Good reads:

This week I've been enjoying this book:
My Green City



 A great roundup of urban interventions and projects with a horticultural theme, several of which I've already featured on this blog.

I've also tracked down this interesting magazine;

 

It's currently on issue 7, which features the asparagus fern, eco-houseboats in Amsterdam, the Shunkaen bonsai museum, samphire, Las Pozas garden in the Mexican jungle, and a look at the symbolism of greenery in the Antonioni film 'Blow-up', amongst other things. 





This week's pics from M&D's garden (plus a few from last month)

All photos taken by me in Lincolnshire.

subterranean gardening

What lies beneath our feet? Dinosaur bones? Earthworms? Stinky sewage pipes? Gardens? GARDENS???!!! Surely Not!? Well, after our bit of stargazing the other week with 'gardens in space', it's time to turn our attention to the world of the troglodytes. Yes, this post is a little round-up of subterranean garden projects.
People have grown mushrooms in caves for many years, but who would expect farmers to be growing crops of rice and assorted greens, and even flowers in an old bank vault beneath one of Tokyo's bustling business districts? At around 1000sq m the Pasona 02 underground farm is used as a training facility for jobless young people who might have a future in horticulture and agriculture.

mushrooms in the troglodyte caves of the Loire valley, France.

 

The Pasona 02 underground farm in Tokyo, Japan, via pruned



 

For a less agricultural take on underground gardening, how about the Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, California. Started over 90 years ago by Baldassare Forestiere and all dug by hand, these gardens almost count as a piece of outsider art. With tunnels and light wells, they are home to trees, plants and climbers reaching up to the sun above.

The Forestiere Underground Gardens, Fresno, California.

As for public underground gardens, after the triumph of New York's Highline gardens; which transformed a long disused stretch of elevated railway track into beautiful gardens, there is now a team dedicated to raising funds for a 'lowline' gardens. Planning on turning empty subway tunnels into below-ground gardens, the website has more details on this novel and ambitious idea.

Projected vision for the Lowline, New York City.

Pop-Up Parklets

A kind of urban intervention, 'parklets' have been popping up in cities around the world, including Sao Paulo, Vancouver, Copenhagen, San Francisco and Dublin. Taking over parking spaces normally reserved for cars, these temporary, pedestrian friendly little patches of garden make a point about the amount of green space disappearing under tarmac.

The worlds oldest bottle garden?

David Latimer planted a sprout of spiderwort inside a bottle on Easter Sunday in 1960. He popped the cork to give it a bit of water in 1972 and it hasn't been open since, growing away happily in its own little ecosystem for 42 years. Truly low-maintenance gardening.

re-blogged from Bored Panda

Gardens....In.....SPAAACE!

Please say the post title in a suitably dramatic B-movie voice.

Gardening. A fundamental essential of modern human existence. And an essential of our future existence, especially if that existence involves hurtling around in spaceships, and dwelling on the surface of Mars like 'Tomorrows World' promised it would back in the 80s. Spacemen and women of the future are going to have to get their veggies from somewhere.

Scientists grappling with the difficulties of forging a life for us a million light years from home have come up with some interesting ideas.

For example, how about the 90's experiment of Biome 2, which locked a group of people inside a giant greenhouse for two years, trying to see how we'd fare on other planets in a closed-system environment?

With a tropical rainforest, it's own coral sea, desert and temperate areas it sounds like a lovely place to while away a few years. However, it was quickly overrun by ants and cockroaches, and the volunteers locked inside all fell out. You can read more about it's sad demise and possible regeneration here.

again with an eye to life on Mars, how about this modern view of how we'd grow food on the red planet?

or the 60s ideas of space station living?

The next one comes courtesy of Hollywood rather than NASA:  the 70's film 'Silent Running'

 "In a future where all flora is extinct on Earth, an astronaut is given orders to destroy the last of Earth's botany, kept in a greenhouse (which really does look like the Eden Project) aboard a spacecraft."

The reality of space exploration is that we're still a long way from life in a lush and productive greenhouse on the moon. Here's a proud astronaut and his Mizuna aboard the international space station. Maybe the closest we've come so far to a garden in space? Not so impressive eh?

Or at least not as impressive as this... a bonsai pine in space:

Floated up there by artist Azuma Makoto, attached to a giant balloon.
Don't forget to look up from your compost once in a while and turn your eyes to the skies!

Remembrance day special: the prison camp gardens of WWI

From the garden museum website:

In an encounter with (war poet and soldier) Siegfried Sassoon in parliament in 1918, Winston Churchill claimed ‘War is the normal occupation of man’. When challenged, he added: ‘War – and gardening.’

The garden museum currently have an exhibition about war and gardening, which includes the story of the Ruhleben Horticultural Society. These were the British soldiers interned in the Ruhleben prisoner of war camp, which was described as 'not fit to keep pigs in' when it was opened. In this horrible environment, with seeds and bulbs sent by the RHS, they created gardens growing not only veg to supplement their meagre food rations, but also flowers and decorative plants to improve their surroundings. They even organised flower and vegetable contests.

members of the Ruhleben Horticultural Society 

The exhibition runs until January next year.

Humongous flowers on brazen display in Anstey village hall!!!

Well, I've never seen the 'titans penis' I mentioned in a previous post or the stinky rafflesia, so maybe my knowledge of giant blooms is somewhat limited, but when I popped in to Anstey jubilee hall earlier today, I was racking my brains trying to think if I'd ever seen bigger flowers. It was the annual Leicestershire Chrysanthemum show and the beautiful blooms on display truly were huge. This guy was there; and his flowers were bigger than my head. And I've got quite a big head.

The whole hall was packed with incredible flowers. Some of my pics:

bottom photo: the flowers I took home from the show, with feet for scale.

 There are a few more photos over on my instagram account: http://instagram.com/you_dig_gardens
There were also 3 huge carrots. They were all about a meter long. Huge.

The weird world of Walt Disney's epcot greenhouses.

Disney World doesn't just do rides with little dolls singing an annoyingly catchy tune and people dressed in slightly sinister animal costumes,  it's also got a greenhouse at it's Epcot park which aims to show people the future of food production. It's clean, white, lab-like environment harbours the monstrous 'Tomato Tree' 

as well as torture devices to force pumpkins to grow into Disney's trademark mouse ears

A little car takes people round this strange soil-free place, a sci-fi glimpse into growing food in the sanitised, Disney way:

It's a crazy robo-veg-patch. How do I build me one at home?

Flowers to the people!

Grow Wild are distributing wild flower meadow packs; with seeds and more, for free to people across the UK ready for sowing in Spring 2015. Organisations can apply for them here: https://www.growwilduk.com/

Psychedelic Vegetables

Some psychedelic vegetables to perk up a drab autumn day:
romanesco cauliflower
chioggia beetroot,
red cabbage,
borlotti beans,
rainbow chard,
and of course, 'purple haze' carrots.

You can grow all of these veggies right here in the UK