After receiving criticism from teachers, parents and community members about overcrowded elementary classrooms, the district has begun the process to hire more teachers.

The goal is to hire and have 8.5 teachers in place by Jan. 17, Assistant Superintendent Becky Furlong said. The new teachers will be distributed between Coralville Central, Garner, Kirkwood, Longfellow, Penn, Van Allen and Wood elementaries. The new positions were posted online Tuesday.

The new teachers will be hired as long-term substitutes. Superintendent Steve Murley said that these new positions will be filled by certified teachers, but that the long-term substitute contract will give the district more freedom in addressing

their staffing needs for future years.

“It will allow us the opportunity to give us the greatest flexibility as we plan for staffing next year,” Murley said.

Furlong said hiring long-term substitutes in place of full-time teachers will cost the district less money, allowing the district to hire more teachers now. She also said that there will be a larger pool of candidates to choose from in the summ

er, if the district hires full-time teachers then.

“The people that we hire will be highly qualified and we will hire the best people that we can,” Furlong said.

Murley said that the district has a rigorous hiring process for new teachers that takes much longer than it does to fill a long-term substitute position.

“If we want teachers in front of kids by Jan. 17, the long-term substitu

te teacher hiring process is most effective for us, to get staff in front of students as quickly as possible,” Murley said.

The district developed new ways to count students in classrooms this year, and now includes special education students who spend at least half of their time in the classrooms in their counts, a group that previously was left out.

It then looked at schools districtwide to determine which schools had the most immediate need. Kindergarten through second-grade classrooms with more than 24 students and third- through sixth-grade classrooms with more than 32 students

were identified as most in need for this school year.

The district also gathered information from the schools regarding individual classroom situations, including the poverty rate and resources available in the building, when making staffing decisions.

“We attempted to use the funds that we had to address as many of the outlier classes as possible,” Murley said.

Murley said the district will readdress the staffing needs when it receives classroom projections for next year. The district requested projections from Executive Director of Administrative Services Paul Bobek at the School Board meeting on Dec. 20. Murley said the district might eventually hire these new teachers on a full-time basis.

“It’s not unlikely that some of these people could be converted to full-time contracts between now and the end of the school year,” Murley said. “And if not then, then by the start of the next school year,” Murley said.

Overcrowding in schools has been addressed in the district several times this year.

Longfellow, which held some of the largest classes in the dist

rict, will be receiving more than two of the full-time teachers this month.

“In general we are really excited,” Longfellow Principal Chris Pisarik said. “It’s a great opportunity to enhance the learning of the students, not only here at Longfellow but throughout the district with all of these pieces that are being

added.”

At a meeting at Longfellow Elementary between Murley, School Board members and members of the Longfellow community in early December, the parties discussed possible solutions to overcrowding issues. Murley said that a short-term solution would be that Shelter House students would no longer automatically attend Longfellow.

This change was never implemented and is no longer being pursued.

“Now that we are able to increase the number of staff (at Longfellow), we don’t have to worry about decreasing the number of students,” Murley said.

Crissy Canganelli, the executive director of the Shelter House, said that the district could not treat Shelter House children any differently other children in the district.

“You could not ask us to require that children (from Shelter House) go to different schools randomly just based on the fact that there is room in the classroom unless all children that are new to the district are being assigned in that manner,” Canganelli said.

Written by: Alesha L. Crews

Iowa City Press-Citizen

January 3, 2012

The school board is trying to increase its percentage of minority teachers from 4 to 6 percent. Only 36 of 904 teachers in the school district are minorities, while minority students make up nearly a third of the student body.

Keeping a diverse teaching staff is a nationwide challenge for school districts, especially in larger, urban school districts, said Superintendent Stephen Murley.

“It is important to have your staff look like your students,” Murley said. “We want to make sure that there is a representation among the staff that is equal to the student body. Minority teachers act as role models and mentors and give support for those students.”

Racial background isn’t the only trait found in high demand by the school district. Male elementary teachers are also hard to come by in the school district.

“Male teachers are a minority in elementary schools,” Murley said. “As a district, we look at race and gender as minority groups.”

Louie Muñoz, a fifth-grade teacher at Wood Elementary, meets two rarities in elementary education: He is male and Mexican. He always wanted to become an elementary teacher because he says teaching came naturally to him.

