A Rooftop Farm For the Future

  • Cathy Erway Sustainable food advocate, blogger, author of The Art of Eating In

Cross-posted from Not Eating Out in New York

A rustic scarecrow looms before the skyline of Manhattan's midtown skyscrapers. Under its watch lie more than 30 varieties of vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs on a rooftop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But its real scarecrows, the overseers of this rooftop farming project, are Ben Flanner and Annie Novak. I asked if they'd had any problems with pest.

"Lately, we've just begun getting some bugs. Both good and bad bugs. But even if they're the bad ones, bugs are a good thing, because it means that they're beginning to recognize that there's an ecosystem here," Novak replied.




Last November, Ben Flanner read an article about Chris Goode in New York Magazine, and how he'd built several green rooftops in NYC, including his own in Soho. Then working in an office for eTrade, Flanner had been devouring books about farming all winter, and knew he'd wanted to do "something with it" that summer. The two mens' dreams came together after Flanner contacted Goode about starting a rooftop gardening project. They eventually found an industrial warehouse on Eagle Street willing to host the rooftop farm. Owned by Broadway Stages, its cavernous interior is frequently rented by the film industry for movie sets. For a partner, Flanner was constantly referred to Annie Novak, a farmer with Kira Kenney of Evolutionary Organics.

Both originally from the Midwest -- Annie, from Chicago, and Ben from Milwaukee -- the two were inspired by the urban farming activity there. "Chicago is a great place for apiaries," said Novak, who estimates there are over 3,000 are present in the windy city. While Novak has had rigorous experience in farming and farm education (she is also a Children's Gardening Program Coordinator at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, school gardening programmer with Slow Food USA, and runs the workshop Growing Chefs), Ben cites no farming experience, "just passion." He'd debated splitting his time between his office job and running the rooftop farm before quickly realizing the demands of the farm.


Taking a languid break, the farmers discussed inter-cropping the lettuces with tomatoes, so that the tall tomato plants would provide shade for its neighboring crops. Or at least, that's what I thought I heard. Novak answered my hapless question to clarify this point with a breathless explanation on the plants just at my feet: because lettuces are one of those plants that flower when it gets too hot, and going to flower early will spoil the harvest, the tomatoes are inter-cropped for shade, but that's not the case with the pepper plants that are inter-cropped with the radishes over in the next row, they've been put in the same bed because radishes take 35 days to harvest while the peppers take much longer, so once they're done new crops can be put in its place.

"We want to teach as many people as possible," said Novak, taking a seat along a bench of volunteers. Hence, my eyeballs needn't have bulged with starry "teach-me" signs -- this team is in it to educate. And without all the enormous response they'd received from various friends and volunteers, none of it could have been possible. In their call for volunteers last week, twenty people responded, out of the forty people on the email list. Both of the volunteers I chatted with had heard about the project at the Brooklyn Food Conference like I had, too -- Bruni Torras, who'd worked at Added Value farm in Red Hook last year, and Betsey McCall, who manages Murray Hill Greenmarket and teaches yoga. Learning how to grow plants can be intimidating for a lot of people, Annie observed, "because it's a living thing and you can kill it. But just with experience you'll get to watch how things grow," she explained.


Once they're ready to harvest, the group plans to provide local restaurants and other community organizations with their crops. But only very local ones -- they plan to transport everything they grow by bike. Nearby Greenpoint restaurants might be in luck, like Anella, where the group often picks up compost scraps from. The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm might also set up a stand for passer-by customers later in the summer. Ben plans on growing some hops for Sixpoint Brewery soon.

At first, Novak admitted, she'd hoped the rooftop had been smaller. Now, she wishes it were 100 times bigger: "We could be growing so much more." It's all a learning experience, though. If it turns out to be that cabbage, for instance, is not a good crop for rooftop farms, then they'll try other plants out for size. A diverse ecosystem is the first goal. And whatever crops flourish, they will find that they will; and those that don't, that they don't. Hopefully the lessons learned will become useful for later rooftop farmers.


"I just want it to be possible, and something that's done all over," said Novak. "It's amazing how nature can be squeezed into NYC."

For more info or to lend a hand, contact rooftopfarmer[at]