FROM THE OUTSIDE, UNCOMMON GROUND LOOKED LIKE JUST ANOTHER urban storefront on Devon Avenue. It was on a busy street with a few Bradford pear trees planted at intervals along the concrete sidewalk in the heart of Edgewater, a diverse neighborhood seven miles north of downtown Chicago, near Loyola University. I could see, pulling into the parking lot behind the restaurant, that a rooftop farm there would get plenty of sun, but the dense city landscape still felt like a crowded and chaotic place to grow food.
Once I stepped inside, however, the project started to make sense. The restaurant’s interior was an oasis. It felt warm and tranquil, with its wood-paneled walls, canvas booths, and ample natural light. Helen and Michael Cameron gave me a brief tour as they talked about their vision for the space. They were just a few years older than I was, established professionals with a hipster edge that was reflected both in their manner, which was confident and infused with idealism, and in their style—Helen wore a printed wrap dress, with her long auburn hair hanging loose; Michael wore jeans and a button-down with rolled-up sleeves. They were committed to sustainability in even the smallest details of their business, and had designed every aspect of the retrofitted building to follow the standards required for certification with the Green Restaurant Association. The restaurant’s tables were made from white oak and silver maple trees that had fallen in Chicago’s Jackson Park. All of the wood used in the building, in fact—from its wall panels to its doors and fireplace mantel—was locally harvested, and the varnishes and paints were nontoxic. The art deco bar was a century old. The kitchen appliances were energy efficient; the walls and windows were superinsulated; the lights were compact fluorescents and LEDs on motion detectors set to automatically switch off when people left the room. They had even carefully chosen the compostable takeout boxes, biodegradable cleaning supplies, and the brown cloth napkins that don’t require bleaching.
Helen and Michael had opened Uncommon Ground’s first location on Clark Street near Wrigley Field in 1991 after working for decades in the restaurant industry—he as a manager, she as an executive chef. Helen, who grew up on Chicago’s West Side eating from her family’s large backyard garden, had begun sourcing local, organic ingredients for their Clark Street location from day one. Having just opened their second location on Devon, Helen wanted to ratchet up their commitment to local foods, sourcing produce that would be grown not just fifty miles away but fifty steps away. Her goal was to build not just any rooftop garden but the nation’s first certified organic rooftop farm.
I followed Helen and Michael up the exterior steps to see the unfinished roof. One of the challenges for a rooftop garden of any size is to make sure that the structure can support the substantial weight of the soil, since each cubic yard of soil weighs around two thousand pounds, and you have to consider the potential winter snow load as well. Michael had anticipated this, and had the roof’s steel undergirding reinforced. Though the deck they planned to build on top of the undergirding hadn’t been laid yet, I was still able to scope out the space, a 2,500-square-foot rectangular expanse that, despite my initial concerns, appeared to have great growing potential.
When Michael showed me the architect’s plans for the roof, he pointed out five large solar-thermal panels that would heat the building’s water, a huge benefit for a restaurant, with its constantly running dishwashers. He also pointed out the spot where they intended to keep rooftop beehives and a large composter for the rooftop farm’s plant waste. He showed me a sample of the decking material they’d use—a composite made of recycled plastic and wood—to help me visualize the space.
I admired the Camerons’ commitment and the breadth of their vision and wanted to be a part of it. Though it wasn’t the kind of growing space I was used to, I tried to think of it as I would any other farm or garden space. I asked my standard first question: Why do you want to grow food here? Did they want something purely functional, to maximize food production, or did they want more of a flexible space where they could host educational and social events? Helen said they definitely wanted to raise awareness about the power of local production, to partner with schools, and, especially, to work with kids.
My first piece of advice was that the farm would need paths, the most crucial component for any educational space, once the basics of sunlight, soil, and water have been met. At the Edible Gardens, I’d seen firsthand that kids need clearly defined space to move around in without trampling the soil or otherwise interfering with plant growth. Visitors to Uncommon Ground wouldn’t step on the plants or soil—Helen wanted the garden beds to be a series of wooden planter boxes raised up from the deck—but there still needed to be room to easily maneuver between the beds and to have the best access to the plants. Fencing clearly wouldn’t be an issue, either, since rabbits and deer weren’t a factor, but the city’s building code required that any rooftop space used by the public have a perimeter wall of at least four feet high. Spacing the beds properly would make the rooftop not just more functional, but also more beautiful. Helen wanted the rooftop farm to attract and engage the community, and we all agreed that its visual appeal would enhance its educational value.