Muñoz’s classroom presence has surprised some students. He recalls one second-grade student who asked his mother, “Did you know boys can grow up to be teachers to?”

“I think having underrepresented groups in authoritative roles can show students that there can be a diversity of adult figur

es to look up to,” said Muñoz, who himself had an inspirational, male sixth-grade teacher. “It’s good to have positive adult role models.”

Muñoz studied in Illinois, and doesn’t think a lot of people consider Iowa when looking to start their career.

“Iowa is a mystery to a lot of the Midwest because people aren’t aware about what Iowa has,” he said. “There are great opportunities in Iowa.”

No matter their background, Muñoz said he feels all teachers need to approach a classroom with the right mindset.

“Schools have such a diverse mix, it’s important to dive in and be open-minded. Enjoy the experiences of different cultures and family structures,” he said. “You should have an open mindedness and willingness to expose yourself to different experiences.”

Jim Pedersen, the district’s executive director of human resources, has been working on recruiting more minority teacher candidates to the district.

“Our pool of minority candidates that meet our standards is quite small,” he said. “Because every company is trying to diversify its employee groups, we are all recruiting from the same candidates. Even if they choose to stay in public education, there aren’t many to choose from.”

Expanded advertising, expanded recruitment at job fairs and promotion of the teaching profession to high school students are among the strategies the district is using to recruit more minorities.

The school district hired five new minority teachers in the last year, compared to one in the 2010-2011 school year.

“We had more success (this year) because with the economy and setbacks, we were still hiring, so we had a larger pool of minority staff to choose from,” Pedersen said.

With the difficulty in finding qualified minority candidates, Pedersen must look to other qualifications when hiring teachers.

“If I can’t hire a minority teacher, I’m going to try to hire someone who has experience with teaching a diverse group of students.” he said.

Petersen said the district will be writing a revised equal opportunity affirmative action plan to be submitted to the state in the spring.

Written by: unknown

Iowa City Press-Citizen

Pacemakers are holistic awards that assess a year’s worth of a newspaper’s publications on coverage and content, quality of writing and reporting, leadership on the opinion page, evidence of in-depth reporting, layout and design, photography, art and graphics. The West Side Story was previously a finalist for the Pacemaker in 2005 and 2007.

The West Side Story received other awards at the conference as well. West High graduates Elizabeth Lin and Jojo Silverman won third place in the nation for their cover design on bullying in the Design of the Year contest. Eleanor Marshall, senior and current editor-in-chief, won Honorable Mention in the national Diversity Story of the Year contest for her article on students wearing hijabs.

Ashton Duncan (junior), Leah Murray (senior) and Caroline Van Vorrhis (senior) received Honorable Mention for their work in the conference’s Write-Off competitions.

The newspaper’s website, http://wsspaper.com, was also recognized, winning third place in the national Best of Show large school website contest.

Written by: The Press-Citizens

November 21, 2011

The analysis, by third-year law student Benjamin Wischnowski, notes that current judicial tests fail to properly identify those bloggers who should be protected by state shield laws that guard journalists in their news gathering.

“The concern is that shield laws present the risk of being under-inclusive by failing to protect bloggers who are legitimate news gatherers, but that they might also be over-inclusive and protect too many bloggers based on a vague, undefined notion of investigative reporting,” Wischnowski says. “The fact that courts could reach these two contrary results leads me to conclude that courts need more concrete tests for dealing specifically with bloggers.”

All states have shield laws designed to protect journalists as they gather and distribute the news, especially when it comes to providing a defense against libel suits or protecting anonymous sources for controversial stories. Some state courts have extended these protections to bloggers, but others have remained silent and some have expressly denied those protections to bloggers.

Considering that more and more news gathering is happening online by independent journalist/bloggers, Wischnowski believes that shield laws need to be interpreted in a way that specifically protects them. As read now, many laws that protect traditional print or broadcast journalists from lawsuits aren’t adequate to protect bloggers.

“By conditioning protection on how closely their work resembles institutional journalism, courts fail to address the nuances of the blogosphere, focusing on the characteristics of the reporter rather than on the reporting itself,” said Wischnowski.

Instead, he suggests courts adopt a test that determines whether a blogger’s work can be considered legitimate journalism by how well it capitalizes on the blog as a medium. Namely, whether the blogger makes her story available for online editing by readers — a form of crowd-sourcing — and whether she collaborates with other bloggers or readers, for instance, through a comments section.

