The most beautiful urban gardens in the world

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL URBAN GARDENS IN THE WORLD

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URBAN GARDENS IN EUROPE AND AROUND THE WORLD

• PARIS

A Paris zoning law requires public buildings and commercial skyscrapers to have green spaces. This is also why 300 varieties of berries are grown on the rooftops of the Galeries Lafayette department store.

• ROMANVILLE

In Romainville, a suburb of Paris, Agro-main-ville, a tower of urban gardens, has opened to the public: eight floors and seven enormous terraces where residents can grow their own plants and maintain shared gardens. This eco-sustainable and energy-efficient structure also features rainwater collection and filtration systems and composting systems for the vertical farms' waste and the community's organic waste.

• BERLIN

In the German capital, however, courgettes, tomatoes and Brussels sprouts are grown in the 300 small plots created on the site of the former runway of Tempelhof Airport, which closed permanently in 2009.

And outside Europe, vertical farms are also a reality in:

• YOKOSUKA

Here some types of vegetables including lettuce are really difficult to find due to the excessive level of pollution of the cultivation soils, which is why they are imported and sold at very high prices. In Yokosuka, just forty kilometers from Tokyo, the vegetables are grown in the former floppy disk factory that Toshiba has now transformed into a hydroponic vertical farm.

• NEW YORK

In the Big Apple, however, vegetables are grown in Brooklyn grange, the largest rooftop garden where, every year, twenty-five thousand kilograms of fresh vegetables, medicinal herbs, eggs and honey are produced. And not only that: the High Line Park, a linear park of about 2,3 kilometers, has become in just a few years one of the main attractions of the American metropolis, and has about 5 million visitors a year, more than the Statue of Liberty. In West Manhattan, however, an old railway line, the West Side Line, now abandoned, has been completely transformed into a fantastic urban park, including traditional vegetable gardens, much loved by residents and tourists. An example of urban redevelopment, embracing greenery, vegetable gardens, and new lifestyles, without erasing traces of history (the old tracks are still visible along the route).

• CHICAGO

On the roof-park “Green Roof City Hall” of Chicago Instead, as many as 20 thousand plant species are cultivated.

These are very important projects, not only for improving the liveability of our urban centers but also for promoting energy savings. The vegetation on top of the buildings, the vegetable gardens and the vertical forests provide the structure with an insulating effect. and this allows you to save on usage and, consequently, on heating bill costs and conditionersNot to mention that rooftop crops allow us to produce fruit and vegetables free of pollutants like lead and heavy metals that leak from car exhausts and end up on the ground.

TO KNOW MORE: Green roofs: why they're worth it, lower bills (-25 percent), clean air, and less noise