Plants & gardens
Show her you love her thiiiis big - but are still green at heart - with the world's tallest roses from Organic Bouquet. (Not that you can get them in time for Valentine's Day; they're sold out until early March.) Grown at high altitude in Ecuador, the roses are nearly two meters tall, with blooms spanning ten centimeters across. (They recommend you also spring for the galvanized steel vase-cum-bucket to keep them in, at an additional modest charge.) $250 USD for one dozen; $450 USD for two dozen. (At that price they'd better be fair trade!)
World's Tallest Organic Roses
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Plants & gardens
Providing a biodegradable (and lower-cost) alternative to landscaping fabric or Rosin paper, Rhimax felt paper adds nutrients to the soil and reduces erosion. It's also made from recycled paper materials which you can buy in 100cm or 50cm roll width or custom sizes for large-scale projects. It can also be used for drop sheets in painting projects, ground protection in garages, etc.
Rhimax felt paper
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Plants & gardens
Scientists in Japan, working with colleagues in Michigan, have figured out a way to genetically suppress growth in plants, resulting in miniature versions. If the growth hormone gibberellin, controlled by genes GAMT1 and GAMT2, is reintroduced, the offspring come out normal. The result's been dubbed instant bonsai, with potential results ranging from real live pine trees to hang from your car mirror as a natural air freshener, to grapevines tiny enough to grow next to the sprouts on your kitchen worktop. While genetic engineering is involved, it's quite different to splicing fish DNA into tomatoes: gibberellin is absent in dwarf plants that exist in nature already. [GT]
Instant bonsai [in Japanese]
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Design & furniture
Quebec City's 400th anniversary occurs in 2008, and part of the celebration involves six Contemporary Ephemeral Gardens. Each garden will be designed by a living artist, to be established in the heart of the festivities, and to live only so long as the celebration does, from June 10 to September 28, 2008. Each garden should address the three major themes of the festival:
Where the river narrows;
Your history, my history, our history ;
and Sowing the seeds of culture.
[
GT]
A Call For Creation Of Contemporary Ephemeral Gardens [via Land+Living]
Related stories: Iota garden decor | Joan Baez braves bulldozers for LA organic garden | Barnet Garden Project provides chemical-free veg and a hand up
Plants & gardens
For those who still like to curl up with a (recycled newsprint) catalog and individually select each seed, herb and compost option over a myriad damp and dreary winter afternoons, the Organic Gardening Catalog has everything from biological pest controls to pear trees for your brand new partridge. All purchases go to support Garden Organic's charity work promoting organic farming. (Yes, of course you can just order stuff online instead; what year did you think this was, 1977?) [GT]
Organic Gardening Catalog
Related stories: Rogueland heirloom seeds | Ready to Grow rare and unusual seeds | 400 organic seeds from Tamar
Green News
The Scottish Wildlife Trust has added its voice to those of Alan Titchmarsh and Monty Don in urging gardeners to stop using peat.
Although peat only covers 3% of the earth, it is an extremely importantant wildlife habitat - and consequently part of conservation. Added to that, peat bogs actually lock-in carbon from the atmosphere, that would otherwise contribute to the greenhouse effect.
Unfortunately, amateur gardeners are not heeding the message and there has been no change in their consumption of peat as a growing medium.
To hear on Monty Don's views on climate change and how it affects (and indeed should affect) gardening, check out this month's Gardeners' World magazine.
[Via Independent]
Arts & information
There were bigger stories and bigger injustices in 2006, but the story that touched me came from Daryl Hannah's environmentalist video blog, involving the bulldozing of an urban farm in Los Angeles. The farm had supported dozens of dirt-poor migrant families with its produce, and the produce - absorbing massy carbon dioxide from the smog - was spectacular. But, a corporation bought it to turn into warehouse space, and though it sold for $6.5 mil USD to them, they demanded $16 mil USD from the Public Land Trust to give it up. Folk singer Joan Baez tree-sat to try to save the farm but ultimately it was destroyed. [GT]
Original stories: Los Angeles urban farm bulldozed | Joan Baez braves bulldozers for LA organic garden | Daryl Hannah on green architecture
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