2012–13 LECTURES

NANCY KLEHM

Saturday, Dec 3, 2011 1pm

Chicago History Museum:
1601 N.Clark Street

GROUNDING: Soils in the City

Nancy will address how action-research on and with the GROUND is a tool for knowledge building, engaging the public, and shaping new policy.

Our urban experience is just as much biologically determined as it is socio-culturally determined. Soil is a living sponge that filters our water and air, and is both decomposition engine and support network for all living things. Soil allows for the stability of our constructions; the resilience to flooding and drought; and the health of our food, water and air. It is manipulated, engineered, cultivated and remediated by engineers, agronomists, biologists, farmers, and activists.

Nancy Klehm is a steward of the earth. She is an ecological systems designer, landscaper, horticultural consultant, and permacultural grower, as well as a teacher, speaker, and consultant.

Nancy is respected internationally for her work on land politics and growing for fertility. She is the bioinstigator-in-residence at the Center for Land Use Interpretation's off-the-grid site in the desert outside of Wendover, Utah. Nancy also designed, helped build, and spent five years managing Greenhouses of Hope, a large scale, closed-loop vermicompost and farming project that trains residents of Chicago's Pacific Garden Mission on horticulture, gardening, and composting techniques.

Nancy's business, Nancy Klehm Gardens, Inc., has designed, installed, and maintained hundreds of landscapes including backyards, community lots, rooftops, decks, and public spaces. Her work focuses on edible, soil-building, and medicinal plants, and habitat creation. She has designed large soil building systems, as well as systems of collection, recirculation, and biological filtration of rain, grey, and contaminated water. Nancy has worked on projects for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Chicago Park District, the Field Museum, the Farm Lab of the Annenberg Foundation, and other private, public, and institutional clients.

Nance earned a B.A. in Archaeology and Spanish Literature from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., followed by graduate work in Education Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She lives and farms in the middle of Little Village, a densely packed, diverse urban neighborhood in the heart of Chicago. Her house and land are daily practice in permaculture and urban living.

Learn more about Nancy's work and background on her website.

$5 suggested donation at the door.

For more information on our Sustainable Food and Design lecture series click HERE.