Ideas: JAMming, Honey bee Haven competition, 99 Tools for Actions, and the Edible Pocket Woodland

First, local forager, Asiya Wadud of Forage Oakland, will be making and exchanging jams, marmalades, jellies, and syrups at the Temescal Farmers' Market on Sunday, February 22, 2009. I recently exchanged a lemon steeped nocino (a friend of Italian heritage suggested the lemons) for a nocino made with walnuts from Delaware Street. The provenance of my walnuts are Parker Street and an unknown location (I exchanged garden herbs for walnuts).

Too late! The deadline for the UC Davis Honey Bee Haven garden design competition was yesterday. Anyway, you can read about it here and here.

The Canadian Centre for Architecture is hosting the Tools for Actions exhibition from 26 November 2008 - 19 April 2009. The theme: actions that "instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world." 99 actions are available for viewing. I read about Tools for Actions at Curbed SF; the website mentioned Amy Franceschini's Victory Gardens 2008+.

Maybe I should submit the Edible Pocket Woodland concept? What do you think? Here's the idea:

Recent academic scholarship and news reports link the purchase of locally grown food to climate-neutral food provision. Also, locavore has entered our popular lexicon; a person that eats locally, generally within a 100-mile radius of home. In this discussion, the primary food plants of concern tend to be annual crops or herbaceous perennials, the types of food grown in home gardens, community gardens, and sold at farmers’ markets. Fruits are sold in markets but tend to be rare in home and community gardens in comparison to the amount of vegetables that are grown. The addition of fruit and nut trees to the urban landscape offers tremendous ecosystem benefits ranging from climate cooling and rainwater capture to wildlife forage to local food provision.

The specific proposal is the Edible Pocket Woodland; the (in)tended integration of habitat and ecosystem services with food provision in neighborhood settings. Annuals and herbaceous perennials are included but are not the dominant vegetation type. The concept is inspired by Robert Hart’s “forest garden,” Thomas P. F. Hoving’s “vest-pocket park,” and Sara Stein’s “pocket woods.”

The arrangement of plants would mimic the layers found in a forest ecosystem similar to Hart’s design. The scale and location of the Edible Pocket Woodland within the urban fabric is modeled after the vest-pocket park; it requires small parcels within neighborhood settings. Finally, the aesthetic would be reminiscent of Stein’s pocket woods; a wooded landscape that acknowledges safety concerns by allowing views through and around taller vegetation.

Et cetera: Flower gaming, Sustainable communities & streets, and Oxford Junior Dictionary vs. nature words

In my Inbox are et cetera (also known as "this and that", "odds and ends", mishmash, hodgepodge, etc.) One is an email from the David Brower Center's executive director thanking me for the post about the green features of the Center.

It takes more than one or two green buildings to make a sustainable community. A recent issue of the Ecologist Magazine e-newsletter reports on the Sustainable Communities Act which became law in the UK on October 23, 3007. According to the Ecologist,

The Sustainable Communities Act recently became law due to a huge campaign effort by the Local Works coalition. This ‘bottom up’ process has been set up and can be used by you, your communities and councils to protect and promote local services, shops, trade, communities and the environment.

A link to the "Sustainable Green Streets and Parking Lots Design Guidebook" developed by the San Mateo Countywide Water Pollution Prevention Program was sent by the Urban Watershed Management Program of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. For more on sustainable streets, watch "Sustainable Streets: Emerging Priorities, Emerging Practices" by the UC Davis Sustainable Transportation Center. San Francisco's Urban Watershed Management Program sponsored the San Francisco Low Impact Design Technical Workshop on January 23 and 24, 2009.

Implementation of street daylighting: Streetswiki (Video still by Clarence Eckerson Jr.)

Surface parking is not a low impact design but it was the subject of an exhibit - Pavement Paradise: American Parking Space - at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in 2008. A novel approach to reducing the impact of parking is to "daylight" the intersection as reported on Streetsblog. What is daylighting in the context of streets (waterways are often the foci of daylighting)? Removing parking spaces at the intersection to offer greater "visibility and eye contact."

Parking spaces are not the only things being removed. Last but not least, the Children & Nature Network posted an article about the removal of nature words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary (!) originally published in the Canadian Press in December 2008.

Flower screenshot 5: thatgamecompany

Interestingly, while Oxford Junior Dictionary is removing references to nature, thatgamecompany (TGC) has created a video game, Flower, with flower petals as the avatar. I read about Flower in an email sent by the Plant Graduate Group at UC Berkeley. TGC's website describes the game as follows:

The game exploits the tension between urban bustle and natural serenity. Players accumulate flower petals as the onscreen world swings between the pastoral and the chaotic. Like in the real world, everything you pick up causes the environment to change. And hopefully by the end of the journey, you change a little as well.

