Hello Everyone!
As an urban gardener and a permaculturalist in the East Bay, I hope to provide an important resource for our curious community. This is my third season growing vegetable starts in Oakland for nurseries and individuals in the community. The growing momentum of interest in urban gardening coupled with growing need for local food production and food justice work has been a constant inspiration. This blog is a fusion of several interests. It will include adventures, projects, plant descriptions and philosophical musings. It will also function as my nursery’s website, where lists of the plants I have available and coming soon can be found at the Available Plants! page. For plant inquires please contact citysown@gmail.com
We are fortunate to have an amazing climate in the Bay Area that permits a wide range of temperate and sub-tropical species. From blueberries to bananas, there are many different species that one can experiment with in our bio-region. My main mission is to provide hearty, well adapted annual and perennial edible plants individuals, nurseries, landscapers, non-profits and any other interested planters in Oakland and Berkeley. Introducing more unusual species into the retail chain will hopefully build awareness and demand for an assortment of incredibly useful, but relatively unknown plants. Selling plants to nurseries and other for-profit operations enables me to donate many more plants to our community! Contact me for veggies!
All plants are grown with organic potting soil and cared for on the roof of an Oakland warehouse. A huge expense and externality in the nursery business is transportation costs. By locating the nursery operation within the urban framework, plants can be delivered by bike cart. There are numerous arguments for buying locally produced goods: creation of local jobs, utilization of local resources, transportation costs diminished, stronger relationships and interdependency… the list goes on and on. There are a sea of rooftops spread across our cities. I hope that this project/business/community endeavor, can serve as an example of how to manage our city’s negative space in an ecologically intelligent manner.
I look forward to growing your plants, talking about ways to incorporate and address your needs as a business and working with community members eager to grow their own food.
Let the Planting Begin!
Wiley
City Sown 