Going Beyond The Potted Plant

Matthew McGregor-Mento put 400 plants in his vertical garden in Manhattan

GIVEN the chance to accompany a team of botanists on a plant-collecting expedition to South America, most gardeners would probably be satisfied with the experience. They wouldn’t come home and try to recreate the rain forest in Manhattan.

But Michael Riley isn’t like most gardeners. Mr. Riley, a former commodities trader turned plant expert who went on to become assistant director of the Horticultural Society of New York, was eager to move beyond potted plants in a way that hadn’t yet occurred to many others. It took a number of expeditions, a lot of research and more than a decade and a half, but by 2003 he had figured out how to grow a wall of plants inside his Upper West Side apartment.

“In the rain forest, I realized that plants didn’t need to grow in pots with labels,” said Mr. Riley, 64. “I wanted to grow plants in ways that were natural to them.”

With his partner, Francisco Correa, a Spanish teacher who is now 52, Mr. Riley attacked a corner of his living area, stripping the walls of plaster and affixing exterior-grade plywood to new and existing building studs. On top of the plywood went bitumen roofing to protect the walls. Cork bark was then stapled over that, and plants were inserted into pockets in the cork. Sprinklers and lighting were installed overhead, trenches were put in at the base of the walls to catch water that trickled down, and pools were added in the middle of the room to increase humidity.

Vertical Gardens

These days, Mr. Riley’s project isn’t that unusual. Vertical gardens — which began as an experiment in 1988 by Patrick Blanc, a French botanist intent on creating a garden without dirt — are becoming increasingly popular at home. Avid and aspiring gardeners, frustrated with little outdoor space, are taking another look at their walls and noticing something new: more space. And a number of companies are selling ready-made systems and all-in-one kits for gardeners like Mr. Riley who want to do it themselves. (For those who prefer to leave it to the professionals, landscape designers can build vertical gardens for a hefty fee.)

In the last few years, companies that sell green wall supplies have seen a jump in sales. ELT, an Ontario company that specializes in green roofs, began selling living wall systems a little over three years ago and is now one of the biggest suppliers to the United States. Greg Garner, the company’s president, said that its green-wall sales have increased 300 percent since 2008. Four months ago, the company introduced a cheaper, lighter kit to make living walls accessible to the average gardener; prices start at about $40 for a one-square-foot panel.

“We’ve turned living walls into something anyone can do,” Mr. Garner said. “The walls have gone from zero percent of our business leads to 80 percent of our business, and it’s happening all over the place, from the Middle East to North America to Europe.”

Companies Focus In On Living Walls

Another big living-wall company, Gsky Plant Systems in Vancouver, British Columbia, was founded four years ago as a green roof supplier but now focuses almost exclusively on vertical gardens, which it designs, installs and maintains for around $125 a square foot. Hal Thorne, Gsky’s chairman, said the company’s growth in the last year “was phenomenal — we nearly doubled sales.”

Many of the modular systems — essentially plastic trays filled with dirt and attached to a wall, with a sprinkler or drip irrigation system installed above — differ dramatically from Patrick Blanc’s living walls, which can be seen in commercial and institutional buildings around the world, including the Athenaeum hotel in London and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Mr. Blanc, who was inspired by tropical rain-forest plants he had studied, knew plants could survive on water and fertilizer alone, and developed a system for growing them on walls lined with felt. The living wall was part of his effort to bring greenery into cities. “When you live in towns, you don’t always go into gardens,” he said. “It’s really important to use empty spaces to invite nature into town.”

He is not a fan of the new kits. On a recent visit to San Francisco to begin work on a green wall for a private high school, his largest outdoor vertical garden in North America, Mr. Blanc dismissed them as artificial. Plants may grow vertically on a surface like the face of a cliff, he said, but “in nature, you don’t have vertical dirt.”

Peter Kastan’s 12-by-12-foot green wall in Miami

“It’s like having a large poodle,” said Peter Kastan. “You have to take care of it, feed it, walk it. It’s intensive care for plants.” More Photos »

At a local nursery, he pointed at one modular system: “This is very heavy and a lot of plastic,” he said. “After three to five years, you have no more substrate — the dirt gets compacted.”

Last year, inspired by Mr. Blanc’s work, Matthew McGregor-Mento, 38, an executive creative director at Gyro: HSR, a New York advertising agency, and his wife, Emma, 35, a massage therapist, set out to build a vertical garden in their two-bedroom apartment in the East Village. They attached an 8-by-10-foot aluminum frame to a wall in the entry hall, screwed waterproof sheets of PVC to the frame and tacked on two layers of matting. Then they inserted some 400 plants — philodendrons, ivies and ferns — into holes they cut in the felt.