Photo du jour: The David Brower Center or "green from the ground up"

Update: I received a very nice email from Amy Tobin, executive director of The David Brower Center. I have included an excerpt from the email below:

As you noted in your blog, the Brower Center truly is green from the ground up! We are on track to be Berkeley's first LEED Platinum-rated building....[The]first two photos on the posting were of our neighbor and partner, Oxford Plaza, a separate building that will provide affordable workforce housing for families and individuals. It is opening around the same time as the David Brower Center.

Oxford Plaza is being developed by Resources for Community Development, a nonprofit affordable housing developer.

One of Berkeley's newest buildings, The David Brower Center, is named for the well-regarded environmentalist, David Brower. The building is described as "green from the ground up" on the Center's website. Here are some of the building's externally visible green design features:

South facing windows are shaded with "solar shading devices":

Photovoltaic panels harvest energy and provide shade:

Windows are operable:

The site used to be a parking lot a well-used surface parking lot. It is located in the center of downtown and adjacent to the university. The photograph below was taken in October 2008.Here it is in October 2008.

The building is also designed to collect rainwater "for irrigation and toilet flushing" making it a "blue-green building" of sorts.

60-year old Ashby Flowers will close if Whole Foods does not renew lease

Wonderfully local and located, 60-year old Ashby Flowers will involuntarily close this summer. The Whole Foods at Telegraph and Ashby will not renew the florist's lease which is scheduled to expire on July 31, 2009. I wrote about Ashby Flowers in "The Florists of Telegraph Avenue" for Human Flower Project.

The Le Conte neighborhood list serve has provided the following information:

[From Stacey Simon]I'm writing to you as the leader of the Le Conte Neighborhood Association on behalf of Ashby Flowers, the flower shop located outside Whole Foods Market at the corner of Ashby and Telegraph avenues. The owners, Marcy Simon and Iraj Misaghi, have been notified by their landlord, Whole Foods Market, that the shop's lease will not be renewed when it expires on July 31st of this year. This means that after 60 years at this site, Ashby Flowers will be forced to close its doors. When Marcy and Iraj bought the shop 15 years ago they sank their life savings into it. Since then, they have worked to be good neighbors and good businesspeople, contributing to local events and schools (such as Le Conte) and building relationships with local businesses and institutions (UC Berkeley, Alta Bates/Summit Medical Center, etc.). Whole Foods declined to say why it would not extend Ashby Flowers' lease, but the company's website claims it supports its local stakeholders and neighbors. To that end, Ashby Flowers would like to enlist the support of the Le Conte Neighborhood Association in its efforts to overturn Whole Foods' decision. As news of the lease decision has trickled into the community, we've had many people ask how they could help. I'm wondering if this is an issue with which the neighborhood association might like to help us as well. Are you meeting tomorrow evening at 7:30 and, if you are, could one of the owners come to speak with you? [contact content removed]. Many thanks, Stacey Simon on behalf of Ashby Flowers

And more recently,

[From the association president] Whole Foods has announced that it does not plan to renew the lease of Ashby Flowers after July 31, 2009. Since this is a valuable locally owned business, the LeConte Neighborhood Assn. Board has voted to support Ashby Flowers. Your e-mail and other means of support are welcomed as well. You can refer to Whole Foods "Caring for communities and environment" at this web page. http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/values/corevalues.php#caring. The address below allows you to send a message direct to the store manager. http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/company/contact_direct.php?tlc=BRK.

Tree Walk: Recollections of favourite trees

First, at the time of this writing, these United States have a new president, Barack Obama. The tree (an oak?) featured on the *President* Obama Tree Logo T-shirt is among my favorites.

Around my childhood home grew many trees: lime (genus Citrus), almond (Prunus dulcis), pear (avocado), June plum (not a true plum), apple (Otaheite or Malay), mango (genus Mangifera), coconut (Cocos nucifera), sweetsop (Annona squamosa), cherry (Muntingia calabura L.), and ackee (Blighia sapida), the national fruit and with saltfish, the national dish. Where was this yard of "exotic" trees? The parish of St. Catherine in Jamaica. Of these, my favourites were the lime tree in the backyard and the almond tree in the front yard. My brother and I spent time in the deep shade of the lime tree, picked the fruit, cut and sprinkled the halves with salt, and happily ate them. As for the almond tree, we ate the fruit too, but my fondest memories are of drinking lemonade with my mum beneath its branches and swimming in our plastic pools which were set in its shade.

