California: suburban plant research by Phoebe

Do you see urban plants in this picture? What about graffiti?

My sharp-eyed sister Phoebe did. She observed some interesting sidewalk phenomena during a recent visit to our childhood home:

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Berlin: Heaven on earth

Baby tree of heaven on Mainzerstraße, Berlin-Friedrichshain.

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Berlin: Urban plant street art

A doubly illicit urban plant on the side of a clothing donation bin in Prenzlauer Berg.

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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: Nighttime weeds along the Gowanus Canal

On a recent warm night while traversing the Gowanus Canal, I spied a couple suspicious green characters lurking about, like this many-headed ivy monster…

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Viennese plant research

Artist Klaus Harth wrote to tell us he was capturing urban plants in Vienna long before Urban Plant Research came into existence. He is a reader of one of our favorite blogs, Balkon & Garten, and as of this week, one of our readers too. 

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Brooklyn: Ivy-graffiti, revisited

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.

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San Francisco: Two fenced-in spaces: an abandoned gas station vs. the concrete terraces of an imposing church

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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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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Brooklyn: Ivy-graffiti at 5th Ave./Prospect Highway

I recently photographed ivy and a billboard contributing their own graffiti to the side of a building above the Prospect Highway…

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