Chris Hoyt: Urban Garden Entrepreneur.

Join me in reading this inspiring piece that ran in today's Birmingham, AL news. It's about my brother Chris Hoyt and an urban gardening initiative his company has undertaken.

Dunn Real Estate, a Birmingham developer where Chris is a senior exec, turned unsold property into "an urban construction garden" by planting vegetables and fruit on the property. Hoyt and other Dunn employees have planted apple trees, blueberries, pumpkins, corn and tomatoes at the site. They plan to partner with nonprofit organizations and community food execs like L'Tryce Slade, in the foto with Chris, that are willing to cultivate gardens in return for vegetables and fruit, grown without pesticides and other chemicals.

"By using this unsold land for vegetable production," says Chris, "we'll assist local food shelters in this very difficult recession."

Slade said she hopes the concept of a construction garden on unused property catches on in the Birmingham area. The Dunn project was appealing to her, she said, because her late grandfather, George Washington Slade, once owned land in North Carolina that produced cotton, soybeans and tobacco.