Now that we’ve had a breather after our breathless and beautiful residency at South Slope’s Open Source, I want to start sharing images and footage of what we did there for those who couldn’t make it – and also for those who did visit and contribute, but want to revisit! This video captures just one song of many from our closing event, the Jam for the Plants.

At this event, we invited friends and neighbors to bring musical instruments to play or their houseplants to enjoy the music. Here are some of us playing “Angel from Montgomery” by John Prine, including Sara on mandolin, Dave on guitar, Kate on bassoon, and Sara’s heroic bandmate from Too Big To Fail who not only schlepped his stand-up bass all the way to the jam but let me jam on it despite my total lack of experience with basses.

Kids and cats ran about among folding chairs and melodious beer bottles, the sun shone and friends dropped in and out, some wearing bike helmets, some bearing cookies. Sage and marjoram hummed along. Needless to say, with such beautiful plants, people and music, it was a memorable last afternoon at Open Source.

So now you have the bookends of our residency experience: the opening and the closing, but that’s only the beginning and ending of a lovely and eventful two week story. For those patient people who are still checking and reading the blog, I will slowly be filling in images and memories from the middle. If you are not-so-patient, you are welcome to take a peek at my South slope snapshots on Flickr for now for now. Until next time, cheers and be well.

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.

The opening went by in a blur; I was barely able to take any pictures of it! Above, Leslie and guests talk into the night.

48 hours before, Leslie and I had begun cleaning the space and installing the show. Here I am with the cool super-vac.

We have transformed the gallery into a temporary community research center with an installation of photographs on the walls (tethered to corresponding locations on maps of Berlin and Brooklyn), a reading corner, a worktable, a tiny (but growing) population of plants, and a calendar of events that includes a guided plant walk, kids’ activities, an acoustic jam, and visits to nearby green sites. If you’re in the area, we hope you can stop by and check it out!

It will be exciting to watch the show grow as we work in residence during the rest of August. We invite plant-watchers to send us (or bring to us) your own photographs, drawings or other artifacts related to urban plants, along with the location (doesn’t have to be Berlin/Brooklyn), and we will incorporate them into our installation.

We’ll be recording our adventures right here on our website (as much as we can!), so if you’re not in the area, you can follow what’s going on from afar.

Next event is this Saturday at 6pm: “A Walk Around the Block,” an urban nature walk led by Leslie and me, followed by a happy hour featuring local mint mojitos.

Leslie and I hope to see you soon… at Open Source or online!

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.

Tati’s song is to the tune of XTC’s “Grass” but with Tati’s own lyrics on this issue’s theme, “Friedhof im August” (graveyard in August). If you watch the video, you can get a good idea of what the issue looks and feels like – they go together perfectly!

There are only 150 copies printed of each issue, so order yours today! The text is in German but the design and artwork are a feast for the eyes so it’s not so tragic if you can’t read the texts. It’s just 5 Euros including shipping from Balkon + Garten’s own site for orders within Germany. For customers outside Germany, check out the English-langauge zine site Gute Seiten which should have the new issue soon. Urban Plant Research (well, Leslie) has a photo inside.

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 for his university magazine!

He commented, “Somehow it always reminds me that it doesn’t matter how bad we treat the environment, there are always plants and animals which can deal with that and will even survive mankind.” But he added: “Still I think treating the environment in a good way is the better option.”

I love this photograph above, with the tree of heaven sapling looking so happily squished into its tiny nook. As I wrote in my followup post to Leslie’s, this tree almost seems to prefer growing out of the most restrictive spaces.

In his email, the subject of which was “Ailanthus-Stories,” Maz sent along 16 photographs he’d taken around the same time that he wrote his article. (The article is in German – if you’d like to check it out, follow the directions he wrote in his comment. Leslie says it is very good!) Since he sent such an abundance of photos, we’ve decided to share them in two installments. Here’s the first half:

Some trees of heaven were discovered “growing out of the underground…”

And some grew from crevices at the base of a wall or sidewalk fixture (one of ailanthus’ favorite spots, I’ve noticed). Maz pointed out that these photographs show how little space the tree of heaven needs:

A close up of the previous plant.

