A pioneering rooftop farm, with sprawling operations in Long Island City and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, is branching out.
The Brooklyn Grange is offering its expertise to help space-challenged urban dwellers and businesses set up city farms, planters, chicken coops and beehives.
“People want to grow food now,” said Chief Operating Officer Gwen Schantz, who began receiving requests for consulting services when the Queens farm opened in 2010.
“We’ve always thought of nature as something you go to on weekends,” she said. But “New Yorkers are realizing this is something they can cultivate in the city in their homes, in their offices.”
Offering consulting services, and even holding weddings on the farms, is also an economic move for the Grange.
“We’re trying to create new revenue streams,” Schantz said. “We want to grow and build more farms and that takes more money.”
Seth Bornstein, executive director of the Queens Economic Development Corp., said consulting is a logical fit for the Grange.
“They have expertise in it. They’re successful in it,” he said. “Why not share that?”
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Restaurateur Carlos Suarez had the Grange set up an 1,100-square-foot farm and chicken coop on the roof of Rosemary’s, his Italian restaurant in the West Village. The Grange also installed a beehive on top of Bobo, his French restaurant nearby.
“It’s an opportunity to eat better quality food and at the same time have some fun,” said Suarez, whose patrons can visit the rooftop farm. “It’s a pastoral experience in the middle of the village.”
The farm is also installing a chicken coop on the terrace of an upper West Side penthouse this week.
Susan Chin, executive director of the Design Trust for Public Space, said the market is “ripe” for this sort of enterprise.
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Last summer, her group released the Five Borough Farm report, which offered city policy recommendations on urban farming.
“We have more than 700 farms and gardens citywide that grow food,” Chin said. “It’s a growing movement.”
Kennon Kay, the director of agriculture at the Queens County Farm Museum, in Floral Park, said she’s heartened by the surge of interest in urban agriculture.
“People are finding that it’s not only possible, but it’s easy and it’s fun to have a couple of chickens or to grow some herbs on your windowsill,” Kay said. “It’s nice to re-imagine urban spaces.”
