All engineers and urban designers should be made to walk on 35-40 degree days from my house to the local primary school with my children aged 5 and 6 and tell me what they think about streets without trees.

This little graphic  was given to Garden Beet from http://www.cobaeurope.com/ . The graphic is all about urban heat sinks and its a very easy problem to fix.

Its fairly obvious.

Concrete cities = hot cities .

Plant trees = cooler cities

But yet again in 2012 trees seem to be less important than traffic lights.

Quite frankly Garden Beet can not work out why its so difficult for trees to be installed in cities.

Some of the best urban design projects get built and shade giving trees somehow get left off the agenda.

The northern suburbs of Melbourne now has  a fab little urban design project running up Northcote’s very cool and hip High Street – but I can not believe it – there are these large concrete tram stops with NO TREES!!

Yep great job urban designers of state government – nice to see the pedestrian paths level with the tram entry/exists but guys where the F**K are the trees.

ITS NOT HARD – plant some bluddy trees or I am going to make you walk my children to school!!!

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Raw timber amongst asphalt and concrete is a soothing image.

Couple hard concrete and the black bitumen with fresh green herbs and a layer of pea straw we have an urban greenery that vibrates good times.

Nothing is more uplifting (for me) than watching shop owners vegetating their shop windows.

Here is a thought – instead of planning laws dictating signage, building form and land use why not have planning laws that reward shop owners for creating street niceness.

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Retro hipsters have embraced the macrame tradition that I was brought up on during the 70s. Travelling along Melbourne’s -  too cool for school – Brunswick Street in Fitzroy one will find a giant overscaled hanging planter x 2 in the front of hairdresser’s  salon.

I love the idea….its always fun to experiment with scale. And I enjoyed the purple and green contrast. Jeeps retro.

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I love this.

I have waited 10 months to show this image  and finally its the right month!

If you are living in the northern hemisphere and you have not ventured to Australia during Christmas you may have little idea how disconnected our European influenced Christmas decorations and traditions are from the hot Australian climate, its plants and landscape.

I have discussed this issue before in a blog post during Autumn 2010  . In a nut shell Australia becomes tacky and tinsley around November. We have fake snow, fake holly, fake snowmen in our shopping centers, streetscapes and in our homes.

With all this in mind I really loved the simple Christmas decoration shown in the image below. A little snapshot of an Australian Christmas.  It is a leafless branch in the middle of summer but nevertheless I loved the composition. And a lovely change from glittery snow capped ball balls.

Its mid January and Australia is now entering the next visual during this holiday period – its the abandoned Christmas tree – scorched to a crisp.

The postcard image above is a great little glimpse of an Aussie Christmas landscape found in most suburbs of the capital cities.

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What a grand little hanging planter is this? Coco Loco -a flowering beauty wrapped in coconut fibre and lipstick red ribbon. Designer CommuniTree has launched this fab gift item for Christmas 2011. The planters are designed and made in Melbourne, Australia. The planters retail for approximately $35.

CommuniTree, directed by Catherine Duniam, is focused on green ideas for urban spaces. Not only does she design, sell and make plant based products she has also managed to quirk up a rather pedestrian streetscape – Melbourne Swanston Walk. At last newspaper stands are being replaced by artist driven products! Way to go City of Melbourne.

Inspired by her farming background Catherine is designing novel ways to inject plants into our lives. CommuniTree has also developed a Living Marquee that incorporates a self supporting living wall system using cloth and bamboo.

Head over to her website for a look >  CommuniTree

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This vertical garden is primarily made from ficus creeper. Its not a new generation living wall (ie made up of plants that do not normally creep up a wall such as ferns, grasses etc)  but it certainly tricked me.

The sharp edges of the creeper gave the appearance that it was a vertical garden made from a system such as easiwall.

I was kinda struck how easy it can be to achieve a contemporary vertical garden ‘look’ without having to part with oodles of money.

Of course the number of plants that will achieve this style is limited but I liked the way the garden owner has broken the ficus square with hanging planters.

Great food for thought. This image offers plenty of scope for creating a cheap vertical garden.

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A family actively using the front garden rather than allowing it to become yet another space for plants animals and other critters . I asked the owner was there enough space in the back garden for the trampoline and she replied ‘oh yes but we wanted to make use of the back and the front’

Interesting use of the trampoline and granitic sand – not an intended outcome but nonetheless her child was happily under the trampoline for shade whilst using the sand to move his imaginary cars.

To date I have presented three front gardens all designed with a  focus on active usage. And guess what? All three houses are within a stones throw of one another. We are in Northcote Melbourne.

Here are the other two posts

http://www.gardenbeet.com/garden_design_blog/2011/06/19/front-garden/

http://www.gardenbeet.com/garden_design_blog/2011/05/14/a-front-garden-full-of-vertical-gardens-recycling-and-community/

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“Jeese Jack that Tasmania Devil in a cage looks great…..Why did you put it on the wall?”

“…oh it was sitting on the ledge and it just looked ordinary”

“Oh gosh that is what we are about…brilliant …oh no.  …oh no …we are shallow”

“No its about making the most out of what is…you can have the most ordinary things in your life but its a different way of looking …you can easily transform anything you want..its just the way you see something”

…….phew back to rearranging

.

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Sometimes the biggest challenge in getting your fruit and veg garden started is the need for help. Its hard yakka getting all the weeds under control. Plus digging the beds in preparation for the seedlings is not much chop either.

And if you have children it can be even harder!

I was most excited when I learnt of a mothers/gardening group that meets every Monday. Each week the group descends on a mother’s garden and a work intensive begins. The children are kept  busy amusing themselves (in theory anyway).

I really like the concept -partly because you are outside rather than inside eating chocolate biscuits but more importantly its a real help for any time poor mother. A veg garden is easy to achieve with 6 or so pairs of hands so why not?

Or what about this for an idea – get a veg garden designer to help you out. I spotted Jessica posting her leaflet in my letter box in Melbourne Australia – if it takes your fancy her email address is veggiegardenjess@gmail.com. She is in the picture above.

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A London Design Festival update just flew into Garden Beet’s inbox – its all about recycling – I realise it aint in the garden but it could be outdoors. Its all food for thought and I like it a lot – so lovely to share – thanks Rachel for the update on your design studio’s activities

Over to Loop.pH -

Commissioned for Bloomberg Philanthropy by art and design agency Arts Co, ‘Waste Not, Want It’ is a series of specially commissioned art and design projects made almost entirely out of Bloomberg’s waste. Presented as part of the London Design Festival 2011.

Design studio Loop.pH’s ‘Faraday Curtain’ is made from hundreds of metres of discarded electrical cable, stripped of its inner core and conductive shielding and rethreaded into an intricately laced textile mesh. The resultant ephemeral textile enclosure provides a soft and sheer shielding from electro magnetic fields.

The tranquil space provided by the ‘Faraday Curtain’ is an opportunity to surrender electronic devices and mobile phones for a few brief moments, as inside the curtain internet access will cease to connect.

 

 

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