The urban parks designed and built by Frederick Law Olmsted and his firm were described as the “lungs of the city” and as “public pleasure grounds.” Olmsted completed Central Park, his first project, in 1873, having begun it in 1857. One of his last park designs was Jackson Park in Chicago, which was constructed in [...]
Archive for March, 2008
The Lungs of the City
Posted in As Landscape on March 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Diet of Flowers
Posted in As Kind on March 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Flowers are not just for looking at, or even just for smelling. You can eat them too. Culinary use of flowers experiences periodic revivals, but has been know since ancient times. The last surge in flower-as-ingredient was probably in the 1980s with the rise of nouvelle cuisine. At that time they were also used extensively [...]
Beautiful and Invasive
Posted in As Kind on March 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
If you have ever stopped to pick flowers along the roadside, taken them home, put them in a vase and when they died, thrown them out, then you might be helping to spread invasive species.
Roadsides are disturbed and stressed environments, the ideal spot for non-native species to take hold. Natives, coping as they are with [...]
Insectivorous Plants
Posted in As Kind on March 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Carnivorous plants seem to attract their own breed of plant lover. Browsing through the many Web sites posted on this subject one is struck by the difference in tone between a site dedicated plants that eat insects versus, say, one devoted to roses. People devoted to roses emphasize their pedigree and elegance while those interested [...]
Pet Banes
Posted in As Kind on March 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Since we are usually not inclined to start nibbling on the flowers – cut or potted – that we bring into our homes, we might not stop to consider the danger to pets from poisonous plants.
Some plants, like poinsettias, have been rumored to be dangerous, but have actually been shown to be more irritating than [...]
A Green and Pleasant Place
Posted in As Event on March 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
As a child I was taken to Planting Fields, an arboretum that is now a state park, in Oyster Bay on Long Island. As an undergraduate I visited the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, Scotland and as a graduate student I found myself wondering into the Rhododendron Gardens in Bremen, Germany during some free time [...]
