Urban Leaves
growing food in urban landscapes
Curiosity our teacher,
experiment our learning
experience our feedback
In The Press
Terrace gardening makes one self sufficient!
Preetha Nair, August 2, 2012
In the urban grey of Indian cities, there's still a way of owning your own patch of green. Tiny balconies, terraces, patios and any small spaces near windows are turning many women into kitchen gardeners. These urban farmers are doing their bit to keep pesticides off their plates, deal with rising costs of greens and reduce carbon footprint.
Create your own organic kitchen garden
Reema Gehi, Mumbai Mirror I Nov 1, 2012
No need to stock up on overpriced organic vegetables any more. Preeti Patil of Urban Leaves India shows you how to grow your very own kitchen garden.
With Mumbai's space constraints, cultivating a garden for pesticide-free vegetables and fruit may seem like a far-fetched idea. But growing and owning an organic kitchen garden is actually utterly achievable.
Herbs enough to beat fever and diabetes
Ankit Ajmera, Mumbai Mirror | Apr 10, 2013
Here's how Mumbai's green thumbs are beating fever and diabetes
Had Hanuman not found the magical herb Sanjeevani that Hindu mythology believes is the cure for all malady, and healed Laxman, wounded in battle by Ravan's son Indrajeet, the Ramayana would have panned out differently.
Besides the power to turn the plot of an epic around, medicinal herbs can be effective weapons against common ailments, as Mumbaikars are discovering.
Eats shoots and leaves
Joeanna Rebello Fernandes, TNN | Dec 4, 2011
The sci-fi writer Orson Scott Card said that unemployment was capitalism's way of getting people to plant gardens. (By that measure , the UK should be blooming ). In Mumbai, it's not unemployment that's driving some to the soil, but inflation, a rising concern about the health of their food, interest in organic food culture, and, not least, the desire to de-tox and de-stress naturally. Across the field, urban gardeners have been reporting about the city's growing interest in pots and plants….
Kitchen Garden Day: Rain fails to dampen farming spirits
Express news service : Mumbai, Mon Aug 29 2011
At a time when rising food prices are a huge concern and use of toxic chemicals poses a serious health hazard, kitchen gardeners across the city braved heavy rain on Sunday to celebrate World Kitchen Garden Day to promote benefits of local urban farming.
The event, organised by NGO Urban Leaves India which has been into urban farming for the past decade, is celebrated internationally on the last Sunday of August and was attended by farming enthusiasts of all age groups, from kids to grandparents.
Mumbai goes green on the terrace
Anahita Mukherji, TNN | Aug 28, 2011,
Planning to turn farmer? There's no need to leave the city. Join the growing tribe of urban farmers, who grow their own food in every nook and cranny available to them in space-starved cities.
"If everyone took to terrace farming, Mumbai would have acres of farmland, enough to make the city partially self-sustainable," says Preeti Patil, one of the founders of Urban Leaves, an organisation whose philosophy is "Reap what you sow, eat what you grow".
Nurture the herbs in your balcony
Joanna Lobo, DNA | Aug 28, 2011
The lane leading to Preeti Patil’s house at Dockyard Road, Mumbai is lined with stately trees with rain-polished barks. If you look up at the buildings, you will see one balcony with leaves and tendrils snaking out of it. This is Patil’s two-year-old kitchen garden.
Patil, 43, is better known among the Mumbai’s green fraternity as a founder of the farming community, Urban Leaves.
