Recent workshops and confirmations

Last weekend, I attended a workshop hosted by the Urban Herbology group and City Plot. The Urban Herbology group is an informal group on meetup that is run by two women who are trained herbologists and focus on the benefits of harvesting and using wild plants. My first experience with them was on an herb walk through one of the parks in Amsterdam and I was amazed at how much in the parks have medicinal properties. The also go into the safety and ethics of it and suggest not picking plants near toxic areas, etc.

This weekend, they and City Plot hosted a seed collection workshop from edible plants (basic and non-basic foods in your home) combined with making a tincture of burrdock seeds. It was a lot of fun learning about how to harvest seeds from your garden, dry them and save them for next year. The benefits of using seeds in this way are many: it promotes biodiversity, saves money, among others. The tincture we made of burdock seed also has many uses. It helps keep you warm, cleans out the liver, and also promotes energy, and more. In addition to the tincture we also learning how to look for public areas in which to grow wild plants that you can harvest at at later time (we also learned what to be careful about).
I could talk about what we learned all day. It was good for me to be in contact with another organization in the urban gardening space. City Plot exists to help people living in cities plant food, gardens, balcony gardens, compost, etc. They are having a workshop soon on worm bins. It is exciting to see so much activity in this space. It also proves that there is a demand from the community for these types of projects.
Next steps: set up a meeting with City Plot to learn what I can from their experience.

Creative ventures in urban sustainability

I thought I’d start using this space for a more targeted purpose. First, I’ll be posting what I learn throughout the feasibility study phase of starting a business. Ideally, at the end of this phase I’ll have a clear idea of what I need to do and be confident that the business will survive and will fill a gap or need. If, at the end of the study I realize that, in fact, it is not possible or feasible to viably start this business successfully, I hope this space will be useful for others in the area who are asking similar questions or share this common interest.

A few of the businesses I hope to get in contact with to find out more about their work are two in the US that I have been following for sometime.

The first, is EcoMovement Consulting and Hauling, which provide recycling and composting services for businesses, residences, events, etc. I really admire their view that composting and waste in general can be a service provided and marketed as such. I think this helps in building community.

The second company is Back to the Roots (BTTR) which turns used coffee grounds into mushroom growing kits. These are sold in stores like Whole Foods and are provided to schools for education. I think their combination of education + business savvy is both thoughtful and innovative.

The third organization and I excited to learn more about and get more involved in is Mediamatic. They started as an organization looking at media, technology, innovation. Now they do that and more. I am really interested in their work around food, urban agriculture, etc. I plan on checking out one of their Secret Art of Growing Mushrooms workshops, too.

From time to time I’ll be highlighting interesting organizations and ventures that are working in this area.

Cheers ~Chloe