This section of the MakingLewes site is about making and growing, the connections between the two, and their integration with buildings and the built environment.

You can find information on these pages about green roofs and rooftop urban agriculture and also currently less known approaches, for instance Zero Acreage and Building-Integrated Farming.

This whole aspect of the natural world, and particularly urban food production, integrated into the buildings and built fabric has been a fast developing field of activity in the last few years, so Making & Growing aims to document, reference and inspire through a set of wide-ranging examples of what’s going on out there.

A partial spur to this section is that Lewes, through organisations like CommonCause and TransitionTown Lewes, has been more directly involved in parts of this conversation than many towns of a comparable size and scale. Even though the town is relatively small, having been a pioneer of farmers’ markets, local produce and other food related initiatives, Lewes could grow this story, making next steps towards integrating leading edge urban agriculture and green infrastructure into both old and new parts of the town’s fabric, particularly in the various industrial and public buildings and public spaces. If Lewes is close to farmed, and produce growing land that doesn’t need to close down the potential for greening the town’s built fabric. And of course this doesn’t even begin the discussion about turning Tesco’s roof space into an organic urban food-growing laboratory…

We hope, therefore, you find this Making & Growing section nourishing food for thought and action.