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Thought Leadership: Earth Day Festival at Urban Agriculture Garden

Employees from Arch|Nexus SAC participated in an Earth Day festival at Sutter Middle School. Using the school garden designed by Arch|Nexus, the  garden club harvested vegetables, cooked up a meal and served it at the event.

Arch|Nexus and Sacramento City Unified School District worked together to create the Urban Agriculture Garden at Sutter Middle School. The project helps the Arch|Nexus SAC office in their effort to become the first certified Living Building in the state of California. Since the project area at Arch|Nexus SAC could not support all of the urban agriculture garden space required to fulfil the Urban Agriculture Imperative of the Living Building Challenge, the project has utilized an option known as Scale Jumping, which allows cooperation between projects and neighboring properties, to create solutions otherwise not possible.

The Urban Agriculture Garden at Sutter Middle School uses the same sustainable methods used to create Arch|Nexus SAC and includes solutions that support California’s water conservation goals.  The garden has been designed to use collected rain water as its source for water. Rainwater is collected on the roof of the main school building, then directed to building roof drains and gravity fed directly into two above grade cisterns. Rainwater is stored and distributed as needed for garden irrigation. Additionally, all of the materials used to create this garden have been thoroughly vetted to be Red List compliant, meaning they are free of harmful chemicals.

 

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