http://seedhead.com/ en-us Nucleus CMS v3.2 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://seedhead.com//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://seedhead.com/ http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=623 Joel Tauber's new show, Sick-Amour, opens at the Susanne Vielmetter Gallery in Culver City, CA in which he showcases a once-forlorn sycamore tree that's stranded amidst a sea of asphalt in the Pasadena Rose Bowl parking lot.

The exhibit includes a documentary film, a video installation and information on Tauber's effort to protect the tree permanently.
"I think of it as a modern, video 'Walden, but not out in the wilderness, out in a parking lot," Tauber tells the Los Angeles Times.

To see a photo of the tree, click here.


]]> General http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=623 Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:50:47 -0700 http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=614 Gold Medal Plants program. The non-profit group (industry-funded however) has just announced its five top choices for plants that can survive a sticky summer. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

1. Thuja standishii x plicata 'Green Giant'": This fast-growin g evergreen (60' tall x 20' wide) makes a beautiful screen or windbreak. (Sold by Fast Growing Trees)

2. Second choice is the gorgeous yellow Rhododendron 'Admiral Semmes' (Sold by Dodd & Dodd Native Nurseries)

3. Hibiscus coccineus boasts one of the most glorious flowers ever. It needs a lot of water but it's worth it for that blood-red bloom.

(Photo: Petrichor/Flickr)

4. Another fiery red bloomer, Odontonema strictum is a great plant for attracting hummingbirds and butterflies in the late summer and fall. But Dinesh Valke, who took this lovely photo, warns that deer love it.

5. A more hardy version of the fast-growing Asian jasmine, Trachelospermum jasminoides 'Madison'. (Sold by Wayside Gardens)

]]> General http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=614 Tue, 06 Mar 2007 10:02:01 -0800 http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=553 Archinect interviews Julia Bargmann of D.I.R.T. (Dump It Right There) Studio, self-professed loudmouth and one of the biggest proponents of remediating industrial landscapes without completing erasing them:

"There are so many people working out there who only show the community a menu of idealized landscapes - they don't even give them a chance to respond to the industrial landscape itself. When I was in Chicago, I asked, 'Have you taken Mayor Daley to see these quarries, basins and landfills?' Revealing these landscapes makes some people incredibly nervous. At the Mayor's Institute, what you hear is: they're ugly, they're blight, degraded, useless. But if you asked the current generation, they might use the word 'cool,'" says Bargmann.

Want to learn more about this type of work? Check out these examples: Dulsberg-Nord Country Park in Germany, William McDonough's plans for the Ford Rouge Plant in Michigan, artist Mel Chin's phytoremediation project, and Bargmann's own designs for Urban Outfitters at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (plans pictured below).

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]]> Landscape Design http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=553 Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:59:00 -0700 http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=528
"Every fall, we are out there, trying to reattach the face of respectability to our properties and our lives by patching, overseeding or completely redoing the ever-failing lawn. Seeking, in sum, to sustain the unsustainable" -- the Washington Post's Adrian Higgins on alternatives to traditional turf, including a buffalo grass variety called 'Legacy'.

Turf, "an exotic crop ill-adapted to most American climates," is now the "largest irrigated 'crop' in the United States," writes Michelle Nijhuis in the San Francisco Chronicle. Her nicely reasoned piece charts the costs and benefits of lawns in the West and the move toward xeriscape (drought tolerant) gardens.

Still, want to keep all your lawn? The least you can do is wean it off chemicals. Canadian Gardening has the tips to make it happen.

Previously: Having a Lawn and Going Green at the Same Time
No Need to Mow the Fake Lawn
New Books: American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn]]> General http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=528 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 16:29:00 -0700 http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=560
Crarae Garden in Scotland is the latest to beckon me. "This woodland garden is as famous for its fabulous planting as for its setting, which Roy Lancaster has compared to a gorge in the foothills of the eastern Himalayas," writes Vivian Russell in the Telegraph.

Start by Grace, Lady Campbell in 1912 and part of the National Trust for Scotland since 2002, it includes a National Collection of southern beech (Nothofagus), over 400 varieties of rhododendron, and many large wellingtonias, redwoods, cryptomerias and rare Picea koyamae spruces.

Fall, continues Russell, "is when the garden is at its most glorious. Great swathes of gold and crimson foliage light up the spaces between the dark, brooding conifers, silver eucalypts and evergreen rhododendrons."

]]> Gardens To Visit http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=560 Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:54:00 -0700 http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=531 writes the Salt Lake Tribune's Glen Warchol.