The court would then determine whether that level of interaction is enough for a reader to understand that the blogger is practicing journalism and disseminating legitimate journalism, or is merely publishing libelous or defamatory statements about another person or organization. Shield law protections can then be extended if the blogger’s work is considered legitimate news reporting.

“Unlike the journalistic standards test, which threatens the viability of bloggers to remain competitive with traditional news sources, this kind of blogger-specific inquiry preserves bloggers’ independence and acknowledges the nuances of the internet’s investigative reporting,” he says.

Wischnowski’s paper, “Bloggers With Shields,” is published in the current issue of the Iowa Law Review.

STORY SOURCE: University of Iowa News Service, 300 Plaza Centre One, Iowa City, Iowa 52242-2500

MEDIA CONTACT: Tom Snee, 319-384-0010 (office), 319-541-8434 (cell), tom-snee@uiowa.edu

University of Iowa News Release

Nov. 15, 2011

Jenny / Jenerally Speaking

The University of Iowa is gauging interest for a potential fraternity for gay, bisexual and progressive men.

Shimek Elementary School first-grader Craig Harris rides the bus home from school Sept. 14. Craig, a transfer student from Grant Wood Elementary, will continue to receive busing to Shimek, but his younger brother will not when he begins school in a couple years under a new Iowa City Community School District policy. Benjamin Roberts / Iowa City Press-Citizen

Some parents say a new Iowa City Community School District policy that ended district-provided busing for students who transfer out of Schools in Need of Assistance is splitting up their families.

This fall, the district implemented a new policy that does not provide transportation for any additional students who transfer to other schools because the school in their assigned attendance area is a SINA.

A June letter from assistant superintendent Ann Feldmann to parents who requested transfers said the district already had spent the $225,000 it had allotted for SINA-related transportation. The funding was provided by the federal government. Feldmann also wrote that the federal government requires the district to provide busing to low-achieving students and those from low-income families first, though SINA transfer students who received busing in 2010-11 would continue to receive transportation this school year.

Some parents say the new policy will cause unnecessary hardship by allowing one child in their family to receive the busing but not their younger sibling.

Craig and Tara Harris’ oldest son, Craig, attends first grade at Shimek Elementary despite his family living in the Grant Wood Elementary attendance area. Because Grant Wood is designated as a SINA, they opted for Craig to start kindergarten elsewhere. The Harrises enrolled Craig at Shimek because it had an opening at the start of last school year. However, when their younger son, now 3, starts kindergarten in fall 2013, he will not be able to ride the bus to Shimek with his brother.

“That doesn’t make much sense,” Craig Harris said. “If the bus is already coming here, it’s not like there’s no room.”

The final number of SINA transfers approved and the number of students receiving busing this year has yet to be finalized, Feldmann said Wednesday. However, she said the number of new SINA transfer requests increased to about 350 this year from 221 last year. This is partially because of Coralville Central, Roosevelt and Lemme elementaries being added to the SINA list.

The overall number of requests for transfer from a SINA, however, included multiple requests from the same family to enroll at different schools, Feldmann said. She said about 500 students are transferring out of SINA schools, though official numbers will be released in October. Of those, about 100 do not receive busing for myriad reasons, such as not being eligible under the new policy or living within two miles of their new school.

“We had more requests and approvals even though we ended the busing for transfers,” she said. “We did not save any money this year (on SINA busing).”

Parent Dave Droll is in a similar situation as the Harrises with his daughter, who is a first-grader at Shimek, and his younger daughter, who will start kindergarten next year.

Also a resident of the Grant Wood Elementary attendance area, he said district officials told him that they want to reduce the number of SINA transfers receiving busing. However, he said that is unfair to families already in the program with older children.

“We played by the rules, signed whatever forms,” Droll said. “It doesn’t make any sense to end it for any families already doing it. Had we’d known (they would end busing), maybe we wouldn’t have opted for Shimek. They changed the rules mid-game.”

Feldmann said the reason for the new policy was so the district could spend all of its SINA-related funding — a total of $300,000 — on tutoring. She also said the new policy was put in place in “an interest in being fair,” a goal that she said sometimes competes with family wishes.

“Because you have a sibling on that bus, do you have more right than someone not on that bus?” she said. “The answer we came to was no.’”