A trough they installed along the floor collects runoff water from the irrigation system, and a pump with a filtration sponge sends it back up the wall. Timers control the watering, which happens four times a day.

Design Challenges

The design, which they devised with the help of a horticulturalist friend, was based on Mr. Blanc’s system and on research they had done online. The total cost was $3,000, but the result was worth it, Mr. McGregor-Mento said. Most people who visit want a green wall of their own, and the effort involved wasn’t that onerous: “Building a vertical wall is about as difficult as painting a room.”

Others have found it more challenging. Peter Kastan, an unemployed movie location scout in Miami, had never grown anything when he decided to install a vertical garden in a friend’s loft. The apartment, which his friend offered to him as a laboratory since it was vacant and he couldn’t rent it, had abundant light and high ceilings, and Mr. Kastan, after reading about Mr. Blanc’s living gardens online, thought it would be an ideal environment.

He began by contacting living-wall creators around the world for advice, and then drove all over Florida visiting nurseries to find plants. He bought 650, including bromeliads, hoyas, begonias and ferns, favoring those that were local and “the most interesting to look at,” he said. And one weekend last November, he and his wife, Mai Tran, and a friend put up the 12-by-12-foot plant wall.

Like Mr. McGregor-Mento, Mr. Kastan used matting affixed to a metal frame bolted to the wall. He bought most of the materials from local hardware stores or online suppliers. About $10,000 later, he has a large, vibrant green wall. He recently completed a smaller one in the kitchen, with herbs and mini-tomatoes.

But it took a lot of work to get the irrigation, the lighting and the plants right. The first month, he lost several plants near the bottom of the wall, where water was collecting. He realized then that some plants were getting too much water and needed to be moved a different spot on the wall; others he had to get rid of.

“It’s like having a large poodle,” Mr. Kastan said. “You have to take care of it, feed it, walk it. It’s intensive care for plants.”

Even professional gardeners sometimes have trouble with their first living wall. Martha Desbiens, a co-owner of VertNY, a landscape design firm specializing in roof gardens, used sedums in a green wall on a client’s terrace, and they dried out over the winter while the irrigation system was off. In a roof garden, they would have gotten plenty of moisture from snow, she noted, but planted vertically, they didn’t get nearly enough.

“A lot of living walls fail,” Ms. Desbiens said. “There’s a big learning curve.”

Marguerite Wells, a co-owner of Motherplants, a nursery in Ithaca, said she tries to steer people away from them.

“People want green bling,” Ms. Wells said. “People think, ‘It looks beautiful and perfect, and I want something beautiful and perfect in my life.’ ”

But vertical gardens can’t be watered with a hose or ignored for long stretches of time, she noted, and won’t tolerate certain plants. Inevitably, the irrigation stops working, she said, whether the pumps break down, the emitters get clogged (if a dirt system is used) or water gets stuck in one cell of a modular system. And within a few days of any malfunction, plants begin to die.

Overcoming Challenges

Amelia Lima, a landscape designer in San Diego, encountered the most basic problem when she decided to turn the 40-foot wall in her backyard into a vertical garden. At first, she tried hanging plants and art on the wall, which faced the picture windows in her living room and kitchen, but it looked drab. Then she found a landscape architect who had worked with Patrick Blanc on a project in Brazil and hired him to help. But halfway through the project, she realized she had forgotten something essential: a water source.

“People think it’s a green wall,” Ms. Lima said, as in, “you hang a picture on the wall and it’s done.”

But there’s a lot more to it than that, she added: “There’s construction, watering — you’re making a garden.”

Just Another Plant in The Wall

Making your own living wall can be done in one of two ways — as a fully bespoke model or something more off-the-rack. Whichever you choose, there are a few things to keep in mind.

• Vertical gardens are heavy, and not every wall is strong enough to support one. Check with a carpenter or your landlord to make sure the designated wall can handle the load.

• When selecting a spot for your living wall, make sure the area gets plenty of light. The best light is natural, but you will also need to install artificial lighting.

• Custom installations like the ones Patrick Blanc builds require a frame that can be attached to the wall, a waterproof barrier to protect the wall, a surface material like felt or cork to hold the plants in place and an irrigation system with PVC or polyethylene tubing and a submersible pump (the kind found in aquarium shops).

• Ready-made vertical garden kits have small containers angled to hold dirt and can be watered manually. After you plant your cuttings in the dirt, you’ll need to let them grow horizontally for several months so they develop strong roots. Once the roots have taken hold, you can attach the kit to the wall. (Kits are available from a number of sources, including eltlivingwalls.com, sgplants.com and floragrubb.com.)