Ironically, Eframo has been caught in the middle of the city's hypocritical policies. "West Jordan is in conflict with itself. The city promotes water conservation, yet they have ordinances that require large amounts of grass," says State Senator Chris Buttars.

But some locals simply think the problem taht Eframo's xeriscape yard is badly designed. "She's just kind of leaving what is there and planting within it," says David Rice, conservation programs manager for the Jordan Valley Conservancy District.

The message here: If you want to buck the green tide (i.e. lawns), you better do it well.]]> General http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=531 Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:34:00 -0700 http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=519 reports the New York Times (online subscription only).

''I think that's when the work started getting good,'' Mr. Tomaselli said, ''when I started acknowledging the importance of endeavors like gardening. You need to be open to the way your life works and not deny it. It makes the work better.''

He's been a gardening enthusiast most of his life, but admits he got into it by first growing pot. ''Then I started growing tomatoes to hide the pot. Then I started getting into all of these cool vegetables camouflaging the pot. Then I started growing flowers.''

Today, he gardens in a small backyard in Brooklyn that includes two carefully tended fig trees. Leaves from the trees, which were first planted by the home's previous owner in the 1930's, are included in "Migrant Fruit Thugs" (pictured below):

The exhibition of Tomaselli's work is on display now through November 11 at the James Cohan Gallery in Chelsea, NYC.
]]> General http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=519 Tue, 24 Oct 2006 10:00:00 -0700 http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=542 Via Reuters.

-----Scientists have discovered that two types of monkeyflower, red and yellow, are pollinated by different animals: hummingbirds and moths. Too bad the article doesn't make clear if the two monkeyflowers are different species. But the piece is interesting, especially speculation that increasing hummingbird populations (who knew these little guys were on the rise?) will favor one type of monkeyflower over the other.

-----Enterprise Rent-A-Car pledges $50 million over 50 years to replenish national forests to fund tree plantings through the National Arbor Day Foundation.

-----Actor and environmental supporter Leonardo DiCaprio is putting together a reality makeover series, E-Topia, that will show a depressed American town being turned into an eco-friendly community.

----In one corner, an endangered wildflower. In the other, pampered dogs. As the Contra Costa Times reports, dogs owners are upset over plans to close part of an Oakland park in order to protect the Presidio clarkia, C. franciscana, which grows in just two locations in the Bay Area. "It's overkill," said Peter Levy, an Oakland resident who brought his yellow Labrador, Lola, to the area last week to fetch tennis balls. "We should protect endangered species, but aren't parks about recreation for the public?" Actually, overkill would be wiping out a unique species from the planet entirely.

-----Has anyone ever seen a dogwood bloom in the fall? A gardener in North Carolina is scratching her head over her dogwood blooming out of season. A fluke perhaps, but if it's a real genetic mutation, wouldn't it be cool to propagate?

-----More and more plants are changing hands online through sites such as craigslist, reports Minnesota's Star Tribune. Why didn't they mention the bustling trade in plants that happens on Ebay too?]]> General http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=542 Tue, 24 Oct 2006 09:32:44 -0700 http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=486
-----England's horse chestnuts are increasingly under attack. 50,000 or more of the country's trees are infected by bleeding canker and many are also blighted by the non-native leaf miner moth.

-----To win the fight against Japanese beetles, it helps to understand the voracious creature's life cycle.

----The USDA has successfully identified the two fungi that are responsible for beech bark disease.

-----First reported in Florida in 2002, pink hibiscus mealybugs continue to munch their way through the state.

-----CNN's Debra Alban gives a handy run-down of tree diseases, including some that mute the vibrant display of fall color.
]]> Insects, Diseases, Etc. http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=486 Tue, 24 Oct 2006 08:42:06 -0700 http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=585 Telegraph's Ursula Buchan somehow whittled all the possibilities down to just such a list.

Seedhead doesn't have any quibbles with most of the choices, except for the glaring inclusion of Lawson's cypress, a completely overdone plant.

Picea omorika, Serbian spruce, one of Buchan's faves:

(Photo: Andiba/Flickr)

Note: National Conifer Week took place in the first week of October in the UK and Andrew Fisher Tomlin, chairman of the Society of Garden Designers, created three borders using conifers to promote the event. Click here to see his planting schemes.]]> Plants in Profile http://seedhead.com/index.php?itemid=585 Tue, 24 Oct 2006 07:56:47 -0700