Ave., Berkeley, CA 94710
• Builders Book Source, 1817 4th St., Berkeley, CA 94710
• Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave. Berkeley, CA 94702
• Mrs. Dalloway's, 2904 College Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705