Pull Quote:
Intimate, lightly trafficked and often quirky, the small gardens of Paris can be ideal places to rest and to read. The trick is to find them. You can consult "Paris: 100 Jardins Insolites" ("Paris: 100 Unusual Gardens"), a guide by Martine Dumond whose color photos make discovery for the non-French speaker a pleasure, or explore various Web sites like www.paris-walking-tours.com/parisgardens.html. Or you can simply wander on foot, confident that around the next corner there will be something new.

For the full article, click Here.

Another eco-trend in gardening is placing plants that like continual moisture and absorb rain water. This helps keep run-off after rains from flooding, and washing pollutants into water systems.

They are actually very simple to create. During rains, water runs off this porch and soaks the surrounding ground. As well, there are a few spigots coming in from the laundry room creating constant moisture. Check with your local nursery for plants that like constant moisture. Here we planted iris, sedge grass, ferns, bugbane, brunnera, cardinal flowers, and a red-twigged dogwood. Many of these are native plants, and later in the summer the cardinal flowers and bugbane will bloom and be really beautiful and attract butterflies and birds. The hydrangea were existing, but seem immensely happy here.

Rain Garden in May

Rain Garden in June

There's a great new Seattle-based blog, Diggin Food that's dedicated to the vegetable--growing, cooking, eating, and even vegetable art.

Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science
August 31, 2008 at The Getty

Last summer I visited the the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City to see the collection of botanical paintings and drawings of plants and their pollinators by Maria Sibylla Merian. Now luckly Angelenos can see these on display at the Getty Museum.

Maria Sibylla Merian left Amsterdam and visited Suriname with her daughter in 1699. Merian not only illustrated the relationship between the caterpillar and the butterfly, but each of her paintings was a like a small narrative, showing the relationships--generous, violent, necessary-- between tropical plants and insects. The local natives and slave women found out about her interests, and started to teach her the local lore the magical and medicinal properties of the plants. She returned to Europe and published the book, "Metamorphosis of the Insects of Surinam". In this she recorded life histories of beetles and moths that were previously unknown to science....center to see the botanical paintings by Maria Sibylla Merian. Her pictures are now on display at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

The proposed project Garden Spot would convert the non-advertisement side of billboards throughout New York City to suspended gardens. This won TODO Design and Das Studio won a first place award at the international Design Awards Land and Sea Competition.

We propose to enlist these structural resources for community improvement and to seed landscapes in the sky. Billboards are designed as monological messages aimed at a target audience zipping past in cars in a defined direction, such as a one way street. As the flip sides of the billboards are not designed to market to a pedestrian, community scaled audience, we propose to exploit them to provide community gardens in the sky, a place for nature to take root and provide relief to the community. Our proposal encourages dialogue with the local residents without interfering with the target, drive-by audience at the same time that it greens the city. These gardens work to offset the carbon footprint of the passing vehicles. We consider it akin to planting an urban tree, only that these gardens will allow for a diversity of planting that can be tailored to local fauna and climate.

Three great Bronx institutions have great stuff planned this weekend. Help out Sustainable South Bronx, get to know the Bronx River, and enjoy the art and music sponsored by the Bronx River Art Center.

Saturday, June 21st
2nd Annual Hunts Point 5k Race
Hunts Point Riverside Park
(Edgewater Road & Lafayette Avenue)
9am

Support the Bronx Greenway!!

Proceeds from this race go to urban forestry efforts along the route including: tree planting, tree maintenance, green walls, planted medians and other vegetated surfaces.

For more information or to register for the race, click here .

Bronx River Alliance

Saturday, June 21st
Bronx River Festival
River Park
(E. 180th St. & Boston Road)
11am - 3pm

Celebrate Bronx Week with canoe trips, arts and crafts, food and live entertainment featuring Gerry Segal and Sonia Manzano (Maria from Sesame Street).

For more information on this event and upcoming Bronx River Alliance events, click
here
for a full calendar.

Bronx River Art Center

Saturday, June 21st
Bronx River Sounds
Cool Hot & Blue featuring
Latin Jazz Group Insight
Drew Gardens
(E. Tremont Ave bet. West Farms Rd. & Devoe St.)
4pm

For more information on Bronx River Art Center, this event and upcoming events, click
here .

Columnist Barry Estabrook from Gourmet.com takes on the tomato scare in his column and Pablo Neruda celebrates its essence.

How the hell does salmonella get inside a tomato?

Pull Quote:
Excuse the bluntness, but that question has been much on my mind this week in the wake of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) warnings against eating raw red tomatoes. The agency took action after 145 diners in 16 states were sickened by tomatoes tainted with salmonella, a bacteria carried in the intestines of animals and humans.

