Prunings XIV

Trailing Hopper Suction Dredger


Assorted bookmarks collected throughout the year, pruned here not so much for your edification but rather dumped just so that they and the discarded multitudes that do not appear here won't clutter my archives any longer.

On container gardens: wading pools, feed sacks, used tires, etc. With a guide to starting a community garden.

On The Return of Lenin, a mildly disquieting recreation of his stop at an allotment garden in Sweden on his way to the Russian Revolution. “Lenin was totally unresponsive to [the benefits of allotment gardens], to poke in the soil was to prepare the ground for political laziness in the class-strugle. The workers shouldn't be occupied with gardening, they should rather devote themselves to the proletarian revolution.”

On Arthur Wiechula, a pioneer in arborsculpture.

On noise mapping England. See also its Parisian equivalent.

On arbortecture: or, plants growing out of buildings.

On expanding and densifying the Mall further and further. “The architects and designers were giddy with the possibilities: They talked about giant sculptural bridges, soaring waterfront museums, inland canals, water taxis and monuments that would forever change the nation's capital.”

On the history of the Illinois Tollway Oasis.

On the Valley of the Yosemite, Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Mariposa Grove of Mammoth Trees by Eadweard Muybridge.

On the Fab Tree Hab. “Imagine a society based on slow farming tress for housing structure instead of the industrial manufacture of felled timber.”

On the Cornerstone Festival of Gardens, “an ever-changing series of walk-through gardens, showcasing new and innovative designs from the world’s finest landscape architects and designers.” What's Christophe Girot doing amongst such a stellar crowd? But never mind, I kid.

On Urban Dead, a massively multi-player web-based zombie apocalyse. “The city is dying. Some months on from the first reported outbreak, military quarantine units have closed Malton's borders, and are moving in to eliminate the looters, to forcibly evacuate those civilians who still refuse to leave their homes. The city is dying, and the urban dead are filling its streets.” In other words, Zombie Urbanism is the new urbanism.

On Boullée.

On virtual parks.

On Michael Rakowitz, planimeters, BBC Gardening, Lagos, a rubber tree, super weeds, and The Bomb Project. Throw them all in the pot and you've got the makings of the best landscape project of 2006.