Gardens

Enter the Microscopic World of Bugs With These Award-Winning Garden Photos

Who doesn’t love to spend time in garden? Some people love it so much, though, that they stake out for hours, camera in hand, waiting for an insect to land on a flower petal to capture the perfect shot. These are the kind of people who submit their photography to the annual International Garden Photographer…

Keurig-Like Miracle-Gro Seed Pods Make Gardening Idiot-Proof

Whether you’re a fan of Keurig coffee machines or not, the product delivery method known as the ‘pod’ is here to stay. In the case of Miracle-Gro’s Gro-ables, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. The pods make planting a garden almost completely idiot-proof. Unless you find using a hose a challenge. Unlike Keurig’s coffee pods…

This Crumbling Highway Overpass Is Becoming a Sky Garden

If you live in a post-industrial city, odds are good that it’s got its share of abandoned, blighted transit infrastructure. Some cities demolish it, some cities let it fester, and other cities repurpose it. In Seoul, they’re choosing the latter. Seoul has spent the past year deciding how to renovate a long stretch of highway…

Behold the Gigantic Vertical Farm That the US Built For the World’s Fair

What comes to mind when you think about food in America? Creepy McDonalds marketing gimmicks? Ok, fine. But what aboutamber waves of grain? The latter is what inspired America’s pavilion at the Expo Milano 2015, which opened this week in Italy. America’s pavilion—which you can think of as a kind of giant exhibit showcasing 🇺🇸…

A Robotic Vertical Garden You Can Build With Hardware Store Materials

Vertical farms are all the rage, yet these systems are often expensive, messy, and utterly impractical for most urban dwellers. The Robotic Urban Farm System (RUFS) by Better Living Through Robotics improves on nearly every shortfall of the typical system: It uses very little water, no soil, and is made from accessible, affordable parts, with…

11 Clever Ways Cities Are Taking Advantage of Public Space

A garden skyscraper. A sidewalk library. A floating pool. A DIY bike park. These are some of the finalists in the Place By Design competition announced today by SXSW Eco, a new sustainability conference by the organizers of SXSW. Which one makes the greatest impact on a city? Finalists for the competition were selected across…

Forget Coolers and Store Your Beer In this Underground Elevator

Beer coolers are a pain in the ass. First of all, you have to find a bunch of ice. Then, you have to pour all the ice into the cooler. And that’s just the pregame for a wet night full of melting ice. Thank God some zany Danes found a better way. The eCool is…

A Guillotine On a Stick That Lets You Play Caesar With Slugs

If you’re tired of your local snail and slug population undoing all the hard work you’ve put into your garden, there’s finally a tool that lets you choose between getting rid of them humanely, or turning them into ironic compost to help your flowers and vegetables succeed. There’s no doubt that Unikia’s Snail Pick and…

The Food Growing on This Building Will Be Served at a Restaurant Inside

France will make quite a statement about feeding the world when it unveils its pavilion at the Milan Expo 2015. Not only will vegetables, herbs, and hops grow on the building’s exterior, but that same food will also be served at a restaurant inside. In fact, the whole place is set up to be like…

Gardener Claims He Hasn’t Watered This Flourishing Biosphere Since 1972

If you can’t raise a plant to save your life you know the appeal of terrariums, which can sustain themselves for months on end without being watered. But a retiree in the UK says he sealed up his bottle garden in 1972—and hasn’t watered it since. The Times reports on David Latimer, a Surrey man…

A Sniping Sprinkler That Only Targets Your Plants When They Need Water

A built-in sprinkler system is a better way to water a garden than just standing there randomly blasting plants with a hose. And taking that idea one step further, the Droplet turns your sprinklers into intelligent snipers that only water the plants you tell them to using a focused stream—except when rainy weather already has.…

Vines of bougainvillea and jasmine wind their way up laser-cut screens, engulfing these high-rise apartment buildings Casablanca, Morocco. The Gardens of Anfa is an under-construction mixed-used development designed by Maison Edouard François, and I bet it will smell heavenly. [design boom]

No, this is not a production still from Bio-Dome: Saudi Arabia, it’s a rendering for the King Abdullah International Gardens in Riyadh. Barton Willmore International designed the crescent-shaped complex which will recreate animal and plant habitats from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods—in the middle of the desert. [designboom]

Build a Custom Garden Planter With These Lego-Like Blocks

It’s hard to argue the fact that Lego is one of the greatest toys of all time, but who says the plastic building blocks have to only be used as toys? The creators of these wonderful Togetherfarm Blocks—made from recycled food-grade plastic—are intended for use as planters and garden boxes in any shape or size…

When spring comes round again, let’s all go to the Poison Garden

The saddest thing about it being winter is that the Alnwick Garden’s Poison Garden is closed until spring. The good news is that we have time to put it on our vacation list. Top image: Poison Garden by Jo Jakeman/flickr The Poison Garden is part of the larger complex of gardens in the town of…

NASA plans to grow turnips and basil on the Moon

Will remembering to water the plants be just as difficult in space as it is on earth? We’re about to find out. NASA has announced plans to plant the first garden on the moon in 2015 — and it might mean we’re one small step closer to space-colonization. Besides turnips and basil, the garden will…

The World’s Strangest and Most Magnificent Gardens

Landscape architects can be just as weird as building architects when it comes to their creations. Which is why these gardens are the living, growing embodiments of some pretty twisted imaginations. Lowarth Helygen (The Lost Gardens of Heligan), near Mevagissey in Cornwall, UK, with two mud sculptures, a small “jungle”, the last remaining pineapple pit…

Just Add Water To Grow This DIY Concrete Garden Furniture

Everyone knows it’s important to water the garden, but what about watering the furniture? Normally, that might just be proof of insanity, but if you plant a few of these of these customizable chairs, it’s just the first step to growing a nice crop of outdoor stools. Designed by Itay Kirshenbaum, “Betzavta” is a design…

Is This a Brilliant Self-Winding Garden Hose Or a Deadly Droid?

The makers of the self-winding RoboReel extension cord are back with a new and considerably larger version that houses an automatic retracting garden hose. It promises to make watering your garden easier and will presumably fend off armies of attacking clone troopers. https://gizmodo.com/powered-reel-prevents-your-extension-cords-from-turning-5901415 A hose attached to your outdoor faucet connects to the underside of…

The world’s most beautiful gardens are miracles of geoengineering

There are gardens and then there are carefully engineered masterpieces of plants, stones, and animals that fill acres of land with anthropogenic natural wonders. Humans don’t always trash their ecosystems. Sometimes we reshape them into something amazing. Here are some of the most incredible examples of landscape architecture, also known humbly as gardening. Click any…