Feldmann said district officials are exploring an option that would allow younger siblings of the SINA transfers to ride the bus if the families pay a fee, though no plan has been established at this time.

The Harrises, though, said they have written to school board members and Craig Harris spoke out at Tuesday’s school board meeting, saying the new policy would isolate his younger son. Tara Harris said she is considering starting a petition among other parents and talking to parents at schools.

“Policies can be changed,” she said. “If we don’t do something now, nothing will come of it.”

Written by Rob Daniel

Iowa City Press-Citizen

Sept. 28th 2011

Now that summer is in full flower and last winter’s doldrums are a chilly memory, it’s time to make good on that New Year’s promise most of us pledged, our hands clutching another steaming mug of triple-mocha-latte-whatever: Start eating better.

After all, who can’t find something nutritious to love in the season of strawberries, snap peas and other delights, particularly smack in the heart of America’s farm country? Plus making sure you get your daily allowance of fruits, veggies and other good-for-you stuff can also mean you’re doing the environment and the local economy — not just your body — good.

Of course, you don’t have to grow your own grub to reap the benefits. Fortunately for those of us who don’t have the time for a backyard garden – or don’t have a backyard, period – the Corridor boasts an abundance of farmers markets, from Iowa City (Wednesdays after work, Saturday mornings) up to Cedar Rapids (every weekday from 4 to 6 p.m. at various locations, as well as Saturday mornings) and everywhere in between. North Liberty? Try Sundays. Marion? Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings.

“There’s nothing like going out and buying a tomato that was picked just that morning, and then going down to the guy who raises some pork and getting some nice bacon, and picking up some good lettuce and a loaf of bread and then sitting down with your family and friends and having something really good,” says Dennis Rehberg, who’s raised pork on his family farm near Walker since the early 1980s and sells his wares at area farmers markets.

“Eating local” may be a catch phrase these days, but beyond the hipster hype there are many reasons to keep tabs on the pedigree of what’s on your plate. For one thing, supporting local farmers, ranchers and other food producers keeps your grocery dollars in Iowa.

Theresa Carbrey, head of education and member services at Iowa City’s New Pioneer Co-op, points out that while Iowa may be an agricultural economy, that’s not necessarily the case once you walk through the supermarket door.

“Even though Iowa is a major food producer, when it comes to food for people, we’re actually a food importer,” she says.

So what’s the real, tangible benefit of skipping the chain superstore and heading for the Iowa-sourced goods? It’s certainly enough for Rehberg to be able to keep his business a local affair.

“I’m not a big pork producer, but I specialize in farmers markets – I sell about 90 percent of my pork there,” he says.

And with that sort of local focus comes another important benefit: Shopper, meet farmer. Farmer, meet shopper.

“You get a really close relationship with people, you watch their kids grow up. It’s how it should be,” he says. “That’s what a farmers market is for.”

Stuck for inspiration? There’s always someone glad to provide ideas for your dinner plans. In fact, says Jill Wilkins, who organizes the Cedar Rapids Downtown District’s farmers markets, the most popular events have been the cooking demonstrations.

“It gives people ideas on how to use the products that are at the markets – and because they can talk to the person who grew it, people tend to try different produce that they wouldn’t at the grocery store,” she says.

“Come down and give it a try,” she says. “Even if you don’t buy anything the first time. We have a lot of vendors, so it can be a little overwhelming. Explore a few new things, and when you make your grocery list for the week, come down to the farmers market first. You can always fill in the blanks at the grocery store, but you’ll be amazed with what you can actually purchase.”

Can’t make it to market? You’re still not doomed to a week of fish sticks and french fries. Stores, like New Pioneer Co-op, can come to the rescue.
The member-owned store, with locations in Coralville and downtown Iowa City, has been in business since 1971. They stock fresh local goodies — everything from mushrooms to artisan Iowa cheeses — with an emphasis on food that’s sustainably produced, local whenever possible and – most importantly – tasty.

“Think of a tomato that’s built to ship from California or withstand getting bounced off the back of a truck — by the time it gets to the table, the pleasure is lost,” Carbrey says. “What we’re doing is a win-win thing; we’re supporting the people who are doing the right thing with the land, and we get a more pleasing product.”

Plus, Carbrey adds, whether you’re buying food or any other product, you’re indirectly sending a message with your dollars. “Choosing food is really an investment in yourself and your community,” she says.