Do you recall the baobabs in "The Little Prince"? I saw one of these trees in Nxai Pan, a national park in Botswana.

I have written elsewhere in this blog about my work as a community and urban forester in New Haven, Conn. and Boston, Mass. The first coniferous evergreen I planted was an eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana L.) at the Ivy Narrow Bird Preserve in the New Haven. I am partial to broadleaf deciduous tree species (sweetgum, tuliptree, ginkgo and the like). However, the fact that this J. virginiana was among the first trees I ever planted and my special relationship with the site and its stewards contributes to its special place on my list of favourite trees.

Did you know that a giraffe will eat willow branches? In my capacity as Boston's urban forester, I assisted the tree warden in collecting branches from a willow along Agassiz Road to bring to an ailing giraffe at the Franklin Park Zoo. Salicylic acid (aspirin) is derived from willows (genus Salix) The willow in question is located in the Boston Fens, a few blocks away from my former apartment. Closer to work, were several horsechestnuts (Aesculus hippocastanum) planted in the sidewalk. The loveliest blooms in the spring! Sadly, one was killed during a car accident (the driver of the car was unharmed).

Now I live in Berkeley, California. Regular readers of this blog might guess that one of my favourite trees here is the quince in my backyard. Northern California is renowned for its coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens). Nearby, where Adeline Street intersects Shattuck Avenue at Ward Street, there is a grove of redwoods in the median. I've seen redwoods in park settings, but these redwoods are my favourites. (The jog in the street at the Adeline-Shattuck is a remnant of the East Bay's streetcar system, the former Key Route System, which played a pivotal role in the formation of Berkeley streetcar suburbs like Ashby Station.)

Garden tag: Tea Gardens by Ann Lovejoy and Allan Mandell

I've been tagged, indirectly. I read today's Greenwalks post in which Karen "tagged" her readers. The rules:

go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures, select the 4th picture in that folder, explain the picture, then tag four people to do the same.

Caveats: One, there is only one photo in the fourth photo folder from the top of my main photo folder so I selected the fourth photo folder from the opposite direction. Two, I am following Karen's lead: readers, consider yourself tagged.

Japanese tea garden from "Tea Gardens" by Ann Lovejoy and Allan Mandell

The image illustrated a post on my tea blog, Notes on Tea, about drinking tea in the garden. This garden is landscaped with pine, bamboo and winter plum. The only of these plants suitable for tea drinking is pine, white pine specifically. Here is my note from the blog:

in "A Roomful of Hovings," John McPhee writes about the white pine needle tea he drank with Euell Gibbons on a foraging trip in Pennsylvania.

Sacred to profane Sunday stroll

On a sunny Sunday this month, we went on a walk with our Berkeley Path Wanderers Association pathways map. The walk's official start point was Le Conte Avenue at Hearst Avenue. We used LeRoy Steps, Hill Court Steps, and Vine Lane to access Vine Street and Shattuck Avenue. (The paths were designed to provide pedestrian access through the hill neighborhoods of Berkeley.) We had not planned a "sacred to profane" walk. We realized we had taken such a route after observing numerous religious institutions on Le Conte and juxtaposed this district with our destination, one of Berkeley's famous commercial districts, the oddly named "Gourmet Ghetto." (Food is sacred, too.)

Pacific School of Religion

Le Conte Avenue is lined with single- and multi-family residences, owner- and renter-occupied. At and near the peak of the avenue are several theological and religious institutions: The Graduate Theological Union, Pacific School of Religion, School for Deacons, Center for Jewish Studies, Starr King School for Ministry, Jesuit School of Theology, and New Spirit Community Church.

New Spirit Community Church

Our intention was to take the La Vereda Path but we got sidetracked and instead, took the LeRoy Steps. We gazed awhile at the landmarked George Jensen House on La Loma Avenue before setting off for Hill Court Steps which we almost missed. The entry to this pathway looks like the entry to a privately-owned side yard.

The path is narrow and the steps wind among yards landscaped with edible plants and the view at the other end is breathtaking (not done justice in the photograph below).

Also beautiful is the entrance to Vine Lane.

See more photos of this archway at the Berkeley Paths Web site.

Before we reached Shattuck we passed a Christian Science and a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Vine. Our walk ended with tapas and refreshments at Cesar.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Update: Some blooms photographed on my walk to the grocery store. By the way, it is 69-degrees F in Berkeley.