Right away, Verd, Kord, and I began working closely with Helen, Michael, and a metalworker they’d hired to construct the planter boxes. Our team of six met several times over meals at the restaurant to plan and design the space. Sunlight would be ample; in fact, the constant sun was likely to put extra demands on the irrigation system. The soil of a rooftop growing space can become hot and dry much more quickly than the soil of an in-ground garden. Growing food on a full-sun rooftop can be almost like growing in a Floridian climate, with the plants growing quickly and requiring frequent and plentiful watering.
The Camerons planned to bring plumbing and a water spigot to the roof to irrigate the garden, but I was concerned about the tubing leading to the planter boxes—I didn’t want a tangle of hoses that would look messy and pose potential safety hazards when young visitors moved between the beds. Kord came up with a plan to extend and organize the tubes the way you’d organize computer wires under a desk—bundling them together and running them discreetly under the deck and up the sides of the beds. Fertilizing the soil would also be a tricky issue. Nutrients can drain out much more quickly from a garden box that is not in direct contact with the earth. We settled on a soil depth of twelve inches, which would give the roots sufficient room to grow and absorb nutrients, provided that the soil was regularly replenished with compost.
Our biggest concern from both a practical and aesthetic standpoint was the planter boxes. The six of us brainstormed a design that would be practical and elegant, with a combination of steel frames and cedar beds with a fabric lining on the bottom to help retain moisture. The beds would be four feet wide by ten feet long and about two feet tall so that both children and adults could work comfortably.
Helen was particularly interested in the possibility of extending the growing season. Just as rooftop gardens heat up more quickly than in-ground gardens in the summer, they’re also more sensitive to cold in the late fall and early spring. I had done a good deal of season extension at the farm, where we’d built low enclosures around the plants that protected them from harsh weather. We’d taken bendable PVC pipes and stuck them into the ground like giant croquet wickets arching above our crops and then covered those arches (about four feet high and four feet wide) with sheets of plastic, creating tunnels over the entire row that we could crawl through to reach the plants. The plastic let in the warm sun during the day and retained much of the warmth overnight, protecting the plants from frost and the soil from freezing.
I worked with the metalworker on a plan that would make it easy to install similar mini-greenhouses above the planter boxes at Uncommon Ground. He designed sockets on the steel frames that could be used to anchor metal hoops; plastic sheeting could then be draped over the hoops in the late fall and early spring months. (The sockets could also be used in the summer as a base for a trellis to support tall plants.) As winter set in, I wasn’t quite sure how our plans would translate into the actual hands-on work, but I was looking forward to the challenge.
IN DECEMBER, AFTER THE busy 2007 season came to an end, Verd, Thea, and I were settling into our lives in the coach house. Two months earlier, I’d found out I was pregnant with a second child. We were excited about the prospect of growing our family and felt grateful to be in a home with room enough for four. We splurged on a couch and a rustic dining room table, and finally had enough cupboard space for the pots, pans, and umpteen serving bowls we’d received as wedding gifts. I loved spending time in the kitchen, making blueberry pancakes for Thea, or cooking beef-and-vegetable stews. Thea, now six, was excited to have a living room big enough to hold a Christmas tree. Verd, for his part, loved the upstairs alcove where he could burrow into his studies.
I met with Steve Balsamo to discuss plans for the rabbit- and deer-proof fence that would border the garden. We purchased 150 yards of Benner’s deer fencing (a durable polypropylene mesh), which we planned to attach to a cedar split-rail fence (painted white, to match the existing fencing on the property) that we ordered from the Walpole catalog. I spent long happy evenings that winter with a yellow legal pad sketching out different garden layouts, fantasizing about a large stand of sweet corn, big melon and pumpkin patches, raspberries to go next to the gooseberries, and expanding a bed of strawberries next to the asparagus that had been planted years ago and was still thriving.