Mix that with the fact that what you add to your basket at the Co-op or the farmers market is almost surely better for you than something you’d pick up in the drive-through line, and it’s a no-brainer.

All you have to do, she says, is start. “Identify the easiest spot to start making some changes, and go from there.”

Global Digital World At Our Fingertips

Digital media have made creating and disseminating text, sound, and images cheap, easy and global. The bulk of publicly available media is now created by people who understand little of the professional standards and practices for media.

Instead, these amateurs produce endless streams of mediocrity, eroding cultural norms about quality and acceptability, and leading to increasingly alarmed predictions of incipient chaos and intellectual collapse.
1.8 billion

Estimated number of Internet users world-wide:  1.8 Billion

But of course, that’s what always happens. Every increase in freedom to create or consume media, from paperback books to YouTube, alarms people accustomed to the restrictions of the old system, convincing them that the new media will make young people stupid. This fear dates back to at least the invention of movable type.

A Little History…

As Gutenberg’s press spread through Europe, the Bible was translated into local languages, enabling direct encounters with the text; this was accompanied by a flood of contemporary literature, most of it mediocre. Vulgar versions of the Bible and distracting secular writings fueled religious unrest and civic confusion, leading to claims that the printing press, if not controlled, would lead to chaos and the dismemberment of European intellectual life.
Journal Community

These claims were, of course, correct. Print fueled the Protestant Reformation, which did indeed destroy the Church’s pan-European hold on intellectual life. What the 16th-century foes of print didn’t imagine—couldn’t imagine—was what followed: We built new norms around newly abundant and contemporary literature. Novels, newspapers, scientific journals, the separation of fiction and non-fiction, all of these innovations were created during the collapse of the scribal system, and all had the effect of increasing, rather than decreasing, the intellectual range and output of society.

To take a famous example, the essential insight of the scientific revolution was peer review, the idea that science was a collaborative effort that included the feedback and participation of others. Peer review was a cultural institution that took the printing press for granted as a means of distributing research quickly and widely, but added the kind of cultural constraints that made it valuable.

We are living through a similar explosion of publishing capability today, where digital media link over a billion people into the same network. This linking together in turn lets us tap our cognitive surplus, the trillion hours a year of free time the educated population of the planet has to spend doing things they care about. In the 20th century, the bulk of that time was spent watching television, but our cognitive surplus is so enormous that diverting even a tiny fraction of time from consumption to participation can create enormous positive effects.

Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads. It only takes a fractional shift in the direction of participation to create remarkable new educational resources.

Time  Average American Spends Watching Television Per Week:  34.5 Hours

Similarly, open source software, created without managerial control of the workers or ownership of the product, has been critical to the spread of the Web. Searches for everything from supernovae to prime numbers now happen as giant, distributed efforts. Ushahidi, the Kenyan crisis mapping tool invented in 2008, now aggregates citizen reports about crises the world over. PatientsLikeMe, a website designed to accelerate medical research by getting patients to publicly share their health information, has assembled a larger group of sufferers of Lou Gehrig’s disease than any pharmaceutical agency in history, by appealing to the shared sense of seeking medical progress.

Of course, not everything people care about is a high-minded project. Whenever media become more abundant, average quality falls quickly, while new institutional models for quality arise slowly. Today we have The World’s Funniest Home Videos running 24/7 on YouTube, while the potentially world-changing uses of cognitive surplus are still early and special cases.

That always happens too. In the history of print, we got erotic novels 100 years before we got scientific journals, and complaints about distraction have been rampant; no less a beneficiary of the printing press than Martin Luther complained, “The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no measure of limit to this fever for writing.” Edgar Allan Poe, writing during another surge in publishing, concluded, “The enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information.”

The response to distraction, then as now, was social structure. Reading is an unnatural act; we are no more evolved to read books than we are to use computers. Literate societies become literate by investing extraordinary resources, every year, training children to read. Now it’s our turn to figure out what response we need to shape our use of digital tools.

Does the Internet Make You Dumber?

The cognitive effects are measurable: We’re turning into shallow thinkers, says Nicholas Carr.

