Posts from — June 2009

©2008 Evershed Card Collection

Urban Delight

The street eating graffiti takes no pity on your soul,
Yet a garden chanced upon, in a sea of concrete
Works magic in your bones,
Like foliage embracing stones.

Tilled soil gives birth to bluebells,
Baby’s breath silences the endless traffic
As urban gardeners work miracles,
With seeds of hope.

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It takes place at the Bath Organic Group Allotments, Victoria Park, Bath.

‘The time is ripe for digging. As cheap imported fruit and veg rapidly become a thing of the past, Kilter invites you to grab a spade and elope to the allotment for a theatrical journey into the future of food. Through an intimate tale of love and vegetables, Kilter leads you and your neighbours down the bean-rows to explore food-security in a post-oil world.

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Vegetable Gardeners, 1496
By Shen Zhou, Chinese, 1427-1509
Link to image here.

The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom
by Simon Winchester

The great Sinologist Joseph Needham (1900-1995) is a legend for his Science and Civilization in China, an encyclopedic account of China’s achievements in science and technology. Presently there are 24 volumes in his classic series. On his first day in China in 1943, he saw a gardener at work and this set in motion his magnum opus.

Excerpt:

Needham wrote: “The old Chinese gardener in ragged blue coat and trousers with a wispy white beard who potters around smoking one of these long pipes with a tiny bowl — and a mongol cap, periodically performing elaborate grafting techniques on the plum tree.”

Winchester wrote “He (Needham) had evidently stopped to watch this old gardener, and not just because of the man’s exotic appearance. He realized that in following as closely as he could the manner in which the man was splicing, tying, and grafting the plum tree, he was actually witnessing something rather important.

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Renderings by James Halverson of Vancouver based Lux Visual Effects Inc.

The Waterpod

From Time Out New York article
June 4, 2009

“Built atop a refabricated 99′ x 31′ construction barge, the Waterpod is about as DIY as it gets: Living units have been constructed from found or donated materials. Most of the food will be produced onboard; the garden will grow beets, potatoes, corn, raspberry bushes and a variety of greens, and eggs will be available from the six birds in the chicken coop, which also provide fertilizer. All water is acquired through a rainwater-catch system, and bathroom facilities include a dry-compost toilet and a solar-heated shower.

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Be sure to watch this video in High Definition. Click on the YouTube icon and then on the HD icon beneath the video.

Once you’ve had your worm bin for a few months and the worms have turned your food scraps into soil, you need to separate the worms from the compost so you can use the worms again in fresh bedding — and put the finished compost to work in your garden.

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Lima, Peru; Community Garden on Former Soccer Field; Funded by CARE USA; 1991

These 26 photos are part of a larger collection of documents soon to be housed at Ryerson University in Toronto in the Jac Smit Memorial Library of Urban Agriculture.

“Under the merger arrangement, TUAN’s (The Urban Agriculture Network’s) comprehensive library of documents and materials on urban agriculture will be transferred to Toronto, Canada and supervised by Joe Nasr. Once it is re-established, the collection will be named the Jac Smit Memorial Library of Urban Agriculture and will be made available for use of researchers and practitioners worldwide.

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