Making a Natural ‘Pocket Park’ in Japan
With only a few weeks to work, we tried to turn vacant urban land into a pocket park that would make Masanobu Fukuoka and Patrick Geddes proud. Here is the short story of how it happened.
garden
The Branch Pocket Farm
The pocket farm is a community herb garden, and a place to re-connect ourselves with nature amid the urban setting of Osaka. It is freely open to visitors.
Herb Tea Blending Workshop
Using herbs from our community garden, every participant made their own, unique herb tea blend to take home.
REALtimeFOOD (world’s slowest restaurant)
A temporary restaurant is the opening scene for a multiple-month community based arts and ecology project where we bring to life an empty plot of urban land and invite the community to cultivate food, relationships, and creativity.
Urban Pocket Farm
Built along natural farming principals, we transform an empty urban lot into a natural garden based on empathy with all living things, including the weeds, bugs, and all of the life that enters the space. This empathy is woven into a series of arts and environment workshops, and eventually carried into the community by those who visit the garden.
Martha’s Gardens: The Half-Gentrified Gem
Take a look at how low-income housing is working in San Jose’s “Martha’s Garden,” a half-industrial, half-bungalow neighborhood on the verge of gentrification, put on hold by city and developer economic concerns.