The drawback of our move from Evanston to Glencoe was that we were now living twenty minutes away from Bryan. Thea loved her regular movie nights and sleepovers at his apartment, but Bryan and I worried that shuttling her between two homes would disrupt her new routine and friendships. We decided instead that Bryan would have dinner with us as a family every other night and spend time with Thea at our house. When I mentioned the arrangement to friends, they thought it was, at best, unusual—a two-father household? But Verd supported the arrangement without any hesitation. Bryan and Verd had developed a great relationship and a wry, jocular way of interacting. Each of them had taken on distinct, noncompetitive roles in Thea’s life—Verd more the responsible buddy and adviser, and Bryan more the decision maker and teacher. Thea has always been, unmistakably, Bryan’s daughter. She inherited his love of sports—he taught her at an early age how to dribble a basketball, and to this day they play hoops together in the local park almost every week and revel in their shared devotion to the Chicago Bulls. Bryan also reads books almost obsessively, on topics from quantum physics to human genetics, and by the time Thea was in kindergarten he had taught her to read and had built her a library.
My parents admire Bryan’s devotion to Thea and include him in family events whenever they can. One evening when Verd, Thea, Bryan, and I joined my parents for dinner at Lake Shore, I heard my father introducing both Verd and Bryan to his friends as his “sons-in-law.” It perfectly summed up our family dynamic and made me feel deeply glad.
IN FEBRUARY 2008, just before the start of a new season and almost exactly a year after we got married, Verd and I boarded a flight to Cancún. It wasn’t the ideal time for a tropical honeymoon—I was five months pregnant, and having already gained fifteen pounds, I wasn’t feeling very bikini ready. But I was well past the period of morning sickness and was otherwise able to savor the prospect of taking my first real vacation in more than twenty years.
On the commune, the concept of “vacation” had been viewed as an inexcusable waste of time and resources. The act of burning huge amounts of fuel to drive or fly somewhere to rest for a week seemed to us indulgent, irresponsible, and even absurd. The planet is in crisis and Americans are going to Disney World, our thinking went. Revolutionaries don’t have time for vacations—there’s too much work to be done. Verd and I found that some of those assumptions lingered as we debated whether it was ethical to fly all the way to Mexico rather than go somewhere closer to home. We felt better about the plan when we found a rustic place online called the Hemingway Eco Resort in Tulum, something between a resort and a campground with thatched-roof huts right on the ocean. We booked a six-night trip, the longest I’d been away from Thea, and I felt nervous about leaving her. But when I called Bryan after we had arrived and settled in, expecting anguished sounds in the background, instead I heard Thea laughing. She told me when we spoke that she was so busy she didn’t have time to stay on the phone for long.
THE COACH HOUSE AND GARDEN AT HARVESTTIME (photo credit 16.1)
In the year since our wedding day, Verd and I had occasionally managed to go out to dinner, but things had been so chaotic with work that we’d had almost no waking time alone together. In Cancún we snorkeled in the early mornings, and during the day we hopped into the jalopy we rented and searched out cenotes—the gorgeous, clear freshwater pools in deep natural sinkholes that the region is known for. We walked mile after mile of Mayan ruins. We spent lazy hours every evening chatting in bed under our king-size mosquito net, and came to understand for the first time in our adult lives the virtues of rest.
We talked about the year ahead. Verd had been getting excellent grades in college, but we weren’t sure yet where his path would take him. He ended up enrolling in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Honors College to pursue a bachelor’s of neuroscience the following fall. Financially, we had no choice other than for Verd to continue working full-time for the business alongside his studies, especially with a baby girl on the way. The last evening of our trip, as we lounged in bed, Verd curled his hands to make a pretend loudspeaker and, directing his voice into my swelling belly, promised our daughter that he’d teach her every dance step he knew, from the moonwalk to the merengue. He reassured me that it would all work out, reminding me that we’d hired extra hands to pitch in for the upcoming season in preparation for my due date in early June. I marveled yet again at his steady optimism, which always kept me looking forward.