The Wonderlust Journal » Green Thumb

Container Garden Solutions

Eliza Coleman — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 04:25:00 +0000

The Bacsac is brilliant. It solves the dilemna of rental-dwellers everywhere who don’t want to plant a garden only to have to leave it behind for the next person. Raised beds + mobility.

I have a nice big balcony with a southern exposure, so I’ve been starting some container garden efforts, but I’ve resisted my desire for a nice big raised bed type wooden container because there’d be no way to take it with me when I eventually move.

Even moving a bunch of small pots will be annoying, and a bunch of small pots doesn’t totally satisfy my desire for a big soil-filled garden patch.

The Bacsac is cleverly made of material usually used for erosion containment, so it’s lightweight, durable, and allows for drainage– perfect not only for gardeing but also mobility. As they demonstrate in their cute photo at top, you can just pick up your garden and take it with you!

They come in different configurations so you can get whatever size you need. From the photo below, it looks like you can even get one that could drape over a balcony or fence– pretty clever.

And, it’s actually more affordable than I expected. Buying pots and containers adds up fast, and the easy alternative of just buying one Bacsac instead of a bunch of containers is pretty appealing.

Available through the cool design store A+R (they have lots of great little gifts!)

via Apartment Therapy

An Itching Green Thumb

Eliza Coleman — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:38:00 +0000

Spring is definitely here, and it’s definitely affecting me. I love the idea of spring– re-birth, new life, and the coming of summer. And I have planting fever.

I find myself daydreaming about things like custom planter boxes and what I’m going to cook come summer using my the produce I’m producing on my balcony. So, I loved this post on Design*Sponge about an heirloom seed bank in Petaluma.

Started by Jerre Gettle at just 17 in 1998, this business, which sells only non-GMO* heirloom seeds, expanded so much after its beginnings in Missouri that he decided to take it to California, to the crossroads of “foodies, farmers, and the slow food movement.”

*if you don’t know what GMO is, you must watch Food Inc., it’s available on Netflix instant and will instantly change how you think about food.

Gettle started his business, which was originally mail-order, after becoming interested in, and starting a collection of, rare and old varieties of seeds. Since most seeds available at the local hardware store are manufactured and/or hybridized GMO seeds, and pure seeds are harder and harder to come by, his company quickly developed a loyal following.

Today, it operates out of this cool space in Petaluma, where each seed is given a detailed description and is packaged with these cool retro graphics. The owners had the seed shelves seen above Amish-built on site according to custom designs.

I like a company that wants every detail to be exactly right.

In the middle of the store, design*sponge noted, were bags of heirloom tomatoes, still covered in dirt, with signs denoting their varietal.

And of course since it’s design*sponge, they then went home and organized their seeds into these airtight cork vials, labeled with the varietal and date. Pretty clever if you’re not going to plant them right away– seeds are actually alive and have a life span, so it’s a good idea to know when you bought them.

The cool at-home packaging makes this whole thing even more appealing to me.

Now I’m feeling the spring fever more than ever…

See the whole post here on Design*Sponge.

Vertical Gardens

Eliza Coleman — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:00:00 +0000

How cool are these “vertical gardens” by Patrick Blanc??

They can be grown anywhere, as they don’t weigh very much (they don’t use soil), and you can adjust the plant types depending on how much sunlight the area gets.

I personally want one just like this on my balcony…

What if half the sides of buildings in New York looked like this?? Not only would it completely change the feel of walking around the city, it would clean up the air SO much!!!

Though Patrick Blanc’s website claims he has the rights to the term “vertical garden,” I’ve been seeing this concept, also called a “living wall,” a lot recently. Here’s a smaller scale take on the idea…

This succulent garden is from Flora Grubb, and you can buy kits from them to make your own.

Here’s another succelent version– I think I like it better frameless, and with the plants in less of a grid-like looking formation…

These frames (would you call them frames or planters?) are pretty, and Sunset Magazine’s website teaches you how to make them and links to supplier websites.

Here’s a great example of one used on an apartment balcony, from apartment therapy–

Is this one growing veggies?? That would be so cool. Also from apt. therapy.

Wooly Pockets is a company that creates clever recycled-plastic containers (“pockets”) for creating a garden just about anywhere… check out their website here.

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Sunset Magazine’s website has a feature on creative vertical gardens like this…

Inspired?

Detroit’s Abandoned Houses

Eliza Coleman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:42:00 +0000

The blogging couple behind Sweet Juniper write about raising kids in Detroit, the city sometimes called “The City That Civilization Abandoned.”

In their series “Feral Houses,” they document a few of the estimated 10,000 abandoned houses in Detroit. 10,000!

They call them “feral” because like the feral dogs of Detroit, stray dogs that have essentially returned to their primitive state and learned how to survive on the streets, these houses are slowly returning to a “wild” state.