The case for digitally-driven stupidity assumes we’ll fail to integrate digital freedoms into society as well as we integrated literacy. This assumption in turn rests on three beliefs: that the recent past was a glorious and irreplaceable high-water mark of intellectual attainment; that the present is only characterized by the silly stuff and not by the noble experiments; and that this generation of young people will fail to invent cultural norms that do for the Internet’s abundance what the intellectuals of the 17th century did for print culture. There are likewise three reasons to think that the Internet will fuel the intellectual achievements of 21st-century society.

First, the rosy past of the pessimists was not, on closer examination, so rosy. The decade the pessimists want to return us to is the 1980s, the last period before society had any significant digital freedoms. Despite frequent genuflection to European novels, we actually spent a lot more time watching “Diff’rent Strokes” than reading Proust, prior to the Internet’s spread. The Net, in fact, restores reading and writing as central activities in our culture.

The present is, as noted, characterized by lots of throwaway cultural artifacts, but the nice thing about throwaway material is that it gets thrown away. This issue isn’t whether there’s lots of dumb stuff online—there is, just as there is lots of dumb stuff in bookstores. The issue is whether there are any ideas so good today that they will survive into the future. Several early uses of our cognitive surplus, like open source software, look like they will pass that test.

The past was not as golden, nor is the present as tawdry, as the pessimists suggest, but the only thing really worth arguing about is the future. It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity. We are now witnessing the rapid stress of older institutions accompanied by the slow and fitful development of cultural alternatives. Just as required education was a response to print, using the Internet well will require new cultural institutions as well, not just new technologies.

It is tempting to want PatientsLikeMe without the dumb videos, just as we might want scientific journals without the erotic novels, but that’s not how media works. Increased freedom to create means increased freedom to create throwaway material, as well as freedom to indulge in the experimentation that eventually makes the good new stuff possible. There is no easy way to get through a media revolution of this magnitude; the task before us now is to experiment with new ways of using a medium that is social, ubiquitous and cheap, a medium that changes the landscape by distributing freedom of the press and freedom of assembly as widely as freedom of speech.
—Clay Shirky’s latest book is “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.”

Matthew McGregor-Mento put 400 plants in his vertical garden in Manhattan

GIVEN the chance to accompany a team of botanists on a plant-collecting expedition to South America, most gardeners would probably be satisfied with the experience. They wouldn’t come home and try to recreate the rain forest in Manhattan.

But Michael Riley isn’t like most gardeners. Mr. Riley, a former commodities trader turned plant expert who went on to become assistant director of the Horticultural Society of New York, was eager to move beyond potted plants in a way that hadn’t yet occurred to many others. It took a number of expeditions, a lot of research and more than a decade and a half, but by 2003 he had figured out how to grow a wall of plants inside his Upper West Side apartment.

“In the rain forest, I realized that plants didn’t need to grow in pots with labels,” said Mr. Riley, 64. “I wanted to grow plants in ways that were natural to them.”

With his partner, Francisco Correa, a Spanish teacher who is now 52, Mr. Riley attacked a corner of his living area, stripping the walls of plaster and affixing exterior-grade plywood to new and existing building studs. On top of the plywood went bitumen roofing to protect the walls. Cork bark was then stapled over that, and plants were inserted into pockets in the cork. Sprinklers and lighting were installed overhead, trenches were put in at the base of the walls to catch water that trickled down, and pools were added in the middle of the room to increase humidity.

Vertical Gardens

These days, Mr. Riley’s project isn’t that unusual. Vertical gardens — which began as an experiment in 1988 by Patrick Blanc, a French botanist intent on creating a garden without dirt — are becoming increasingly popular at home. Avid and aspiring gardeners, frustrated with little outdoor space, are taking another look at their walls and noticing something new: more space. And a number of companies are selling ready-made systems and all-in-one kits for gardeners like Mr. Riley who want to do it themselves. (For those who prefer to leave it to the professionals, landscape designers can build vertical gardens for a hefty fee.)

In the last few years, companies that sell green wall supplies have seen a jump in sales. ELT, an Ontario company that specializes in green roofs, began selling living wall systems a little over three years ago and is now one of the biggest suppliers to the United States. Greg Garner, the company’s president, said that its green-wall sales have increased 300 percent since 2008. Four months ago, the company introduced a cheaper, lighter kit to make living walls accessible to the average gardener; prices start at about $40 for a one-square-foot panel.

“We’ve turned living walls into something anyone can do,” Mr. Garner said. “The walls have gone from zero percent of our business leads to 80 percent of our business, and it’s happening all over the place, from the Middle East to North America to Europe.”

