Østergro, a very unconventional rooftop restaurant
THINK LOCAL, ACT GLOBAL
Welcome to ØsterGRO, a rooftop farm in the eastern part of Copenhagen. On this roof, 600m2 of crops supply a gourmet restaurant and the local residents. Right now, fennel is the one growing a lot. Cofounder of ØsterGRO explains:
We have a lot of salads here, as we pass along, we’ve got garlic down there that we put in the soil last year. And, this is cumin and we got tomatoes on the side because that’s where all the sun is. We have the beehives over here and it’s for the pollination and of course, also for the honey that we get from it. It’s very important for us to have pollination of our crops because it gives us a better result, especially for apple trees and all that. You can see here that that’s where they fly in and out. We have 3 beehives and 3 families so, 3 queens in there and approximately 50,000 bees per beehive. They are actually quite friendly and that’s also a thing we need to understand, appreciate the bees more. Because they don’t do anything wrong, they just want to go to the flowers.
Urban agriculture is not for the quantity, it’s for the quality. It’s about showing citizens of Copenhagen that what’s going on in the rural landscape is actually quite important. And we need to start appreciating it more and respecting the food more and buying more local and eating more in season. It’s a utopia. But we can definitely be more sufficient with food grown very locally. Because, as it is now, a lot of our food in Denmark comes from other countries. And then we make a lot of pigs and export that and a lot of our agriculture is not food for us, it’s food for animals. So therefore, I think as a tool for showing people, it’s very important.
Brut. Nature