Posted in From our contributors, Plants worldwide, tagged architecture, art, building, city, gutter, photography, pictures, San Francisco, sidewalk, wall, weeds on 1 May 2012 | 4 Comments »
On the sloping streets of San Francisco, local plants are interacting with the local architecture, growing against all odds. Phoebe Kuo sent in the above photo, reporting, “An intrepid urban plant seeks refuge on a steep San Francisco incline on Hayes Street, facing Alamo Square park (home of the famous Full House ‘painted ladies’), inside a nice, wet rain gutter.” Let’s take a closer look…
Posted in Plants worldwide, Projects from others, tagged architecture, art, photography, pictures, plants, San Francisco, sidewalk, street on 23 March 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Let’s take a little trip around San Francisco with local photographer Melinda Earle. She documents the Richmond neighborhood in series of lovely slice-of-life cell phone shots called The Richmond Chronicles, as well as shooting around town. Every so often, she catches odd juxtapositions of San Francisco’s pastel architecture and squeezed-in plant life, like the one above, at 8th and Balboa. I’m happy to be able to share a few of these plants here.
Posted in From our contributors, Plants worldwide, tagged art, drawing, flower, found, photography, pictures, plants, San Francisco on 24 February 2012 | 3 Comments »
Sometimes plants erupt right out of solid pavement, as we have documented in the past (Sara’s feather-weed stem and my asphalt-defying plant). This blue-headed beauty appeared at the Alamo Elementary School in San Francisco this Tuesday, where it was documented by Drew, who goes by @artnok_a on Instagram. Thanks for sharing this beautiful urban plant, Drew!
Posted in Plants worldwide, tagged art, city, parks, photography, public space, San Francisco, street art, urban planning on 15 January 2012 | 2 Comments »
The urban greening report from San Francisco continues! Last weekend on our walks around the Mission, we learned about two initiatives that are transforming the city’s streets and sidwalk. First, on Alabama Street at 24th in the Mission district, after eating terrific pan dulce at the La Victoria bakery, we admired a sidewalk-greening project in which residents have removed some cement on the mostly paved-over sidewalk area to create little urban gardens. A sign explained that fully paved sidewalks lead to poor drainage, while open spaces within the sidewalk are both pleasant and practical, absorbing rainwater.
Posted in Plants worldwide, tagged art, avocado, city, DIY, gardening, photography, potted plant, San Francisco, urban gardening on 11 January 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Happy New Year! I’m sending you all my sunniest greetings for the new year, and apologies for the long silence. I escaped gray Berlin for three sunny weeks driving up and down my home state of California, meeting with my Urban Plant collaborator Sara in picturesque Napa Valley and spotting urban plants all along the way!
Posted in From our contributors, Plants worldwide, tagged architecture, art, California, city, garden, green roof, native plants, photography, plants, San Francisco on 3 July 2009 | Leave a Comment »
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 I asked Megan for the scoop. It turns out that this is no average green roof, but something much more wonderful.
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Posted in Plants worldwide, tagged art, city, gas station, graffiti, photography, plants, San Francisco, urban plant research on 24 May 2009 | 3 Comments »
During a visit to San Francisco last week, I was hanging out in the Mission with an old friend from college and we passed by this closed-down gas station ripe with weeds and graffiti. On the sidewalk in front of the lot was a Heidelberg press sitting shinily in the sun. My friend’s attention was caught by this amazing spectacle of machinery while I went and checked out the weeds.
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