Companies Focus In On Living Walls

Another big living-wall company, Gsky Plant Systems in Vancouver, British Columbia, was founded four years ago as a green roof supplier but now focuses almost exclusively on vertical gardens, which it designs, installs and maintains for around $125 a square foot. Hal Thorne, Gsky’s chairman, said the company’s growth in the last year “was phenomenal — we nearly doubled sales.”

Many of the modular systems — essentially plastic trays filled with dirt and attached to a wall, with a sprinkler or drip irrigation system installed above — differ dramatically from Patrick Blanc’s living walls, which can be seen in commercial and institutional buildings around the world, including the Athenaeum hotel in London and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Mr. Blanc, who was inspired by tropical rain-forest plants he had studied, knew plants could survive on water and fertilizer alone, and developed a system for growing them on walls lined with felt. The living wall was part of his effort to bring greenery into cities. “When you live in towns, you don’t always go into gardens,” he said. “It’s really important to use empty spaces to invite nature into town.”

He is not a fan of the new kits. On a recent visit to San Francisco to begin work on a green wall for a private high school, his largest outdoor vertical garden in North America, Mr. Blanc dismissed them as artificial. Plants may grow vertically on a surface like the face of a cliff, he said, but “in nature, you don’t have vertical dirt.”

Peter Kastan’s 12-by-12-foot green wall in Miami

“It’s like having a large poodle,” said Peter Kastan. “You have to take care of it, feed it, walk it. It’s intensive care for plants.” More Photos »

At a local nursery, he pointed at one modular system: “This is very heavy and a lot of plastic,” he said. “After three to five years, you have no more substrate — the dirt gets compacted.”

Last year, inspired by Mr. Blanc’s work, Matthew McGregor-Mento, 38, an executive creative director at Gyro: HSR, a New York advertising agency, and his wife, Emma, 35, a massage therapist, set out to build a vertical garden in their two-bedroom apartment in the East Village. They attached an 8-by-10-foot aluminum frame to a wall in the entry hall, screwed waterproof sheets of PVC to the frame and tacked on two layers of matting. Then they inserted some 400 plants — philodendrons, ivies and ferns — into holes they cut in the felt.

A trough they installed along the floor collects runoff water from the irrigation system, and a pump with a filtration sponge sends it back up the wall. Timers control the watering, which happens four times a day.

Design Challenges

The design, which they devised with the help of a horticulturalist friend, was based on Mr. Blanc’s system and on research they had done online. The total cost was $3,000, but the result was worth it, Mr. McGregor-Mento said. Most people who visit want a green wall of their own, and the effort involved wasn’t that onerous: “Building a vertical wall is about as difficult as painting a room.”

Others have found it more challenging. Peter Kastan, an unemployed movie location scout in Miami, had never grown anything when he decided to install a vertical garden in a friend’s loft. The apartment, which his friend offered to him as a laboratory since it was vacant and he couldn’t rent it, had abundant light and high ceilings, and Mr. Kastan, after reading about Mr. Blanc’s living gardens online, thought it would be an ideal environment.

He began by contacting living-wall creators around the world for advice, and then drove all over Florida visiting nurseries to find plants. He bought 650, including bromeliads, hoyas, begonias and ferns, favoring those that were local and “the most interesting to look at,” he said. And one weekend last November, he and his wife, Mai Tran, and a friend put up the 12-by-12-foot plant wall.

Like Mr. McGregor-Mento, Mr. Kastan used matting affixed to a metal frame bolted to the wall. He bought most of the materials from local hardware stores or online suppliers. About $10,000 later, he has a large, vibrant green wall. He recently completed a smaller one in the kitchen, with herbs and mini-tomatoes.

But it took a lot of work to get the irrigation, the lighting and the plants right. The first month, he lost several plants near the bottom of the wall, where water was collecting. He realized then that some plants were getting too much water and needed to be moved a different spot on the wall; others he had to get rid of.

“It’s like having a large poodle,” Mr. Kastan said. “You have to take care of it, feed it, walk it. It’s intensive care for plants.”

Even professional gardeners sometimes have trouble with their first living wall. Martha Desbiens, a co-owner of VertNY, a landscape design firm specializing in roof gardens, used sedums in a green wall on a client’s terrace, and they dried out over the winter while the irrigation system was off. In a roof garden, they would have gotten plenty of moisture from snow, she noted, but planted vertically, they didn’t get nearly enough.

