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Green Here, There, and Everywhere
One man’s quest to ‘green up’ the City of Brotherly Love
Urban Jungle owner Curt Alexander knew he wanted to build his innovative green business in one of Philadelphia's developing neighborhoods. He found the perfect space at this post-industrial abandoned warehouse in South Philadelphia, once home to a furniture manufacturer.
Urban Jungle owner Curt Alexander knew he wanted to build his innovative green business in one of Philadelphia's developing neighborhoods. He found the perfect space at this post-industrial abandoned warehouse in South Philadelphia, once home to a furniture manufacturer.
Pictured is a vertical garden installed by Green Living Technology International.
Another vertical garden installed by Green Living Technology International, this PNC bank garden can be found in Pittsburgh. It is the largest outdoor green wall in North America.
Article submitted by Lena Kim, EPA Region 3 Community Involvement & Outreach Branch
It’s a common quandary among urban gardeners with unlimited imaginations but limited square footage – how to get all those plants to fit.
Curt Alexander, owner of Philadelphia’s innovative Urban Jungle, has the answer: vertical gardening. The concept is wonderfully simple -- taking a vertical surface of brick, mortar, wood, anything -- and greening it through a blend of non-invasive ground covers, a trademarked growing system, and a healthy dose of creativity.
It would seem as though going green – vertically -- was in Alexander’s DNA. Growing up on a farm surrounded by California wine country, he experienced a much more foliage-filled childhood than many of his Center City neighbors in his new hometown of Philadelphia.
After leaving home to obtain an engineering degree from West Point, dedicating four years to the Army, and ‘doing time’ in a high-powered corporate sales job, Alexander admits that his path to helping fellow Philadelphians go greener, higher, has been a circuitous path indeed.
OR, one could argue that this background set the stage for a vertical revolution of sorts in the City of Brotherly Love. An agricultural upbringing, an engineering background to design and build, military training to efficiently manage multiple tasks, and corporate sales to… well, sell -- it begins to make perfect sense.
“My goal is to inspire people to change their mindset when it comes to making their environments more sustainable,” says Alexander. “We can do this in urban areas like Philly by maximizing our virtually unlimited vertical spaces when deciding to go green.” Alexander points out that Philadelphia is representative of many urban environments littered with bleak brick and mortar facades. It’s simply a matter of seeing them as opportunities rather than eyesores.
Like other innovative and eco-minded entrepreneurs going vertically green throughout the nation, Alexander is taking a multi-pronged approach to starting the City of Brotherly Love’s ‘vertical revolution’.
For homeowners just starting out, he advises thinking beyond the smaller horizontal spaces that comprise many city dwellers’ backyards. He advocates going green by installing window boxes and/or sustainable paneling on what most of us would call typical urban façades, and what he calls “blank canvases with potential.”
The key to keeping these urban plants healthy, he points out, is not to rely on the short reach of a watering can. Instead, the use of an automated irrigation system actually saves water, increases plant life, and doesn’t limit a homeowner to growing only near windows. While large-scale irrigation systems are found in many suburban lawns and gardens, the smaller-scale systems are far less common in the city. As Alexander says, these systems are plant-savers for busy urban dwellers with little time for maintenance but a strong desire to ‘green things up’. For tips and tricks check out Urban Jungle
on how to beautify your urban home or business's facade by adding some "vertical green."
Alexander also encourages home owners with these ‘blank canvases’ to go one step further via the vertical green walls for which he is becoming known. Surprisingly lightweight, able to ‘live’ indoors and out with no soil requirements and automatic irrigation installed, they are an eco-minded and time-constrained city dweller’s dream.
Only several hundred of these vertical, living green walls exist in the nation and Alexander’s goal is to increase this number exponentially. He said it shouldn’t be difficult, once people see more of them go up. In addition to bringing a completely different type of aesthetic beauty to a concrete-filled city, the living walls insulate buildings, clean the air, and help in the reduction of the urban Heat Island Effect.
And then Alexander reminds Philadelphians to consider green roofs.
What was considered avant-garde a few years ago is becoming a serious consideration for many home and business owners who want to save their environment and their money. Green roofs come in variety of constructions; Alexander’s Urban Jungle uses interlocking panels consisting of a drainage layer, a water absorption layer and a root retention layer available ready-for-planting or pre-vegetated. The numerous smaller cells of each panel accommodate plants such as tropicals, ornamentals, edibles (fruits, vegetables, and herbs), sedums, groundcovers and grasses. The panels’ interconnecting design allows for top-down irrigation and a totally seamless appearance.
Business owners have been fairly quick to adopt green roofs. Although home owners have been more cautious about the idea, they become enthusiastic about a ‘living roof’ when they learn about the economic and environmental benefits of improved air and sound insulation, storm-water management, longer roof life, and new habitats for insects and birds.
Alexander practices what he preaches at a massive warehouse in a former industrial corridor in South Philadelphia. By the time this article is published, he and his team will have transformed a decrepit former furniture factory building into a LEED-certified model for going green, vertically. The 4,200-square foot space is filled with living walls in various stages of growth and fountains, flora and aqua gardens all being tended to by busy gardeners, artisans and eco-architects. It is a far cry indeed from the eyesore this old factory once was to its South Philly neighbors.
To complete the factory’s transformation, Alexander already has plans drawn up to create one of Philadelphia’s first vertically integrated, self-sustaining greenhouses on top of the entire building.
As Philadelphians go greener and Urban Jungle continues to ‘grow’ along with them, Alexander says that the hardest but also most satisfying part of his job is keeping up with the increasing demand for his special vertical environments. He is quick to add however, that he is willing to consider incorporating anything and everything into his business model that “helps people maximize their outdoor living spaces as sustainably as possible.”
Not a bad place to be for a kid from California wine country looking to make a difference…
For more information on how to go green vertically, visit urbanjunglephila.com