Karen at Greenwalks is a font of information. It is from her that I learned about GBBD, hosted by May Dreams Gardens. I would like to share photos of quince flowers, buds, and a fruit. The quince grows in my "backyard." Read more about this fabulous tree here.

Weekend of service

President-elect Barack Obama's call to service now has an online presence - USA Service. There are many events this weekend; the weekend precedes Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the inauguration of the President-elect. I will be participating in two local events. The first of these is on Saturday with California Habitat Indigenous Activists and the second is on Monday at Presentation Park.

California Indigenous Habitat Activists or CHIA will be expanding its restoration project along the Ohlone Greenway in the Westbrae Commons neighborhood. I volunteer regularly with CHIA on its regular fourth-Saturday-of-the- month workdays. CHIA's work is chronicled in a local ecology nature-made profile.

The urban fruit tree movement has another member in Presentation Park, a small city park (.17 acres) located on land formerly owned by a Catholic monastery. The Presentation Park Fruit Tree Project has arranged for the planting of "several fruit trees" and a park clean-up.

I served with AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (AmeriCorps*NCCC) after college and applied the service legacy to each place I lived thereafter: New Haven Urban Resources Initiative Community Greenspaces program, Boston Urban Stewards, and now in Berkeley, with CHIA and Berkeley Partners for Parks. Last weekend, I volunteered with the Mission Greenbelt Garden for Birds at 22nd and Shotwell in the Mission District of San Francisco. I wanted to be at the outset of another nature-made space. Also, I like gardening and birds (read our Bird Watch posts). I volunteered on the second day of three work days. Concrete was cut on the first day, clay tilled and amended on the second, and shrubs, grasses, and flowers planted on the third day. Will you be participating in any service projects this weekend?

Tree Walk: Multi-use tree guards

Early tree guards were installed to protect tree trunks from errant carriages and horses. Horses would eat the bark of street trees. With curbs and motorized vehicles, the utility of guards have declined, though they continue to be installed to deter vandals and to decorate sidewalks. The traditional tree guard requires maintenance; as a tree trunk expands, it can can grow into the metal bars of the guard. On more consideration, guards can protect trees from cyclists who will lock their bikes to tree trunks in the absence of proper bike racks.

Now guards are offered in shorter and alternative styles. For example, Arlington County, Virginia has installed low-slung, decorative guards in metal (the traditional material), and in concrete and brick. The latter are not tree (trunk) guards per se, but they do hinder access to tree wells (pits, parkways, bed space).

None of these guards are multi-use. But New York's tree guard bike racks are. A 2001 design competition sponsored by Trees New York and Cooper Union yielded two fabulous multi-use designs. Last fall's CityRacks Design Competition yielded 10 finalists, one winning bike rack design, and no combination tree guard bike racks.

Locally, I have come across three multi-use tree guards. Two are designer guards; one of which doubles as seating, and the other as a bicycle rack. The third is a do-it-yourself guard. I think its additional purpose is to alert cars to the presence of the curb.

Related Posts

• Tree Walk: Infrastructure vs. street trees and tree planting sites
• Tree Walk: More than 36 hours in Toronto, part 2

Good plastic? Two water conservation products

Plastic products have a horrible reputation. There are numerous anti-plastic campaigns: "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" cloth bag; municipal plastic bag bans and taxes; and Pur Water Filter's "Lifetime in a Landfill" television commercials. Also, the existence of the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," of which 80% is plastic, received extensive news coverage in 2007 and 2008. So, is there good plastic? Well, two products, made from plastic, are being marketed as environmental goods, specifically water conservation aids.

The first is the Hughie Sink, a removable sink, purported to "capture up to 80% of all grey water wasted." No manufacturing information is available at the Hughie Web site but it looks like a plastic product. I read about the sink at Re-Nest (post) and Wasted Food (post). The Hughie sink is being marketed as an aid to Australians dealing with water restrictions from "the worst drought in living memory."

The second product, also of Australian origin (but now manufactured in the U.S.), is the Rainwater HOG. Each HOG module is 40 pounds empty (440 pounds full), has a 50-gallon capacity, is made from 100% recycled, "UV stabilized food grade plastic." The retail cost per hog ranges from $320 to $450. If you live in San Francisco, there is a cheaper alternative. You can purchase a discounted and "re-purposed" rain barrel for $69.99 from Cole Hardware stores. The discount is sponsored by the SF Public Utilities Commission Rainwater Harvesting Program.

Plant idiom: Out in the sticks

"Out in the sticks" literally means among the sticks of white birch, in Maine. At least this is the meaning contained in Henry Petroski's book titled "The Toothpick: Technology and Culture."

