Gardens in Unexpected Places

Gardens in unexpected places

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

Someone planted tomatoes in this Toronto sinkhole — and residents are loving it | CBC Radio

Toronto resident Bryan Link says he hopes the city doesn't rush to fix the massive pothole on his street — at least not until the tomatoes growing in it are ripe.

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

Some of artist Christophe Guinet’s “Just Grow It!” creations. 

Via his Web site, Monsieur Plant.

[staceythinx]

[elizabethalexis]

Hanging gardens by Rebecca Louise Law

take me to church

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

Lovely.

[unconsumption]

"An old chair is given new life through the introduction of botanical life."

Okay, I’m interested.

According to Design Boom:

sao paulo-based artist rodrigo bueno lives and works in what he calls the ‘jungle inside’, a living laboratory where nature and time meet. his studio is filled with reclaimed materials — mostly wood and plants collected from urban waste — which he transforms into installations, sculptures, paintings and objects. …

one of his recent creative endeavors has seen him untie colorful botanical life with furniture, intertwining bark, branches and leaves into fabric cushions and chair legs. the quotidian objects come alive with new purpose, ever-changing in shape, size and color.

It’s not clear to me how practical this is, but certainly turning disused chairs into planters sounds cool!

More here. Via Curbed.

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

File under: Ferniture. 

[significobs]

How lovely is this idea of a vase in the shape of a book to put between books on a bookshelf?

[significobs]

 (via swissmiss | Hanabunko Flower Vase)

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

Flowers + books? Auto-reblog! 

[nprglobalhealth]

Floating Toilets That Clean Themselves Grow On A Lake

Imagine you live on a floating lake house. Open air. Chirping crickets. Clear, starry nights. Everything seems great until you need to use the bathroom.

The natural instinct might be to make a deposit in the water. But that wouldn’t be safe. Microbes in your feces would contaminate the water and could cause outbreaks of deadly diseases, like cholera.

A group of engineers in Cambodia wants to solve that problem for the floating villages of Tonle Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. Over a million people live on or around it. Exposure to wastewater spawns diarrhea outbreaks each year. In Cambodia, diarrheal diseases cause 1 in 5 deaths of children under age 5.

To help clean the lake’s water, engineers at the company Wetlands Work! in Phnom Penh are developing plant-based purifiers, called Handy Pods. The pods are essentially little kayaks filled with plants. They float under the latrine of a river house and decontaminate the water that flows out.

Here’s how it works. When a person uses the latrine, the wastewater flows into an expandable bag, called a digester. A microbial soup of bacteria and fungi inside the digester breaks down the organic sludge into gases, such as carbon dioxide, ammonia and hydrogen.

Continue reading.

Photo: A pod to pick up your poo: The Handy Pod features floating hyacinth plants placed underneath a houseboat’s latrine. The blue tarp offers privacy. (Courtesy Taber Hand)

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

File under: Wearable gardens in unexpected places.

(via PassionflowerToWear on Etsy)

[junkculture]

Campaign Aims to Turn Abandoned Bicycles’ Saddles into Outdoor Planters

[unconsumption]

Nuff said!

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

Up-CYCLING, yeah! 

I must say this is a fab addition to the Gardens in Unexpected Places archive of gardening examples that involve upcycled/disused bicycles and/or bike parts. 

[obviouslycloe-blog]

I gave my boyfriend a flower beard.

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

So, I'm a little behind in my Gardens in Unexpected Places posting, and behind in mentioning the flower beard idea (until now!).

Gotta say I kind of like the look of the top flower-enhanced beard shown in this May 2013 Design Squish post.   

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

In the Palestinian village of Bilin -- near the West Bank city of Ramallah -- residents have planted flowers in hundreds of spent Israeli tear gas grenades collected after clashes with Israeli security forces.

The garden is "meant to show that life can spring from death."

(Via The Associated Press: West Bank garden of tear gas grenades. Photo credit: AP Photos/Majdi Mohammed.)

[lovelimzy]

Bumblebee. 

[npr]

I love everything about this artist’s work. — Lauren 

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

Now THIS is fab floral art.

(It really isn't a Garden in an Unexpected Place, per se, but still cool.) 

[sciencefriday]

The subject of this week’s picture can live up to 3,000 years, making it one of the longest-living organisms on Earth.

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

I'd say this counts as a garden in an unexpected place!

Among the interesting pieces of information in the Science Friday post:

"Llaretas tend to grow low to the ground, near and over rocks. They’re attracted to the heat that the rocks absorb during the day and retain through nighttime, says [Cath] Kleier. 

...

One of the highest growing plant species in the world, the llareta generally takes root in the tropical alpine areas of Chile, Bolivia, and Peru at elevations of 14,000 to upwards of 17,000 feet, where there’s a lot of direct sunlight and solar radiation during the day, but near freezing temperatures at night, says Kleier. She found one living above 17,200 feet, “but I suspect that they are higher than that,” she says."

Nature is awesome. #thatisall 

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

What's not to love about this?

(photo via Tatiana Mikhina/Sofi)

[junkculture]

Lost Civilizations

via here

[murketing]

Call for you.

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

In resurrection ecology news:

Scientists have revived moss that has been lying dormant -- frozen -- in permafrost for 1,500 years. 

Full story: A Growth Spurt at 1,500 Years Old - NYTimes.com

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

Want to turn an old chair into a piece of garden furniture? (Note emphasis on the word "garden.") 

Here's an example, complete with tutorial, via Bridgman Furniture.

[tomrboyden-blog]

Mobile garden in the edible gardens feature in Brussels, Begium [August 2013]

[gardensinunexpectedplaces]

MOBILE EDIBLE GARDENS in URBAN SPACES? Yes! 

Methinks this item is a good addition to the growing(!) Gardens in Unexpected Places mobile gardens archive.