I like this concept because it makes it sound like the houses were natural things that people found and tamed, and that they are now returning to the wild. The image above particularly makes it feel like someone had once come and discovered this house behind all the vines and chopped them down, and now the vines have returned to take back the house.

They explain that as the lime-based paint and other materials deteriorate, they provide the perfect environment for growing vines. Also, trees will often begin to grow right into and up through the house, as seen in the image at top.

The sign in the yard above reads, “WILL THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE DETROIT PLEASE TURN OFF THE LIGHTS?”

via ReadyMade

Val Verde

Eliza Coleman — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:11:00 +0000

You know those kinds of memories where you’re not really sure whether it is a real memory, or a memory of watching yourself in a home video, or even a memory of how you imagined a story someone told you?

Well, I recall going on a hike with my sister soon after she moved to Montecito, when I was about 14, and that the trail, which she had found with a friend on a previous hike, took us right up to the backyard of an abandoned mansion.

I remember peering through bushes for glimpses of the mansion in its slightly decaying glory and my sister telling me that there were rumors that one of the descendants of the former owner still lived in there and tried to keep it up, as evidenced by the still-pruned shrubs and other such details. Supposedly sometimes hikers (trespassers) spotted someone swimming in the pool, but neighbors never saw cars come or go.

She also told me that in the 1920s, when the house was in its heyday, the owner often held glamorous days-long parties for celebrities up from LA and East Coast polo players who vacationed in Santa Barbara.

I asked her years later where that hike was, and she didn’t have any recollection of it, and said the story I described didn’t ring any bells. That is sounded somewhat like Val Verde, but that Val Verde was run by a foundation and that there’s no way some squatter lived in there.

Love the stripes above. The clock propped on the floor makes this shot perfectly eery.

Click for the rest:

Ever since, Val Verde has become woven into that memory as the images of what I saw, but I’ve never stopped wondering if I imagined what we saw on that hike or the stories she told me. Maybe we just went on an ordinary hike and she told me about Val Verde and I imagined the rest? Or did the whole thing happen, and she just doesn’t remember, and the hike and that mansion are still out there for me to rediscover?

I still think about it whenever I hike a new trail in Montecito, wondering if I’ll come across that old house… Interestingly, Ann Mitchell’s dreamlike photos of Val Verde, the black and whites above, capture the way I remember the house I saw… mysterious, shadowy, and intriguing.

Regardless, Val Verde is beautiful and worth sharing, and I’m convinced that whatever the case, Val Verde itself has some mysteries to it. From my research, I learned that Val Verde was built in 1915 by architect Betram Goodhue, and that it was the first single-home family built in the Spanish Colonial Revival style in the US. The landscaping was done by Lockwood de Forest, who also later remodeled the buildings.

It is called the best-preserved California home in this style, and is considered one of the finest examples of this style of architecture in California. It is also the best-preserved California home in this style, and is considered one of the finest examples of this style of architecture in California.

Tiles from the facade of a Middle Eastern building thought to date to the third century.

I couldn’t find much information about Henry Dater, the original owner who commissioned it, but I did run across the intriguing snippet that the house was “once a retreat for the nation’s gay cultural elite,” though it wasn’t clear during what years this was true. It was actually quite difficult to find information about the house, especially surprising given its architectural significance.

The next piece of history is that in 1955 Heaton Horth Austin, an heiress from Chicago, bought Val Verde as a wedding present for her husband, Dr. Warren Austin. The Austins started the Austin Val Verde Foundation, which preserved the property until it went bankrupt (after their death) just a few months ago.

Unfortunately, even while held by the foundation, it wasn’t open to the public because Montecito residents thought it would cause “traffic issues” to have tourists coming to see the house, even though traffic studies proved this wouldn’t happen. The only access to the home the foundation was allowed to give was through the few parties per year they were permitted to throw.

After filing for bankruptcy, seemingly because Montecito residents managed to block the foundation from any me
ans of making money, it was purchased by a Russian millionaire, Sergey Grishin, for $15.2 million in September of this year. ($15.2m? Only?! I’m serious! It’s a landmark and it’s like 20 acres!) He hasn’t stated what he plans to do with the property, and its fate remains a mystery.

Ok and lastly, what is this about? I came across this blurb is from a Santa Barbara Independent (our newspaper) obituary.
“Betty Gallagher, the wife of the first president of the Associated Press, who helped him run the Berlin bureau after World War II, died Thursday. She was 93.
She died at her home in her Val Verde Casa Dorinda home.”
Printed like that! With Val Verde crossed out! What does that mean? What do those writers at the Independent know?!

Images and information from Austin Val Verde: Impressions of a Montecito Masterpiece by Ann Mitchell and Jay Belloli, Austin Val Verde: A Montecito Masterpiece by Berge Aran, and the Santa Barbara Independent.