“A lot of living walls fail,” Ms. Desbiens said. “There’s a big learning curve.”

Marguerite Wells, a co-owner of Motherplants, a nursery in Ithaca, said she tries to steer people away from them.

“People want green bling,” Ms. Wells said. “People think, ‘It looks beautiful and perfect, and I want something beautiful and perfect in my life.’ ”

But vertical gardens can’t be watered with a hose or ignored for long stretches of time, she noted, and won’t tolerate certain plants. Inevitably, the irrigation stops working, she said, whether the pumps break down, the emitters get clogged (if a dirt system is used) or water gets stuck in one cell of a modular system. And within a few days of any malfunction, plants begin to die.

Overcoming Challenges

Amelia Lima, a landscape designer in San Diego, encountered the most basic problem when she decided to turn the 40-foot wall in her backyard into a vertical garden. At first, she tried hanging plants and art on the wall, which faced the picture windows in her living room and kitchen, but it looked drab. Then she found a landscape architect who had worked with Patrick Blanc on a project in Brazil and hired him to help. But halfway through the project, she realized she had forgotten something essential: a water source.

“People think it’s a green wall,” Ms. Lima said, as in, “you hang a picture on the wall and it’s done.”

But there’s a lot more to it than that, she added: “There’s construction, watering — you’re making a garden.”

Just Another Plant in The Wall

Making your own living wall can be done in one of two ways — as a fully bespoke model or something more off-the-rack. Whichever you choose, there are a few things to keep in mind.

• Vertical gardens are heavy, and not every wall is strong enough to support one. Check with a carpenter or your landlord to make sure the designated wall can handle the load.

• When selecting a spot for your living wall, make sure the area gets plenty of light. The best light is natural, but you will also need to install artificial lighting.

• Custom installations like the ones Patrick Blanc builds require a frame that can be attached to the wall, a waterproof barrier to protect the wall, a surface material like felt or cork to hold the plants in place and an irrigation system with PVC or polyethylene tubing and a submersible pump (the kind found in aquarium shops).

• Ready-made vertical garden kits have small containers angled to hold dirt and can be watered manually. After you plant your cuttings in the dirt, you’ll need to let them grow horizontally for several months so they develop strong roots. Once the roots have taken hold, you can attach the kit to the wall. (Kits are available from a number of sources, including eltlivingwalls.com, sgplants.com and floragrubb.com.)

• Each wall has different requirements, depending on its light and plants (talk to a local nursery or green-roof specialist about the best plants for your wall), but many people water their vertical gardens three times a day for 8 to 10 minutes. You will need to add fertilizer to the water to make sure the plants get necessary nutrients.

via New York Times

Trevor Tondro for The New York Times

The Iowa City area is getting some credit from national publications.

In the February issue of Men’s Journal, Iowa City is named the “Healthiest Town in the United States,” based on criteria set by CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta. The area also ranked 10th on MSN CareerBuilder’s “Today’s Best and Worst Cities for Jobs” list.

According to a news release, Gupta, in Men’s Journal, provided information about the healthiest diets in the world, the importance of regular exercise, and how to “quiet your mind” to increase mental focus and reduce stress to live longer. He also said there is a relationship between where a person lives and how that affects how long they live, saying people should look for local farms, short commutes, sidewalks, low pollution, green spaces and good weather.

Iowa City ranked at the top of the list despite its winters, followed by Boulder, Colo.; Logan, Utah; Northampton, Mass.; and Charlottesville, Va.

Wendy Ford, Iowa City economic development coordinator, said Iowa City often is overlooked in these lists because of its location.

“It really puts us in a good light,” she said. “We’ve got a lot to be as healthy as those other places are.”

The CareerBuilder article cited the Iowa City metro area’s 1.2 percent job growth between July and October 2009, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to a news release, 77 of the nation’s 281 metro areas added jobs during the same period, though only 19 posted growth rates of 1 percent or higher.

Joe Raso, president of the Iowa City Area Development Group, said the ranking was a good indication of how the area continues to grow.

“It’s not surprising that we rank highly, but it’s satisfying that we continue to grow,” he said.

via IC Press Citizen 1/26/10