• Each wall has different requirements, depending on its light and plants (talk to a local nursery or green-roof specialist about the best plants for your wall), but many people water their vertical gardens three times a day for 8 to 10 minutes. You will need to add fertilizer to the water to make sure the plants get necessary nutrients.

via New York Times

Trevor Tondro for The New York Times

FIRST US OFFSHORE WIND FARM OFF MASS.

BOSTON — A whole new way of generating electricity in the U.S. drew a big step closer to reality Wednesday, and it could look like this: 130 windmills, 440 feet tall, rising from the ocean a few miles off Cape Cod.

After more than eight years of lawsuits and government reviews, the Obama administration cleared the way for the nation’s first offshore wind farm.

“We are beginning a new direction in our nation’s energy future,” U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declared in announcing his approval of the $2 billion Cape Wind project, which would finally allow the U.S. to join the list of major countries that are producing electricity from sea breezes.

Strong Opposition Possible

The project has faced intense opposition from environmentalists, antwo Indian tribetribes and some environmentalists and residents, including the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who warned that the windmills could mar the ocean view. They would be visible from the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port.

Salazar said the project’s developers can protect local culture and beauty while expanding the nation’s supply of renewable energy.

Salazar said the project’s developers can protect local culture and beauty while expanding the nation’s supply of renewable energy.

Members of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard have vowed to go to court, saying the project would interfere with sacred rituals and desecrate long-submerged tribal burial sites. Other groups said they would sue immediately.

“It’s far from over,” Cape Cod resident Audra Parker of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. “Nantucket Sound needs to be off limits to Cape Wind and any other industrial development.”

Salazar said the project had been exhaustively analyzed and added: “This is the final decision of the United States of America. We are very confident we will be able to uphold the decision against legal challenges.”

The windmills would be about five miles off Cape Cod at their closest point to land and 14 miles off Nantucket at the greatest distance. According to simulations done for Cape Wind, on a clear day the turbines would look as if they were about a half-inch tall on the horizon at the nearest point and appear as specks from Nantucket.

Funding For Green Jobs

The costs will be covered with private funding as well as potentially millions in federal stimulus money and tax credits. Cape Wind is negotiating to sell the electricity generated to a local utility.

Cape Wind eventually hopes to supply three-quarters of the power on Cape Cod, which has about 225,000 residents. Cape Wind officials say it will provide green jobs and a reliable domestic energy source.

The announcement came after a pair of deadly disasters earlier this month in West Virginia and the Gulf of Mexico illustrated the risks in extracting oil and coal to meet the country’s energy needs.

Advocates are hoping Cape Wind can jump-start the entire U.S. offshore wind industry.

US Still Lags Behind

America has the world’s largest onshore wind industry but lags behind other countries in offshore electric generation because of high upfront costs, heavy regulation and technological challenges.

Denmark installed the world’s first offshore wind turbine 20 years ago.ago, and there are offshore wind farms around Europe. China has built a commercial wind farm off Shanghai and plans several other projects. The Netherlands also has offshore turbines.

Major U.S. projects are on the drawing board for the waters off New Jersey, Delaware and Texas. The U.S. Department of Energy envisions offshore wind farms accounting for 4 percent of the country’s electric generating capacity by 2030.

Changing Cape Cod’s Landscape

Kennedy, who loved to sail the waters off Cape Cod, fought Cape Wind until the weeks before his death last summer, calling it a special-interest giveaway that could harm the ocean vista. Others say it could interfere with air and sea traffic and endanger birds and other wildlife.

The lead federal agency reviewing the project, the Minerals Management Service, issued a report last year saying the project poses no major environmental problems.

Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., whose district includes Cape Cod, warned that the project will raise the region’s power costs, disrupt an ocean sanctuary and set back the wind-power industry, all to benefit a private developer.

“Cape Wind is the first offshore wind farm to be built in the wrong place, in the wrong way, stimulating the wrong economies,” Delahunt said Wednesday.

Home to some of the best-known beaches in the Northeast, Cape Cod has long been a destination for summer vacations and is famous for its small towns, colonial-era fishing villages and weathered, gray-shingled homes in its namesake architectural style.

Earlier this month, a federal panel, the Advisory Council on Historic Properties urged Salazar to reject the wind farm, saying it would have destructive effects on the view from dozens of historic sites.

Salazar said he worried that if the project were killed for such reasons, then no offshore wind farms would be possible on the Eastern Seaboard.

