Gardens · Eco-Chick

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Interview with Jess Woods: Mother Nature Meets Her Match

by Haley · 01/31/11

I met Jess Woods six and a half years ago. She’s a blonde, curly haired, blue-eyed lady who shouted love from the moment I worked with her. Fast forward to now for she’s a mother of two girls under the age of five, homemaker, and breadwinner with an adorable hubbie. She is a brilliant writer who let me know that I could write, but she also taught me a ton about being eco-concious before it was a “thing”. She’s the kind of gal who walks into a room, and things get a little bit better. Since she is so brilliant I had to ask to borrow a little bit of her time for an email interview!

Haley: Why was it important to you to have a house with a garden?

Jess: I’ve been trying, since I moved to New York permanently in 2000, to express how much I love this city. I love its architecture, its grid of streets above 1st and its paved cow-paths down in the Financial District. I love that there are 192 countries on this planet (as recognized by the UN) and that, last I heard, there are representatives for 191 of those living in this city and calling it home. I could go on and on here, but what I want to say, I guess, is that I cannot imagine a more vibrant place to raise my two daughters – a more teaching, generous, electric place than New York City in which to have them grow up.

I want to show them the world, and part of that is not just the world’s people and their cities, but nature and food and where that food comes from. We have been striving to eat organically, seasonally, and locally. These things are possible here, more so than is initially apparent. But there’s no way to do so more authentically than by growing food in your very own garden. So we’re doing that. Admittedly, last year was full of its foibles. My tomatoes were a disaster, for example.
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eco-aware, eco-baby food, eco-concious, eco-home, Gardening, gardens, Home, mother nature

Eve S. Mosher: Eco Art Visualizing Powerful Intentions

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by Alicia Lubowski-Jahn · 03/08/10

48 Hours of Sao Paolo – Time’s Square, what are we not seeing? ▪ (proposal, 2008)

If seeing is believing, Eve S. Mosher is helping us to stretch our imagination to conceive our world as it might be in a future whose outcome we determine. Among her public art projects, she has visualized a Times Square unplugged from its high voltage current. Referencing the time component of the ever-pulsing energy of the eponymous city square, a time-out would open up new perspectives, what Mosher describes as: “to see what exactly are we missing by seeing the ads and not the space between, behind and around them.”

▪ Insert ____ Here ▪ (2008) – Insert *BIOSWALE/FILTRATION* Here – 062

Mosher also highlights time in her numerous other urban projects, where we are reminded of the intimate connection of the past and the future in our present. Neighborhood signs, for example, recommending “insert___here” suggest the promise of filling in the blanks in altering our communities through proposed insertions like green roofs, bike lines, solar panels, and a local/organic farmer’s stand. She has also retraced the sea level of New York City, projecting a drastically elevated future waterline of a metropolis increasingly flooded as a result of climate change.

▪ HighWaterLine ▪ (2007) – Passing through DUMBO, with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background

Seeding the City is Mosher’s most recent community project and it too expresses states of potential and becoming. Small plots of green tagged by vibrant green flags are sprouting on rooftops throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. As Mosher herself describes, this initiative is about the power of potential: “Each installation is a seed of potential – potential for community action, potential for more green roof, potential for change!”

Seeding the City – “Cityscape”

Mosher, who is in residence at Wave Hill through March, will be participating in a panel discussion on art and environment on Sunday, March 7th at 2pm (with Susan Benarcik and Anne-Katrin Speiss, moderated by Mierle Laderman Ukeles) and in an open studio event on March 21st.

▪ Insert ____ Here ▪ (2008) – Insert *LOCAL/ORGANIC FARMER’S STAND* Here – 068

All images by Eve Mosher.

art, Brooklyn, eco art, gardens, New York City

Vertical Gardens Feed and Beautify Cities of the Future: Existing and Planned

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by Starre Vartan · 05/15/09

Starre Vartan in front of a Green Wall at the Vertical Gardens exhibit at Exit Art

The Vertical Gardens exhibit at New York City’s Exit Art was a glimpse into the future– not one that’s made up of sleek silver flying machines or barren cityscapes, but instead a vision wherein buildings and urban structures are integrated into the local ecosystem.

This is the kind of future I can see myself, my friends and their children living, growing, and thriving in; where one doesn’t have to choose between the city and the country; where you can bring the farm and the garden right into the city center.