The favorable economic climate may also have helped attract Charles Forster to move to Maine, but he did so principally to have his manufacturing operation closre to the supply of wood that worked best in the machines. Where that wood was, of course, was "out in the sticks." In 1870, most likely in the latter part of the year, Forster set up a factory in Sumner, Maine, which is located in the sparsely populated hills of the west-central part of the state, halfway between Augusta and the New Hampshire border (p. 90).

The wood that was worked best in Forster's toothpick machine was birch, specifically white or American or paper birch (Betula papyrifera Marsh.).

Like his earlier mills, this Forster factory at Dixfield was in the heart of the "birch belt." This region which began in the Berkshires in Massachusetts and extended north into Canada and west through northern Minnesota. Very little birch grew farther west, and so no toothpick factories would be established there" (p. 91).

Birch is also used in toothpaste. Tom's of Maine uses xylitol derived from birch tree pulp to flavor its toothpastes. Update 02/09/09: Sweet or black birch (B. lenta) is the source of wintergreen oil (Petroski).

Master's thesis: Faux creeks with a focus on Temescal Creek, Oakland, Calif.

Jon Bauer's master's thesis titled, "Potemkin Creek: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Nature," about local and regional faux creeks is now available at his blog of the same title. Jon writes in his abstract:

Temescal Creek in Oakland, California has experienced over 150 years of anthropogenic change since it became part of the United States. Those changes were continually motivated by finding new ways to utilize the creek as water supply and sewage conveyance and as the location of highway networks, until in the 1970s and 1980s it was determined that no new benefit could be derived and the uncertainties of flood outweighed any remaining benefits. Like other East Bay creeks, it was culverted. Thirty years later, Temescal Creek has reemerged in the landscape as an engineered faux creek. These landscape features demonstrate new ways that nature is conceptualized and incorporated into the urban built environment. I examine the reasons for the construction of these faux creeks by public agencies and private developers to demonstrate the ways that commodification of nature is masked as restoration.

Jon ends his thesis with an ironic epilogue about creek protection. Thank you to Susan Schwartz of Friends of Five Creeks for bringing this publication to our attention. (All photos by local ecology.)

Etceteras: Ideas not blogged in 2008

Here are some noteworthy people and places we meant to blog about in 2008.

A penthouse apartment with two—TWO—levels of garden in New York Magazine

Clearing the air: China's environmental challenge at Asia Society [video]

BUGTO: biodiversity urban gardens Toronto

South Bronx green roof at I (heart) Public Space

In Italy, a redesign of nature to clean it in the New York Times

The platform of the Garden Party by Ketzel Levine of NPR Talking Plants [follow Ketzel at Ketzel Uprooted]

Science Debate 2008

Utah officials: Keeping rainwater is illegal posted at Treehugger

Food Mapping

Google Maps learns to walk with directions on foot posted at carfree chicago

Bookcases in parks a New York Times story originally read at gardenhistorygirl

Coles Brook and other Bests Of New Jersey

Local ecology nominates Coles Brook, despite the tire in the middle of brook (center of the photograph), as one of the Best Of New Jersey. The brook runs through the Fairmount neighborhood of Hackensack and is flanked by a municipal park, single family houses, and stores along Route 4. Animals observed at the brook include four mallards, one calico cat, and four black cats. Perennial wildflowers along the stream bank, in the foreground of the photograph, were planted by Hackensack Riverkeeper.The remaining Bests Of New Jersey, in no particular order, were taken from several 2008 issues of New Jersey Monthly.

Willow School in Gladstone achieved gold certification via LEED in 2003. It is "the first private-school building in the country (and second overall) to earn" the gold designation. Some of its gold-standard features are a 85% recycled stainless steel roof that directs rainwater to a 100% recycled, 57,000 gallon plastic storage tank; 70,000 species of drought tolerant, native plants; and waterless urinals that "save about 45,000 gallons of water per year" (NJM, Sept. 2008).

Laura Schenone's article (NJM, Nov. 2008) titled "Farming the Front Yard" in Montclair reminded us that Maplewood, New Jersey hosts the third edible estates prototype, established in 2007. By the way, Schenone is a food blogger at Jellypress.

Farming and gardening should be no surprise; New Jersey is the Garden State. According to Schenone, again, between 2002 and 2008, farmers' markets have doubled in number, from 50 to more than 100 (NJM, Oct. 2008). Farmers' markets can be found using the Urban Farmers' Markets locator provided by the state Department of Agriculture.

Finally, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44th president on January 20. Roseland flag maker Annin & Company will produce the flags for the event.