Friedhof im August: Balkon & Garten

The newest issue of Balkon & Garten, the reader-generated magazine by our friend and soon-to-be-publisher Anke, has arrived! And in style. The release party on Saturday was the talk of the blogs, and songwriter Graf Tati made a theme song just for this issue – with music video.

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Ailanthus-stories: Reader photos from Karlsruhe, Germany

We recently received correspondence from Maz, one of our readers in Germany, who sent us photographs of ailanthus altissima, the tree of heaven. He had previously commented on Leslie’s post about the infamous tree, excitedly mentioning that it was his favorite tree and that he had written an article on it a few years ago [...]

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Berlin yesterday: Book, photo, film

Stills from Flip Flop by Anke 
Yesterday was an eventful day for Urban Plant Research in Berlin. I had a visit in the studio with Anke from the artistic-botanic small press Beton + Garten Verlag, which is working with us on our first Urban Plant Research book.

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San Francisco: the fantastic, the amazing Living Roof!

The amazing Megan of Megamoog recently photographed this bizarre-looking green roof and shared it on her Flickr photostream. Though I have been feeling like there are just too many stories about green rooves in the news these days, this one had such a cute, alien, submarine-spaceship look that I had to find out more, so [...]

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Urban Tumbleweeds in Redwood City, NYC, Nevada

Today’s photo comes courtesy of reader and sister Phoebe, who writes from California: “In a town covered in pavement, aka Redwood City, the origins of this 4 foot wide tumbleweed is a mystery.”

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The comeback tree: Ailanthus altissima, tree of heaven

Photo taken in Mainz, Germany by Jo Spittler
A lively discussion about Ailanthus altissima broke out in response to my last post about Marko finding a plant busting through the pavement. Observant reader Jo Spittler suggested that the  ”breakthrough” tree might be an Ailanthus, also known under such poetic names as tree of heaven and ghetto [...]

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Buenos Aires; Frankfurt: Potted plants with personality

Yet more peculiar plants from other places, courtesy of a reader. My sister Phoebe is a frequent flier with an eye for odd details in the streets, including curious plants. Here are a few greens she spotted in Tokyo.
The picture above is from her recent trip to Buenos Aires. She writes: 

This is the main street [...]

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Grenoble: Bending trees at research reactor

Recently, I found myself explaining Urban Plant Research to several quantum physicists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum in Berlin. I felt a bit sheepish describing our not-very-scientific approach to “research” and didn’t expect these real scientists to think much of such a whimsical project. But one of them, Elisa Wheeler, was very enthusiastic, sharing her own story [...]

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Tiny flowers? in Hamburg

  
Photographed by Marko Förstel
Marko, who last sent us some great plants from Aarhus, Denmark, is currently working in a lab in Hamburg where he has had to spend the first days of spring working 12-hour (or longer) shifts indoors.
He writes: “I attached a picture of flowers which made me feel good
after 13h playing with knobs [...]

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Another London letter: pedestrian poppies

Sorry for the long silence. Winter has set in, both in Brooklyn and Berlin, and we have yet to brave the snow and sleet to document our green neighbors in their cold weather guises. But today, thanks to some outside help, we are able to post some weather-proof plants.
We are lucky to have gained a [...]

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