LaGuardia Airport, NY: Bathroom plant research

Our roving plant reporter Phoebe Kuo, aka my sister, found a birthday bouquet yesterday while traveling through LaGuardia Airport in New York City late at night. Although she had just endured a late evening flight following a long day of work, our birthday girl was on the alert for urban plants and snagged this cell [...]

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Manhattan: “Low line” underground park proposed

And now for something completely different… simply by proposing a new park, three New York entrepreneurs have made waves among Manhattanites, urban planners and architecture nerds. The reason: their want to put the park completely underground, in a defunct trolley station on the Lower East Side, which looks like this:

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Vieira de Leiria, Portugal: Giant kale

What could be behind this wall?

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Mons: Windowsill plant friends

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NY Parks Department now against foraging?

Edible plants (woodruff and bear’s garlic) spotted on a foraging tour in a Berlin park. The New York Times chimed into our discussion on urban foraging this weekend with an article about the New York City Parks Department enforcing park rules about foraging: namely, that it is not allowed.

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New York trees wear urban tumbleweeds

Speaking of “urban tumbleweeds,” a.k.a. plastic bags and other trash blown through the city, I began to notice back in early spring just how many street trees have some kind of trash caught in them. It’s probably not so apparent now that the trees have grown their full summer coat of foliage, but back then [...]

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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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Talking trees in the Bronx! and other art in NYC parks

Photo courtesy Katie Holten on treemuseum.ning.com Folks, I cannot tell you how excited I was to discover that a tree museum is opening June 21 along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx! 100 trees along the historic boulevard will each be linked to an audio excerpt (via a number you call on your phone) containing [...]

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Portrait of a parks commissioner: “This isn’t a walk. This is a sector patrol.”

I liked today’s New York Times portrait of Adrian Benepe, the Parks and Recreation Commissioner for all of New York City. The piece focuses a lot on how he relates to the parks outside of work, reminding me of my asking park maintenance workers in Berlin whether they still visit the parks in their personal time. It [...]

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Vertical farming coming to Manhattan?

Another note related to Earth Day and environmentalism: vertical farming! Farms may soon exist in the middle of Manhattan in the shape of skyscrapers. Watch the intriguing video on YouTube from Discovery-News.com:

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