Great Things Can Grow in Small Places

No Matter the Distance, Love Can Bloom

Love brought Walsh to Tokyo back in 2002 when a simple pen-friend exchange with a Tokyo native, Harumi, turned into something more. "We began writing letters in 1995," Walsh tells us, "Then we got into sending emails, and then we started calling each other between Auckland, New Zealand and Tokyo." In a time before WhatsApp and Zoom, that racked up quite the bill, "There was one month in 1999 where her monthly phone bill was ¥90,000," he said, adding, "I could buy a ticket for her to come from Tokyo to Auckland for that." Eventually, they found a solution: "One of us should move."

It was Walsh who took the risk and uprooted himself, and it paid off, as Walsh and his wife have now been married for 21 years. Other than love, Walsh came to Tokyo with nothing, unable to make his former IT career work here due to a lack of Japanese language skills. Stuck in a tough spot, he remembered he was a strong writer in high school, and in just a few months he found himself working as a proofreader, then writer, for the bilingual publication Hiragana Times. 

Years later, in 2011, Walsh was working from his sixth-floor office in Tokyo when he felt the 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Tohoku. The event itself scared Walsh, but it sparked a new worry, "I thought, if a really big earthquake hits Tokyo, which it could at any time, supermarkets could be down, roads blocked, so where would we get our food from?" He did not have an immediate answer but knew that as a father to a then three-year-old daughter, there would be nothing worse than not being able to feed her. So, a year later, he decided to take food production into his own hands. 

A City with Growing Potential

As a writer, Walsh had a knack for bringing words to life. As a farmer, he had the same knack with vegetables. He started small, buying some spinach seeds, a pot, and some soil and within a few weeks he saw leaves sprouting. "It felt like magic," Walsh recalled, "So I bought some more pots, some seeds, and within a month I had a small herb garden." 

Walsh and his family live in Akatsuka, in Tokyo's northern Itabashi City, where his wife grew up. Once an area filled with rice paddies, Akatsuka has become increasingly urban. The area still holds some remnants of its former farming days, with community plots available for rent. Jon was encouraged by his wife, whose father used to grow his own produce, to rent one of these plots. Here, Walsh grew an abundance of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and herbs, more produce than his own family could eat. "I began giving food away to the next-door neighbours and friends," Walsh said, "I had become a food producer in Tokyo, and I was just amazed that by cooperating with nature I could grow so much, even in this metropolis." 

Sometimes in Tokyo, especially in the more suburban areas, local people, more commonly the older generation, will grow plants in pockets of free space, but in many cases they only plant flowers. Of this, Walsh says, "Many people could grow food if they simply changed the plant. There's a lot of potential to grow edible plants in Tokyo, especially on roofs, even on walls. As long as the sun shines there, you can grow food."

Bringing Farming to a New Generation

Walsh shared his methods with his daughter, who picked up the basics quicker than he thought possible, and it gave him an idea. "I got in touch with the founder of Tokyo International School and asked him if his school grew any crops. He said they didn't, but he was interested, and I was invited in." At the school, Walsh demonstrated just how easy it was to grow food and, after seeing how much the students enjoyed the class, he was invited to work part-time teaching urban farming.

This was the start of something big for both Walsh and the school, where he still teaches more than 12 years on. Since then, his urban farming business, Business Grow, has blossomed, "I've now got two staff that have been working for me since 2021," he tells us, "And my team has now taught over 1,500 students at 19 different international schools around Tokyo." 

One of the benefits Walsh has seen from his time teaching is the independence and confidence it gives to students, "When it comes to the schools where I've been teaching, our students have been going home and starting gardens and teaching their parents how to grow food." While the student's grandparents likely grew their own produce in the past, the convenience of urban living means that their parents have not, so now children have the opportunity to become the teachers, taking this "new" knowledge home and sharing it with their family. Walsh loves to see this, adding, "In the standard teaching scenario, the teacher is always older and the students are normally younger. But I teach students how to become teachers."

Walsh and his team are now helping schools produce so much food that they are encouraging the students to donate it to those in need. "At the larger schools we teach at, we get the students to set up a donation garden," he explains, "Everything we grow in these gardens will be donated to the Second Harvest Japan food bank." The fresh veggies find their way to those who need them, and the students become food producers for the people of Tokyo. 

A Vision of a Sustainable Tokyo

Growing your own vegetables does not just benefit the individual or even the community, but the planet as a whole. Walsh explains, "One of the most obvious ways that urban farming can contribute to sustainability is the fact that the food's growing where you live. Most of the food that we eat comes from the countryside or out of the country, transported by trucks and planes which creates pollution. If you grow crops where you eat them, then there's no transport so pollution gets drastically cut down." He also points out other sustainable factors such as using fewer chemicals on the plants, reducing plastic packaging, and creating more green spaces which increase biodiversity and improve air quality. 

Making this switch is much easier than many may think, even in a city as densely packed as Tokyo. Walsh knows what is possible here, as he has taught thousands across the city, including luxury hotels. "The main challenge is basically to get people to realize that it's possible to grow lots of food in the city," he says, "then it's important to show them how." Walsh has seen the joy that growing your own produce can bring, "the look in the eyes of a student when they see their first leaves growing from the ground when they've sowed seeds, it's almost like when they go to Disneyland." 

While central Tokyo may not be set up for farmers the same way the countryside is, there are places you can go. From small local garden stores to larger home stores that sell a variety of seeds and gardening equipment, there are places to buy what you need to get started found across the city. Some cities in Tokyo offer community farms, particularly those further out of the center. But Walsh stresses that one does not need a full garden to grow food, just a space with a patch of sunlight will do. 

For Walsh, living in Tokyo is incredibly convenient, not only for his hobby but for his day-to-day life, "The older I get the more I appreciate the convenience of the public transportation system and simply getting around." The one thing he would love more of as an urban farmer, and as a resident of Tokyo? "More green spaces." 

Jon Walsh

Jon Walsh is a writer and urban farmer residing in Tokyo. With his business, Business Grow, he provides workshops, seminars, and lectures on urban farming throughout  the city showing people how to cultivate happier, healthier, and more sustainable lifestyles.

Operating on the concept that envisions green urban development for the next 100 years, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is pushing initiatives to protect, increase and maintain, and cultivate Tokyo's greenery. Through the efforts of both individual citizens and various entities, the aim is to transform Tokyo into a sustainable city that exists in harmony with nature.
https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/english/policies/environment/0804_01.html