Ode To Tomatoes by Pablo Neruda

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

It has been hot, hot, hot in New York City and I've been worried about all the plants wilting. I've heard lots of people tell me that their plants looked great, until August, and then mysteriously, while on vacation, everything died. Well, it feels like August now, and I'm working on a design for a rooftop garden that has no water source. It's exposed to full sun and wind, yet has absolutely no irrigation. There's a drainpipe for run-off we wanted to attach to a rain barrel, but this too is set up so close to the door, and runs about 1 inch off the ground, so that nothing can be put around or under it, and it can't be altered.

So while researching self-watering containers, gel water crystals, and drought tolerant plants, (unfortunately, the client doesn't like yucca), I've come across some articles of interest. The Los Angeles Times published an article, How do his veggies grow? The no-dig way , about Pat Marfisi who has raised beds of layered alfalfa hay, straw, blood and bone meal, and compost, and it doesn't require much watering, and very little digging.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer weighed in last week with Green Gardening: I'll take my garden dry, on the rocks , and the key here is deep, gravel mulch. Foilage is planted in topsoil and compost, and then mulched with about a half-inch of crushed gravel. The author, Ann Lovejoy, wrote "Because these gardens are not watered (after the initial planting year), weeds rarely trouble them. The deep gravel mulches make pulling the few weeds that do appear a snap.... Why is gravel depth so important? Like any mulch, it is supposed to moderate soil temperatures and keep soil evenly moist. A 2- to 3-inch deep gravel mulch also will prevent weed seeds from germinating. A skimpy half-inch deep mulch won't.
Dry garden pathways often are trenched 12-18 inches deep, then filled with 3/4-inch crushed gravel. Like French drains, such paths pull excess water away from raised beds in winter, allowing plant roots to get plenty of air. This helps prevent the root rots that carry away so many plants during our long wet winters."

Last year, Slate.com published a good article, On Dry Land, which not only describes drought tolerant plants, but also tells how to prep the soil to retain rain water run off. The author, Constance Casey, advises, "Make the water percolate down to plants' roots. Don't till the soil; bare plowed soil loses water to evaporation. Leave organic material lying on the soil surface or plant groundcover (a cover crop like clover or alfalfa in the case of farmers). Midwestern farmers are now leaving corn plants up after harvest to catch the snow and protect the soil. Encourage worms, whose tunnels, about the diameter of a pencil, direct water down to root level."

If you're looking for drought tolerant plants, one of the best known suppliers is High Country Gardens

The rise in gas prices aren't all bad. Victory Gardens are proliferating, car manufacturers aren't making anymore gas guzzling SUV's or Hummers. What's next--public transportation in America? Bike lanes? But back to vegetables...

Newspapers from around the country have been reporting on surge in vegetable gardening--it's officially a trend, and hopefully one here to stay. On June 11th, 2008 the New York Times ran the article, Banking on Gardening that profiles people who have decided to grow their own because of rising food prices. On June 5th, 2008 The Wall Street Journal published The Vegetable Patch Takes Root , which discusses not only costs, but also this is the most reliable way to get organic produce. On the heels of this reporting, The San Francisco Chronicle weighed in on June 7th, 2008 with the article Easy foods for beginners, Homegrown craze brings bumper crop of fresh, veggies, healthy bodies where not only high food prices and concerns about the environment, but the growing "foodie" movement is spurring gardeners on.

I came across a real estate blog, San Francisco Sweet Digs , that argues listing backyard fruit trees is a key selling point. They author claims this is due to rising food prices--seems that people buying million dollar homes wouldn't be that worried about apples jumping in cost. But there is something comforting about being able to step outside and pluck food from a tree. And if you could, why wouldn't you grow avocados?

There was a nasty comment left from one guy about it being a real estate blog, but then people wrote in and said fruit trees were a relevant selling/buying point.

Later this month, I'm planting a self-pollinating black cherry tree in a client's yard. We put in a fig tree, blueberries, and raspberries earlier in the year. Henry Leuthardt Nurseries on Long Island specializes in fruit trees and espaliers. To get them bare-rooted, you have to order in April--they cost a lot less like this than balled and burlaped. You can also purchase grape plants there for table and wine grapes.

Speaking of wine grapes, I registered for the upcoming class at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden how to make wine in Brooklyn with Robert Herold. From the course description the class seems to focus more on making the wine than growing the grapes, but I think the two must be closely related. It's going to be on Saturday, July 12 | 10 am-1 p.m.
$39 member, $44 nonmember (Fee includes $10 materials charge.)