This one’s just been chopped down (not for long…)

And this photograph, Maz wrote, “shows a supermarket; in the back you can see the mothertree of the small one on the roof.” He’s entitled it “Mum + baby.” What a great find!

Stay tuned for the second half of Maz’s tree of heaven photos!

On July 12, in the high noon sun, I caught sight of a plant living down below the street, underneath the subway grates at 9th Street and 6th Avenue.

For the past several months I’ve been shooting video “still lifes” of plants in the neighborhood. Hindered by technical difficulties, I had not been able to start posting them until now. (Please let me know if you have any troubles streaming the video – I am still not sure I got the settings right.) There is much more to come, going back through the seasons.

By the way, we’ve been getting some great submissions by our readers. Stay tuned for photos from Germany, Spain and Connecticut!

With the ivy-graffiti still on my mind, I’d like to share some more amazing instances of climbing plants I’ve discovered in Park Slope. This photograph that I took a little while ago, with its lush, dark ivy, reminds me of Leslie’s photograph of Juncker’s Hotel Garni, minus the beautiful way the ivy flows into windowboxes.

This plant, making a green stripe up the building, looks like it’s being trained to take over the front of this townhouse.

I assume this sort of behavior is the type that ends up killing the tree.

Attraction of vine to bush.

A charming little plant.

This dead tree cloaked in ivy makes a strange, big shape. It’s enclosed in a backyard, and I hadn’t noticed it for a long time because of the surrounding fence. I had to press the camera up to the chain link fence to take a picture.

From my logbook entry that day, April 27: “It is amazing how entirely the ivy has clothed the tree, weaving itself around its circumference, following each branch nearly to the very tip. At the highest heights of the ivy, the tendrils hang down.”

The poor branches, naked at the ends, resemble drumsticks.

Last fall, I was impressed by the multi-colored transformation of ivy on the side of a building above the Prospect Highway, which outdid the artistry of the graffiti underneath it. To my dismay, I recently discovered that the ivy has been cut back and entirely removed from the lower part of the wall, leaving a mass of dead leaves on dead branches still clinging to higher part of the wall, extending almost to the roof, out of reach.

Here’s the photograph I took in the fall. This wall has always been a mess of color and layers and patterns!

Now that the ivy’s been cut back, the graffiti below has resurfaced.

This part of the graffiti is placed so much higher than the rest – I wonder if it was done more recently, at a time when the ivy had already grown and covered the lower part of the wall. It’s like dating artifacts found at an excavation site!

The wall is so raw now – I don’t think taggers will be able to resist adding new artwork for long. And then perhaps the ivy will grow back and the cycle will begin again!

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.

Our book is still in the early planning stages but we will share more about it soon! Near the end of Anke’s visit, Karin, our first-prize winner in the U8 Plant Quiz, which we presented in the Berlin subway, came by to pick up her prize. She chose Photo 2 (Kottbusser Tor). While I was chatting with Karin, Anke said goodbye and slipped out the door.

This morning I discovered the film she made on her way back out into the leafy green world.

Photo courtesy CBS

Though perhaps a bit off topic, this CBS13 article from my hometown, “Family Sees Image Of Michael Jackson In Tree Stump,” was too good to go unmentioned. Talk about plants making shapes and speaking to us! And holding mirrors up to our minds…

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.

I documented in detail the purchase, the first day, and the second day of the Rose of Jericho. Then outdoor plants beckoned me away from the cycles of my indoor oddity, and I did not mention it again.

Looking back on the past year, I must admit I have not often watered the Rose and experienced its resurrection. The sheet of care tips that the tea-shop owner wrote recommended letting the plant go through its natural dry, dormant periods for a couple weeks between each watering. Since I water my other houseplants on a totally different cycle – every two or three days, I wouldn’t include the Rose of Jericho in these regular waterings, intending to water it separately. Sometimes months would pass before I remembered to do so. I also became hesitant to water it when a few small white puffs of mold appeared in its center after one watering. 

But now that the July sun is again heating my windowsill up like the Rose of Jericho’s native desert, I was happy to water it and watch it unfold. And I set it outside in the summer sunlight, letting it bloom over the street.

The summer here feels too hot now, but soon it will seem too short. We might as well bask in it while we can.