It seems strange to me now that I made it to my 30s without gardening. Up until five years ago, I had never known the exquisite, self-congratulatory taste of a strawberry I had grown myself, or the crippling defeat of watching a seemingly perfect tomato vine slowly yellow from the bottom up, wilting my dreams of annoying friends by inviting them over for "brus-KET-ta".

Instead of creating a typical living wall that simply covered the existing surface with plants, he constructed a piece of architecture (or "vegitecture") that acts like any conventional building, with a door, stairs and floors. But unlike any other building, it has plants for walls.

With a little creativity, vision and willingness to get our hands dirty, we can remake spaces defined by asphalt and dead grass into productive places of beauty.