Berlin: Taking spring into his own hands

Snow is still on the ground a week after Easter. Most Berliners are busy complaining about the total absence of spring, but my neighbor Herr Mischke has taken matters into his own hands. On the mountain of old snow in front of his bookshop, Atlantis, he’s throwing this spring’s first garden party on the icy peak.

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Geografische Buchhandlung Atlantis is an independent bookshop ‘for reading travelers and traveling readers,’ with maps, travel guides, and general interest books (mostly in German). Karl-Marx-Allee 98, Berlin-Friedrichshain.

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Miami: Shade Tree installation Friday, Dec. 7

For one day only, a very odd tree in Miami will become a pop-up art gallery and installation site for an  event entitled Shade Tree. Tomorrow, December 6, artist Barron Sherer informed us via email, he and William Keddell will be showing a site-specific work about this large tree which has grown right through and around a chain link fence.

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Berlin: Deciduous Christmas trees in Kreuzberg

The folks on Dresdenerstraße, a little street tucked away behind Kottbusser Tor in Berlin-Kreuzberg, have gotten up several of their currently leafless street trees with colorful baubles and ribbons. For once, Christmas finery isn’t reserved for the conifers.

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Berlin: Ivy snuggles up to stockinged drainpipe

Outfitted by guerrilla-knitting street artists, this Berlin drainpipe offers a warm surface for an ivy vine on a cold November day.

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Berlin: Shopping cart planter!

The shopping cart as mobile guerrilla gardening planter, which I first saw in Basel, Switzerland last year, has appeared in Berlin-Neukölln.

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Berlin: Knit for the trees

Tackily dressed, but warm, tree spotted in Samariter Kiez in Berlin-Friedrichshain.

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San Francisco: Urban gardens, tree art and “parklets”

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.

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London: Larger-than-life plant street art

Today’s Urban Plant was photographed by one of my favorite photographers on Instagram, @akafrank. He spotted this mesmerizing street art on Felix Street in Cambridge Heath, London. Here’s the exact location on Google Maps.

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Brooklyn: Trees wearing sweaters

The weather has been very mercurial lately, swinging from warm summery days for short sleeves to gusty days like today when I go back inside to get my sweater. The weather is whipping the trees around too and I bet some of them would be happy to have sweaters too, like these trees I saw in Brooklyn back in January. 

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Berlin: Ivy graffiti, Engelbecken

10 November 2008, ca. 16:00
Engelbecken, Kreuzberg, Berlin

Freshly sprayed graffiti interacts (probably inadvertently) with the plants that had claimed the wall first. Red and gold leaves have been masked with black, but others have been memorialized in green: they blocked the new silver paint from hitting its target, leaving bits of the earlier green paint in perfectly leaf-shaped patterns. A welcome bit of subtlety and detail in a piece of painting that would otherwise be monotone and boring.

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