Local Ecologist

Image: Sir Winston Churchill Square In June 2013 Curbed published a list of 40 Secret Gardens, Parks And Green Spaces Hidden Across NYC . Two village greenspaces made the list: Gardens of the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields and the Liz Christy Community Garden. Below we include these two and three more: Jefferson Market Garden, Sasaki Garden at Washington Square Village, and Sir Winston Churchill Square. Image: Garden at the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields Take a seat while we have this enjoyable fall weather. 1. Garden of the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields 2. Jefferson Market Garden The site of a former women's prison is now home to roses, rhododendrons, native ferns, and spectacular specimens of star and saucer magnolias, white fringetree, and American yellowwood. 3. Liz Christy Community Garden The most striking feature of this community garden is the towering dawn redwood ( Metasequoia glyptostroboides ) growing in the eastern section

I have always been fascinated by the tools people use in their work.  I asked Boston architect Marie S.A. Sorensen AIA NCARB LEED AP to tell us about her tools of the trade and she selected photographic imagery.  This is an occasional series; learn about landscape architect Thomas Balsley's pens and markers . Photographic imagery is essential to an Architect’s toolbox. I shoot with a lightweight mirror-less Sony NEX-7, a 26-megapixel digital camera with an 18-35 mm interchangeable lens. I take the camera wherever I can when the light and the environment are promising. Sometimes the photographs I make are themselves works of art, printed and exhibited, and sometimes they are used fractionally to illustrate renderings made in the architecture studio. I try to go places where people are enjoying and experiencing the world. It is often a person’s expression or activity that captures my attention. Observed behaviors and emotions inspire the spatial and sensory qualities of the

Window Box Gardens showcases other people's small gardens.  Gardeners share photographs and description of their gardens. Maybe we can hang window boxes off our window guards...! If you would like to see your garden here, please email us at info(at)localecology.org.   Today's gardens bring us across the Atlantic to Berlin.  Without a window box garden of her own -- but she does have a windowsill -- Leslie Kuo of Urban Plant Research shares her garden dreams as well as photos of other people's gardens. Living on east Berlin’s busiest boulevard, with no balcony and all my windows facing four lanes of heavy traffic, I tend to admire and document other people’s window boxes rather than plant my own. Besides, they’re forbidden in our building, as my landlord regularly reminds in stern letters. Between that and my wariness that the abundant car exhaust will render any edible plants (my favorite kind) unfit to eat, I tend to see the windowsill as a very temporary