Combining baseball and urban gardening at Fenway Park

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Just behind Fenway Park's third base foul line, you can find a rooftop garden known as Fenway Farms that's producing vegetables you can enjoy in the stadium's own concessions.

Transcript

00:00 Baseball fans know the left field wall at Boston's Fenway Park is the green

00:05 monster, but the home of the Red Sox has a lot of other kinds of green going on.

00:09 So Chris Gralert is president of Green City Growers, which runs Fenway Farms, a

00:15 unique example of urban agriculture. So Chris, thanks so much for joining us.

00:20 Absolutely fantastic to be here, thank you. So when did this begin and who had

00:25 the idea to combine a baseball stadium and urban farming? Yeah, in 2015 Red

00:31 Sox ownership decided it'd be a fantastic way to show people what's

00:35 possible in terms of local food production. So ownership said why don't

00:40 we transform this black asphalt roof on top of the the team's offices into a

00:45 beautiful organic farm. So here we are standing at the famous Fenway Farms. And

00:49 over your left shoulder I can see part of the structure. What are we looking at

00:53 in terms of relation to the actual field? So we're just behind the third base foul

01:00 line here, just over the seats in the private boxes. Excellent.

01:05 Well in terms of the farm there or the large-scale garden that you have, what

01:10 kinds of organic crops are grown at Fenway Farms? We can grow everything from

01:15 A to Z, asparagus to zucchini I like to say, but we don't spend a lot of space on

01:20 things that take up a lot of space like pumpkins and sweet corn and watermelons

01:24 and things like that. But we're growing everything that you could possibly grow

01:28 in a garden on the ground in Massachusetts and just putting it up on

01:32 a roof. How is the harvested produce used in the stadium and where else does it go?

01:37 This section we're looking at right here is the production garden and all of the

01:42 food that's grown here is used in all the concessions and restaurants in

01:46 Fenway Park. And on the other side on the vineyard vines deck is a donation

01:51 garden and all of that produce is donated to a local food impact

01:56 organization based here in Boston. Are there any weather challenges or farming

02:00 issues that are unique to rooftop locations like that one in Boston?

02:06 It's really similar to growing things on the ground and in fact this

02:10 little ecosystem in here because it's blocked from the wind and it's got some

02:15 nice sun reflection it actually stays a little warmer in here and it drains off

02:20 really well and so it's actually maybe more ideal in some ways than growing on

02:25 the ground. Have you ever had any monstrous home runs or foul balls? Not

02:30 sure exactly where we sit in relation to the foul line. Land in the garden and

02:34 also can fans see any of the farmers at work? Absolutely yes we get foul balls

02:39 that come flying over here into the garden often and we love to pass them

02:42 out to visitors or farmers that are working here in the garden and sure you

02:47 can come by on a tour we're on the we're based on the third level so if you're

02:51 going up on the fourth level you can see the see the the garden from up above.

02:56 Chris Growler president of Green City Growers there at Fenway Park. Thanks so

03:00 much Chris.

03:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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