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Showing posts from March, 2009

Gates of Berkeley, part 2

If you enjoyed the first installation of Gates of Berkeley, you will appreciate part 2. If this is your first introduction to Gates of Berkeley, view the original post .

Earth Hour TODAY

Update, 03/29/2009: I was away from home so my place was dark before, during, and after Earth Hour, but I was someplace where the lights were on. Where were you during Earth Hour?

Tree Walk: Tree Space Design by Casey Trees

Casey Trees, Washington DC's primary urban forestry nonprofit, has released its Tree Space Design Report , specifically geared towards designers. Other resources for design professionals include Innovative Tree Spaces in DC , Tree Planting Detail, Interactive Maps & Tools , and Lunch and Learn. Image : Tree Space Design Report, Casey Trees A photograph does speak a thousand words and the report's illustrations do just that. Soil volume is really critical for healthy and long-term growth. A healthy tree can provide numerous ecological and social benefits over its lifetime. Given the size of the tree (at maturity) and its required soil volume, there are several tree space designs: (1) Open Image : Tree Space Design Report, Casey Trees (2) Covered Image : Tree Space Design Report, Casey Trees (3) Partially covered Image : Tree Space Design Report, Casey Trees Design #2 and #3 are commonly seen in downtown and commercial areas while design #1 and #2 are more common in reside

San Francisco Flower Show 2009

"Sustainable Spaces Beautiful Places" was the theme of this year's SF Garden Show. Beautiful places are a matter of taste; some of the gardens did not meet my personal aesthetic. Of the eighteen gardens (excluding the Container Gardens and the Chateau la Vieille Barrique du Vin which I did not find), six were explicitly designed for sustainability: The Urban Garden (UCB Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning); Serenity Now! (Tierra Seca Landscape Design; Sky's the Limit (Rebecca Cole Design); Actinomycetes, Worms, and Fungi, OH MY! (San Mateo County RecycleWorks); !Sing! (Mariposa Gardening and Design); and The Sustainable Garden (AskTonytheGardener.com). Coincidentally, these were among my favorite gardens at the show. Sky's the Limit and The Urban Garden were set in the city; each intended to maximize the often limited open and living spaces found in cities like New York and San Francisco. Rebecca Cole writes of her gar

SF Flower & Garden Show 2009

This blog was honored with a press pass (thank you Dawn Stranne & Associates) to attend what was to be the last year of the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show . Good news: the show will go on! At the Garden Writers Reception on the evening of Wednesday, March 18, founder, chairman, and producer Duane Kelly announced that a buyer (two in fact) had been found for the show. (The fate of the sister show - the Northwest Flower & Garden Show - is yet to be determined.) Kelly's announcement was met with heartfelt applause. The new owners (left and center, with Duane Kelly in suit and bowtie) were similarly applauded. I attended last year's show at the Cow Palace in Daly City. This year's show is being held at the San Mateo Event Center. Duane Kelly mentioned that landscaping on the event center's grounds scored highly in early surveys. Interestingly, while the show attendees are responding positively to the new venue, the production company, Salmon Bay Eve

Burnham's Plan of Chicago 1909

Daniel Burnham's Plan of Chicago 1909 is 100 years old. (The plan was completed with the assistance of city planner Edward H. Bennett and artist Jules Guerin.) The City of Chicago will celebrate the plan's birthday "with a yearlong festival of exhibitions and public events..." (Paul Golderger, The New Yorker, March 9, 2009). Image : Plan of Chicago 1909, illustration by Jules Guerin Golderger writes engagingly about Daniel Burnham and "the most effective example of large-scale urban planning America has ever seen." Despite the effectiveness of the plan, Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs, almost half a century later, criticized Burnham's plan for its "monumental grandeur" and ignorance of neighborhoods. In Burnham's defense, Golderberger points to the work of architectural historian Kristen Schaffer who "discovered that Burnham had some remarkable radical social notions" like day-care centers and better housing for the poor, though th

Wave, Split, Eagle, and Schubert Sonata at Olympic Scultpure Park

Richard Serra's "Wake" could not be any more dramatic if it was located on the shore of the Sound, or in the Sound itself. The massive (as in tons) steel "wakes" evoke the waves created by boats and ships. A fitting sculpture for Seattle's Olympic Sculpture Park which is technically located alongside Elliot Bay and not by the Puget Sound, per se. To get a sense of the scale of these wakes, see the next image. The woman in the photograph is approximately five feet (5') three inches (3"). We write about trees often on local ecologist so I could not miss the opportunity to photograph the silver tree sculpture "Split" by Roxy Paine (foreground). The lighting made it difficult to get a close-up of the tree. In the right-background is Alexander Calder's red bird "Eagle." A better photograph of Calder's piece is here . I would never have guessed the subject of Mark di Suvero's sculpture. It is titled "Sch

LEQ: How do purpleleaf plums photosynthesize?

First, LEQ is the acronym for local ecologist question. Second, it was inspired by Human Flower Project 's HFQ or Human Flower Query . Third, this is our first LEQ. Fourth, we try to provide a, not the, well-reasoned and researched answer but encourage reader contributions! The LEQ was generated in-house (so to speak) as we were returning from an errand. In the course of two weeks, the purple leaf plums have gone from crowns of pink flowers to purple leaves. One of us asked, how do purpleleaf plums photosynthesize without green leaves (chlorophyll is expressed as a green color)? The other responded that perhaps other pigments, in this case, anthocyanins have photosynthetic capabilities, though less effective than chlorophyll. Anthocyanins are expressed as purple and red (ex: purpleleaf plum or sweetgum and red maple in the fall) while carotenoids (carotenes, xanthophylls) are expressed as yellow (ex: ginkgo in the fall). This guess was inaccurate (and also embarrassing becaus

Tree Walk: Three types of tree houses

Photograph : Children playing in a treehouse, Riverhead, NY, August 1967 Arthur Schatz, Life Magazine Not knowing the origins of the tree house, I turned to the web and J. B. Jackson. Several online dictionaries define tree house as "a playhouse built in the branches of a tree" or more generally, "a structure built among the limbs of a tree, usually for recreation." Wikipedia did not provide any information on the origin of the tree house but did provide a link to The Treehouse Guide , a building and reference website. Unfortunately this website does not offer an origins story. I don't own The Treehouse Book by Peter Nelson, Judy Nelson, David Larkin, Paul Rocheleau and it is not available at my local library. On to J. B. Jackson, landscape geographer and historian particularly of the vernacular or everyday American landscape. Jackson's 1994 tree essay is titled "In Favor of Trees." Although he does not mention the tree house, what he does men