Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Galleria mall is giant greenhouse, raising organic crops in Cleveland
By Sarah Crump, The Plain Dealer
February 27, 2010, 4:00AM
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/02/galleria_has_gardens_now.html

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Millions have passed through the Galleria at Erieview, sun 
glinting on its barrel-shaped glass roof. But it took a nurseryman's 
granddaughter to look up and think:

This place looks like a giant greenhouse.

Now Vicky Poole, the Galleria's marketing and events director, who worked on 
her grandpa's farm as a child, expects that by late spring or early summer, 
there will be fresh tomatoes for sale among the shops and galleries at the 
downtown Cleveland mall.

Very fresh -- as in vine-grown in bags and troughs hanging from steel stair 
banisters and ceiling beams in the shopping center that stretches between 
East Ninth and East 12th streets.

vicky.jpgJohn Kuntz/The Plain DealerVicky Poole, marketing and events 
director at the Galleria, and Jack Hamilton, a gallery owner there, place 
signs among the first of the mall's organic gardensPoole got the idea last 
year when she spotted a photo of dozens of plants growing on a two-story 
window grid in a New York cafe.

"I said, 'That's our food court.' "

She was reminded of the picturesque glass rotunda in the Galleria's food 
court that she often curtains off for wedding receptions. Renting out party 
space is one of the ways Poole has found to make up for the Galleria's losing 
many of its retail businesses.

"It's not really a shopping mall anymore," she said about the complex that 
opened in 1987.