Our residency at Open Source has begun!

Urban Plant Research’s first New York exhibition and residency began last Saturday at Open Source Gallery in Brooklyn! It kicked off with an opening party filled with friends, neighbors, fellow artists and plant lovers, pizza and beer.

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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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Berlin: Rose of Jericho, revisited

About this time last year, I bought a Rose of Jericho at a tea shop. The Rose of Jericho is a plant that looks brown and dead until it is watered. Then unfurls, turning green in the center and smelling like the forest floor.

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Berlin: Visit our community garden on Saturday

Unlike Phyllis, I don’t have a backyard to garden in, but I am a member of a young community garden, Bürgergarten Laskerwiese. Anke recently photographed me weeding my vegetable bed there, 10 square meters (90 square feet) which I share with Marko. You are invited to visit us this Saturday, when the gardeners will be hosting [...]

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A new guidebook about Berlin’s urban plants

It looks like Sara and Leslie are not the only curious duo hot on the trails of Berlin’s wild plants. This new guidebook, to be published this summer, also finds two creative women, Heiderose Häsler and Iduna Wünschmann, seeking out often-overlooked plants and researching their connection to the people and history of the city. 
Titled Berliner [...]

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Berlin: Taking zucchinis for a walk

Here’s a picture from an urban plant incident that spotaneously happened a few weeks ago. I was wondering how to transport four gangly zucchini seedlings from my apartment to the community garden. Luckily some friends dropped by to invite us for a stroll. So we took the zucchinis for their first trip outside. Maybe we [...]

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Berlin: More tasty wild plants

The virtual tasting tour of Berlin’s wild plants continues! To get started, I’ll answer Sara’s question about the plants from this walk: which are native to Germany?

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Berlin: Edible plant walk

In a city with many wild-growing plants, you begin to wonder if some might be useful. When I weed my 10 square meters at the community garden, carting piles of unknown plants to the compost heap and leaving just a few lonely vegetables amidst bare dirt, it seems ridiculous to dismiss so many robust green [...]

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We have a winner! Subway quiz prizes & answers

Our quiz about plants near Berlin’s U8 subway line is officially over! The poster in the Bernauer Straße station came down last week and it’s time to announce a winner and reveal the answers to the quiz.
If you haven’t tried the quiz, you can still find it here – just for fun, no more prizes [...]

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Berlin: Break on through! Plant defies asphalt

30. May 2009, ca. 15:00, Mariannenplatz, Berlin-Kreuzberg
As Marko and I were passing by the big construction site in front of the Bethanien (an old brick hospital, once site of squatters’ movement, now home to arts organizations), he pointed and said, “There’s something for Urban Plant Research.” In a strip of newly laid asphalt, there had [...]

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