Facilitate creation of home/community gardens, chicken & bee keeping, and incorporation of food growing areas/access in multifamily and residential developments.
Best Practice of this action
Rating Guideline
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Remove restrictions to food gardening/raising of chickens/bees in residential areas. Report beehives on city property under BPA 18.5. |
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Proactively zone for & allow by right food gardening/raising of chickens/bees; report one or more developments that have dedicated, permanent and managed growing space, such as resident garden space, and/or related facilities (such as greenhouses). Report adopted city guidelines that prevent the restriction of food production through homeowner (HOA) agreements (CC&Rs) under BPA 3.5. |
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Work with a rental building owner to establish a community garden, farmer's market or CSA/food buying club drop-point within 1/2 mile; establish tax incentives to use vacant lots for urban agriculture. |
Resources
- Gardens:
- The Univ. of MN Extension Service has gardening resources for backyard gardeners.
- Backyard gardening can be promoted by efforts like the Harvest Moon Backyard Farmers business that works with residents to plant, maintain and harvest backyard gardens.
- See how developers at the Cornerstone Group brought an urban farm plot for the Rivertown Commons apartment complex in St. Paul.
- Using flat roof space is one strategy for producing local food on multifamily residential buildings (and on commercial buildings and unused top-levels of parking ramps). Find ideas on growing edible plants on green roofs.
- Chickens:
- Some cities may wish to embrace the self-sufficiency culture of keeping chickens that the USDA promoted in 1918. For example, in March 2012 the La Prairie, MN Zoning Committee held a public meeting, studied the raising of chickens and recommended to the city council a chicken ordinance, which was adopted.
- Bees:
- See a policy resolution template for becoming a Bee Safe City (Humming for Bees of Excelsior, MN: 2017).
- Bee-keeping and pollinator-friendly landscapes are enabled by city ordinances cataloged by the Minnesota Bee Lab at the Univ. of MN.
- Resources developed under the MN Solar Sanctuaries Act of 2016 that establishes voluntary pollinator-friendly native vegetation and habitat management practices in the footprint of solar installations.
- Report Bee Safe City recognition under BPA 10.7.
- Food Access:
- Agrihoods: Cultivating Best Practices (ULI: 2018) identifies strategies to aid developers and their (city and other) partners in planning, creating, and operating single-family, multifamily, or mixed-use communities built with a working farm and other food-production space as a focus.
- For language that incorporates food access into a residential development, see LEED for Neighborhood Development, credit 13 under neighborhood pattern and design.
- See model ordinances for food security and sovereignty from Sustainable Development Code.
Order Number
2
Action Type
Finite