Vertical Gardens are not only beautiful green spaces among the concrete jungle of the urban landscape, they are practical too: these gardens can grow food for the surrounding communities, giving access to green space AND fresh food (what could be more local than the vertical garden farm on your own block?)

These vertical farms are designed to help ease the environmental impact of what the U.N. estimates the world’s population will reach roughly nine billion people, and the vast majority will live in cities in the next 50 years. According to Mother Nature Network’s article on the subject:

..both animal and plant life could thrive indoors. Fish such as tilapia, trout, and striped bass would live in the pond on the ground floor, while fruits and vegetables would be grown hydroponically, without the use of soil, on upper floors. Wastewater from the fish tanks would be transported to the basement where, along with drain water from showers and sinks, it would be treated and then used to fill the fishponds and hydroponic tanks.
Water containing human wastes and other organic material would pass through a methane reactor to create energy to power the building. With no need for pesticides or food transportation, and the ability to produce multiple crops in a season (six corn harvests, for example, instead of one), the vertical farm sounds like an eco-cornucopia.

Below see some of the innovative ways that Vertical Gardens, Vertical Farms and other forms of urban gardens have the design world creating green spaces sprung from concrete.

The High Line, a former elevated train track that runs along Manhattan’s West Side, is being rehabbed into a park with great views of the Hudson River. When complete, it will be a multimodal ribbon of green running alongside the river, echoing the natural curves of the water.

The Shake Shack in Manhattan has a green roof, which blends in well with its location in Madison Square Park.

EVO Design created these planters which provide both light and space for plants, in one unit. Eventually the creators hope to make it a solar-powered unit.
“New design is about the Interaction between architecture, landscape architecture, farmers and construction workers. It should all be more collaborative, because the old system of separation and specialization isn’t working. All this technology we need is here, we just need to get it into use,” saysMica Gross (pictured).

cities, gardens, urban

Smart Garden and Lawn Watering

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by Starre Vartan · 07/16/08

What are your recommendations for keeping a garden quenched without wasting water?
—Rachel Carter, Ludlow, VT

You can forget juicy tomatoes this summer if you don’t give your plants enough to drink, but the fact is, most people water their gardens wrong. Each year, from May to September, water use nearly doubles in parts of the country (mostly for keeping our backyards green), and about half of it is wasted through evaporation, runoff, and overwatering.

You may not need to water at all if you use native plants, because they’re already adapted to a region’s climate. But if you are going to water, the first thing to do is assess how much your yard and garden really need, says Bernd Leinauer, a turfgrass specialist for New Mexico State University’s extension service. He suggests contacting your local university extension office for advice, since most people use too much water.

Next, audit your sprinklers, which are often inefficient. “They throw water in the air, and you hope that it eventually lands where you want it,” Leinauer says. “It often doesn’t.” (For easy-to-follow instructions on how to do an irrigation audit, visit Austin’s site.)

Furthermore, using a drip irrigation system instead of sprinklers can cut your water use by a third or more, while other systems, including bubblers, microsprayers, and soaker hoses, work well for watering specific trees or plantings in a small area. Drip irrigation uses a grid system of hoses buried three to four inches deep, with holes every 12 inches, so water is delivered slowly and directly to the plants at root level, where they can use it most efficiently.

Your plants will be happier and healthier, too; watering at the roots ensures the plants receive consistent moisture and makes them less susceptible to disease. Drip irrigation also keeps topsoil intact and nutrients in place so they can do their job. In the end you’ll have more time to lie back in your hammock and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Originally printed as Starre’s “Green Guru” column for Audubon Magazine.

conservation, gardens, lawns, water

Smartest Car; Still Worse Than The Dumbest Bike

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by Katie Kish · 12/30/07

Pink Car

The process of buying and making new cars isn’t the solution to this enormous fossil fuel problem we’re having. Hackneyed as it might seem, we need to develop long term sustainable community transportation, AND to rethink the way that we structure our lives around cars.

Buying a smart car is kind of like putting a band aid on a giant gash- technically, at a minuscule level, it’s helping- but if your concern stops at your purchase, you’re still going bleed to death… and worse, you may begin to confuse consumerism with activism. Often, trying to change the world by buying things isn’t really creating the change that companies convince us it is.

However, having said all that…