9.15.2013

Interesting products to make food grow close to your kitchen
Some time ago I told you about me having a dream. More importantly that if you have one, the only way to realize it, is to wake up and work on it. For some weeks, that’s what I’m doing now.

Part of the process is doing things which maybe are not something you really like to do or which are not your best characteristics. These are things you need to step over or you won’t get there anyways. So last Friday I woke-up early and headed over to a town two hours away to visit a fair. A fair on flowers, plants and everything you need to grow and maintain them. Did you know something like that exists?

The fair wasn’t the reason to head south, but was an interesting side-effect. By signing me up to the conference on ‘technical green’ I was allowed to enter the fairground and to see what’s going on in the business, talk to some people and distribute my business cards. What I hate about this, is that people are not interested in you, but only in the money they might make out of the conversation.

So far so good. I concentrated on the lectures which were meant to share information on what green can do for the urban environment: why we enjoy parks, what are the advantages of green office courtyards and which profits there are when installing a green rooftop. Sounds all super interesting when you try to create a real relation between food, people and the cities.

Unfortunately the program was so full of interesting lecturers and so much time got lost by saying ‘please hurry up’ and ‘I’ll try to be short’ that the presentations couldn’t really get much further than showing beautiful pictures of architectures and landscapes. That wasn’t where we came for.

For me technical green does not only mean that flowers and plants make a place look nice, but that people really enjoy it. It should be explained why: temperatures are better, cars are far away, you can hear the birds, see the seasons, smell the flowers. And thereby you should not forget to think about other functionalities you can get from so called technical green. For example the food it can provide.

I learned a lot that day. I am still not a big fan of fairs but who knows what come out of the business cards swops I did? More over I also learned that my dream has not been realized in the country I live in now. So I’ll stay awake and continue the work.