Landscape+Urbanism

Category: plants

  • Reslience

    A tree at Lime Kiln Point State Park on San Juan Islands. Soon, if this tree has its way – trespassing will again be allowed on this property: (images (c) Jason King – Landscape+Urbanism)

  • Restoring the Garden of Eden

    A great feature from Spiegel Online covers the work of Azzam Alwash, a US/Iraqi hydraulic engineer aiming to restore what were once vibrant wetlands flourishing in the cradle of civilization through an organization called Nature Iraq. While most news coming from the region focuses on bricks and mortar rebuilding, it’s important to note the power…

  • Rooftop Agriculture

    I’ve purposely steered away from the pure rooftop farms in discussions of vertical farming solutions recently featured (here, here, here, and here). This isn’t due to any particular reason other than I think that rooftop farms area a separate typology in it’s own right – as it is focusing on a separate area of emphasis…

  • Vertical Agriculture (From Outer Space)

    While I continue this impromptu study of the current state of Vertical Agriculture – it’s important to realize that the ingenuity of humans is always a factor. Industrialization of growing food is a long-standing feature of agriculture – which has probably simultaneously done the most good for productivity and the most harm in severing our…

  • Planter Pocket Facade

    An interesting project from Osaka, Japan featuring a variation on vertical green with a Hundertwasserian flair. There is a certain transparency in the system, and I was amazed that the project has been in place since the early 1990s. (via Inhabitat) :: image via InhabitatFrom Inhabitat: “Italian-born architect and artist, Gaetano Pesce designed and built…

  • Reforesting Cities

    A great post on Urban Omnibus investigates the potential of implementation of urban reforestation blended into existing buildings in our urban areas. From author Vanessa Keith, author of the article: “Retrofitting our urban building stock to address climate change need not be limited exclusively to increasing their energy efficiency. If “one of the primary causes…

  • FOOD inc.

    The beauty of being taken down by illness is the opportunity to lay on the couch and catch up with some movies that have been in the queue. One such film was FOOD inc., a documentary that provided a concise summary of the content of Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma –…

  • More on Plant VOCs

    A follow-up email from Susan McCoy at Garden Media Group offered some follow-up information on the my previous post related to Plants and VOCs (Sept. 6, 2009). My take on it was at least on the right track, unlike some others – but I figure the press release (and upcoming report) is a good opportunity…

  • Plants + VOCs

    A recent, somewhat hyperbolic title from Treehugger, “Bad Green: Some Indoor Plants Release Volatile Organic Compounds” provides a snippet from some recent research that mention, gasp, that plants, particularly indoor ones, release volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It’s a strange conceptual notion indeed, as there has been much research and information on the ability of indoor…

  • More Fake Trees

    And They’re Pretty Handy if we are Attacked by Giant Interstellar Swarms of Flies: :: image via InhabitatVia Inhabitat: “A report published last Thursday from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) suggested that a forest of 100,000 artificial “trees” could be “planted” near depleted oil and gas reserves to trap carbon in a filter and…