Guest post by Ariane Khachatourians I know this isn’t exactly about gardening, but it is about a fellow avid gardener who passed away earlier this week. I don’t know how many people know of Jane Jacobs, myself having studied human geography and urban planning in university, she is one of my idols. If you haven’t …
Guest post by Renee Garner Words like hyperaccumulator and phytoremediation sound like something straight out of a 1960s Sci-Fi movie and hardly verbs describing gardens. But when the conceptual, and socially minded artist Mel Chin creates a garden, you get these lengthy words among others. Mel Chin is a Texas born artist now living in North Carolina; and when he plants, …
Guest post by Emira Mears Try saying that three times fast. TrugTubLove. TrugTubLove… Anyway. Gayla’s post about Lee Valley got me to thinking about my last Lee Valley impulse purchase. I had stopped there on my way back from picking up a load of compost, and tried very hard to restrain myself from making too …
The one-stop crack distribution depo of the Canadian gardening world recently opened a store in downtown Toronto, and… ummm… I have been there twice in two days. I want to state for the record that prior to this I have never purchased a Lee Valley product, somehow managing to walk past the booths at garden …
Guest post by Christina Radisauskas Last week I went to a film and discussion series entited “Label Me Confused: What organic, free range, and all those other words really mean” at a local theater. Several organic farmers gathered to discuss the benefits of choosing to eat locally produced and/or organic foods rather than typical supermarket …
How ingenious is this: a flower shop where rather than buying cut flowers, you buy photos of plant bits that are then constructed into 3-Dimensional arrangements. Wolf Klein’s Der Blumenladen (The Flower Shop) is part old-school flower shop, part mad take-out menu, and part wacky flip book with a splash of conceptual art (at least …
As if gardening with living plants isn’t enough to keep me occupied, I’ve recently become obsessed with plants crafted from paper. Download and construct your own garden of indoor houseplants, from the Epson Hong Kong site. Patterns include ivy, lucky bamboo, saguaro cactus, and a cute barrel cactus.
Guest post by Emira Mears I’m a pretty big fan of Branch the currently online/soon to also be a physical store in San Francisco that bills itself as a purveyor of Sustainable Design for Living. They have a pretty great gardening section that seems to be a combo of novelty grow-in-one containers and some graceful …
Guest post by Amy Urquhart I disovered a cool magazine when I was visiting my grandmother a couple of weekends ago. It’s called Birds and Blooms (Beauty in Your Own Backyard). It’s an American publication dedicated to showcasing…well, you guessed it: birds and plants (and butterflies too). My interest in gardening extends back a few …
Guest post by Christina Radisauskas I work at a university that has finally decided to develop a “sustainability initiative.” Because I am a librarian, I was asked to create a bibliography of resources to enhance our faculty’s understanding of the concept and how they might incorporate it into their departments’ curricula. While I worked on …
So they’re not very stylin’, but these self-watering planters made from junked pop bottles are pretty handy for the well-intentioned but forgetful gardener. The bottom watering system keeps cuttings and seedlings on the right side of moist without the discipline (and hassle) of routine dampness patrol. There’s more talk and experimentation with this concept in …
Guest post by Kelly Gilliam So besides being an avid gardening, I’ve an avid knitter. That means I’m always looking for cool new things to knit up. Today I got the idea in my head “hey, what about knitting plants??” So after a little searching I found these awesome knit plants that you can make. …