Blogs & Ecology

Mushroom Kit for Gardenless Gardening

Since no one can match the spectacular architecture of the China Olympics 2008, particularly in these tough economic times, Britain is looking elsewhere to make its mark for 2012. Their choice: great gardens and a Botanical Olympics. Britain has a horticultural tradition that set the pace for the western world, hence the announcement that there will be a half-mile long botanical garden as the focal point. Inspired by Britain’s five centuries of collecting plants from around the world, the park will be a lasting legacy for the community after the games are finished.

The house-in-a-greenhouse probably wouldn't play very well in say, Arizona, where enclosing your house in glass shell would be folly. But Bengt Warne, a Swedish architect, starting designing what he called the Naturhus (Nature House) in 1976 to work with Scandinavian nature. Warne put up his own Naturhus before he died in 2006, but two other Swedish families have now designed their own versions of an enclosed house.

Greenhouse on the outside, energy-efficiency on the inside

In a small town in Far West Texas, Clyde Curry has been busy refining and perfecting his papercrete mixture. Papercrete is mostly recycled paper and his new formula even gives an afterlife to styrofoam as well. Clyde mixes this waste into paste and then makes bricks. Lots of them! What looks like large, heavy concrete bricks are actually light and slightly spongy, but also ultra strong, fire resistant, and highly insulative. Clyde then stacks the bricks into non-traditional shapes until…POOF! He has a Palace unlike no other.

:: GreenUpgrader encourages minimally packaged lunches like the Bento Box.

:: The EPA issues more stringent regulations for gas-powered lawn and garden equipment.

:: Eat Drink Better decodes eco-food labels.

:: Chicago hosts the Museum of Sustainable Style, an exhibition of green fashion.

:: We're reminded of the repercussions of peak oil and what we can do to help stop it.

An Excellent Introduction to Mycology
When I wrote about MushroomExpert.com, I was impressed by this comprehensive online resource for anyone wanting to know more about the mushrooms and fungi that we see in the world around us. In fact, I was so impressed with the site’s content and its humorous yet thorough and responsible approach to mycology that I ordered both of site creator Michael Kuo’s books right then and there. Now that I have both titles,

photo: The Green School

Read more: An innovative new sustainable school opens in Bali. Students from all over the globe learn the latest in green living while living in paradise....

Push Reel Mowers
I came out of the closet as a reel mower addict a few months ago; I still believe that replacing grass with native low-lying species of plants and food crops is the best solution, but for those who still have grass lawns (and that's a lot of people), reel mowers make sense in the majority of cases.

SunLawn LMM-40 Reel Mower Review
Today I review a model of reel mower by SunLawn. Read on for photos, technical specifications, and my impressions....

Last week we had the pleasure of checking out the One Planet--Ours! Sustainability for the 22nd Century installation at the United States Botanic Garden just a stones throw from the Capitol in Washington, DC. Despite the odd name (isn't sustainability for the 21st century hard enough?) the federally-funded exhibit offered a dazzling array of inspiring eco demonstration projects, including the kinds of energy technologies the current administration and government has done so little to support.

Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

A few years ago the City of Palm Desert, Calif. gave up on lawns and started converting to indigenous plants that could survive without water. Landscape manager Spencer Knight says "The city decided to stop apologizing for the desert and said, 'We live in the desert; it is what it is ".

Unfortunately, the golden barrel cacti are expensive, and now fetch as much as eight hundred bucks. They have shallow roots and are easy to dig up, so thieves started pulling them out.

So now they are sticking microchips in them....

Good public art stops you in your tracks, while the best public art also opens up a new thought channel in your head. Which, in terms of the evolution of the environmental ethos, may be what we all really need right now.

Moss greens up public space

Six Ways that Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
Yesterday I posted about MushroomExpert.com, and in the process of researching that post I came across the above video of Paul Stamets speaking at TED which, for some reason, we have yet to feature on TreeHugger (though we have written about ...

Comprehensive Online Guide to Mushrooms and Fungi

Victory gardens have come back ever bigger - garden magazines and home gardening tools sales are good even in this recessionary economy. The harvest season is almost upon us, and an extension of that urban victory garden idea is to glean the fruit (and nuts) on urban trees that doesn't get picked or used (except by birds and animals) for various reasons...