Climate Curve

Project Summary / Description:

GROW is a community-engagement program of Urban Blooms that aims to create environmental stewardship, public health, neighborhood beautification, community revitalization, and youth education and employment opportunities. The GROW program was started in Cincinnati, Ohio in 2017. 

In partnership with community organizations, the goal is to create living walls throughout Cincinnati‚ urban environments. The result will be to bring the environmental, health, and cultural benefits of Living Walls of various scales to diverse communities; this will have a secondary impact of creating links throughout the region that will serve to position GROW Cincinnati projects as identifiable and valuable community assets. In 2017, GROW Cincinnati initiated two Living Wall/Community partnerships: 
o Bond Hill ‚ 520 sq. ft. installation, a partnership with The Cincinnati Port Authority 
o Corryville ‚ 500 sq. ft installation (pending), a partnership with Uptown Consortium 

The cost of one Living Wall ranges between $20K and $50K which is determined primarily by the size of the Living Wall. Projects are funded 50/50, with half of the funding from Urban Blooms and half from the interested community. The matching fund requirement creates additional ownership and engagement from the community. 

Interest in being a part of GROW Cincinnati has been established with these first projects and continues; funding is the limiting factor. Urban Blooms is building off this momentum to seek funding sources to ensure financial stability for the GROW Cincinnati program for five years, with the hope to expand to other urban areas as well.

Best Estimate of GHG Avoidance/Reduction of This Project (Tonnes CO2 Equivalent/Year):

Mission Statement:

Urban Blooms is a social enterprise whose mission is combining Ecology, Technology, and Community to improve public health, energy efficiency, employment, education, and revitalization and engagement of urban communities. 

The social enterprise model allows for lower project costs by combining visibility, sponsorship opportunities, and funding from private installations with non-profit funding sources. This model makes the benefits of Living Walls financially accessible to communities that traditionally do not have the finances, or the influenced to fund environmental enhancement projects.

Our goal is to allow the benefits of Living Walls to proliferate though underserved communities; communities that are traditionally highly impacted by environmental degradation but receive little in the way of environmental enhancements, especially one that provides immediate, in-place benefits to the existing community

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