___
JAY LINDSAY | April 28, 2010 | AP

Associated Press writers Glen Johnson in Washington and Steve LeBlanc in Boston contributed to this report.

Eds: CLARIFIES other European nations have offshore turbines, not just Netherlands. CORRECTS some environmentalists, not all, and 2 Indian tribes, not 1, oppose project. Moving on general news and financial services. AP Video.

Model Your Town Competition: Cast your vote!

The first-ever Google Model Your Town Competition has entered the public voting phase. It’s now up to you to help decide which of the five finalist towns should be the overall winner. Cast your vote before May 1.

* Barranco (Lima, Peru)
* Braunschweig (Niedersachsen, Germany)
* Donostia – San Sebastián (Gipuzkoa, Spain)
* Dursley (Gloucestershire, United Kingdom)
* West Palm Beach (Florida, United States)

These five teams used Google SketchUp and Google Building Maker to create beautifully detailed 3D models of their communities — and now they’re viewable in Google Earth by everyone in the world. To see all of the towns who entered the competition, check out the Google 3D Warehouse collection.

The winning town will receive an event hosted by Google in their honor, US $10,000 for their local schools and more. Don’t forget to vote by May 1, and we’ll announce the winning town by May 15.

And if you’re interested in learning how you can model your town, check out our Your World in 3D website for examples and other tools to help you get started.

Posted by Allyson McDuffie, SketchUp for Education Program Manager

via Google Blog

The Unauthorized TechCrunch iPad Review

For some strange reason we weren’t invited to test drive the iPad early. But easy-to-get stories are never fun anyway. And there has always been another way to spend time with the iPad other than a freebie loaner from apple – the third party developers.

Scores of developers have had iPad’s for weeks now. They’ve had to sign non-disclosure agreements, and have the iPad locked in a separate room that random employees couldn’t access. And even that wasn’t enough. The iPads are literally chained to the desk with steel cable and a lock. Apple comes by the office with a suitcase, installs the iPad in a bolted case, chains it to the desk and locks it there. And they they do occasional surprise visits just to make sure it’s still there.

What’s more, Apple has told developers that they are monitoring the location of the device as well. We tried (oh how we tried) to find a way to break into a company that had one and just steal the whole desk that it was chained to to bring it back here and wait for Apple or the police or whoever to show up. It would have made an excellent April Fools joke. But CEO Heather vetoed the idea.

But one thing I have had the chance to do is test iPads at developers who’ve been willing to bend the rules a little. Well, actually, a lot. This is exactly what Apple didn’t want – bloggers and other outsiders to get access to and play with the devices.

But play I did. I’ve surfed the net on the iPad. I’ve played games on the iPad. And I’ve done email on the iPad. Yes, those iPads were chained to desks and in a bolted on steel case. And even so, the experience was stunning. It’s a nearly flawless device.

And the iPad beats even my most optimistic expectations. This is a new category of device. But it also will replace laptops for many people. It does basic computer stuff, like email and web surfing, very well. Applications load quickly and are very responsive – think iPhone 3GS with a 50% speed boost.

That’s what surprised me the most. The iPad isn’t just for couch computing when you want to look something up on Wikipedia or send a quick email. It’s a perfectly usable business device. And the form factor just happens to work far better for cramped places like airplanes than a normal laptop. I doubt I’ll ever open a laptop on a plane again after tomorrow.

I am easily able to type 50 words per minute on the large virtual keyboard. A physical keyboard is a nice add on when I’m in my office or hotel room, but it works just fine without it, too.

The iPad will put significant pressure on laptop sales, particularly second device laptops. And it will also have a devastating effect on single-use devices like the Kindle, unless the price of those devices drops substantially. I will quite happily read books on the iPad, and the battery really does last for up to ten hours.

And then there are the apps. Some of the iPads best uses are yet to be imagined. This is certainly an amazing game device and productivity tool. And I’ll happily consume massive amounts of music and video content on the iPad. Third party apps, and there are a ton of them coming, will make this even more useful.

I suspect I’ll rarely be away from this device. In fact it will make my phone far less important for non-calling uses. I may not have the iPad in my pocket with my phone, but it will certainly be in my bag over my shoulder. With a 3G data plan I’ll use it to read the news, look up movie times and reviews, send instant messages and emails, and lots of other things that I do with my phone. I’m not so sure I need to have the latest and greatest phone device any more, knowing that there’s an iPad within reach.

I’d pay $1,000 for a chained to the desk iPad. The fact that tomorrow I’ll get the one I pre-ordered for just $500, chain free, makes me very happy indeed.

by Michael Arrington on Apr 2, 2010

via Techcrunch.com