JSOnline: “Long-dormant greenhouses again bloom life into cemetery”

As Will Allen, the creator of Milwaukee’s aquaculture urban ag renaissance, said in an article in today’s Journal Sentinel, “Urban agriculture is about finding places where people wouldn’t think of to grow food.” Witness the brilliant reuse of inactive greenhouses. Under Will Allen’s guidance, the greenhouses will grow both fish and vegetables through the aquaculture system that Allen is accredited with making well-known and more widely used.

I’m glad that JS food writer Karen Herzog noted that the Forest Home Cemetery had been used for growing food in the past. According to Milwaukee historian John Gurda, Native Americans grew corn in this area in the 1700s, and more recently, “The cemetery planted a Victory Garden to supply employees with vegetables during World War II, Gurda wrote in ‘Silent City: A History of Forest Home Cemetery.'”

It’s worth noting that the contemporary revival of Victory Garden movement has been realized in our back yard, in our front yard, and at the White House in Washington, D.C.