ECO Outdoor | Design Feeder » sustainable greenery

whats your plan for october 1st ?

Em — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:17:38 +0000

For some lucky states October 1st is a long weekend, so already plans are in full swing to load up the car and escape for a change of scenery. Although there is of course those of us who will choose to stay put in our local area and soak up the action and good times around us.

Either way with a strong scent of jasmine, bbq’s and freshly mowed lawns in the air there’s going to be lots to do starting with our very own Spring Experts in-store beginning at 10am.

With a line up of some amazingly talented professionals such as Peter Fudge, Ken Pattinson and Georgia Harper you really must put aside just 15 min on Saturday to make a visit into one of showrooms (listed below) and make the most of this opportunity to meet these experts and bounce around some ideas for your very own outdoor space.

Their advice is free and it’s all very informal and relaxed, so just grab a coffee and pull up a seat and throw some questions out there.

Experts can be found at the showrooms below.

Georgia Harper > Richmond

Ken Pattinson > Brookvale

Peter Fudge > Waterloo

Keep watch of this space, as interviews with the experts themselves is to follow …

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the ol’garden shed

Em — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:05:04 +0000

www.etsy.com - Colourful Garden Shed magnet

Whether it be a place you store a few of those rusty gardening tools, your workshop retreat or a forever growing storage area, I’m sure we can all agree our humble little backyard dwellings leave much to be desired.

But don’t be disheartened, there are many ways to improve this outdoor space! How about a bit of colour, maybe some plants of the edible kind ? … a few good outdoor furniture pieces that could turn your space into an extra room??…….the list goes on.

There’s no doubt a garden shed can be both stylish and practical, however it just might take a little more time and effort to get it up to scratch.

Check out the images below for some inspiration, peep over your neighbour’s fence for an idea or seek some handy advice from a landscaper/designer in your area and lets ‘embrace the emerging modern lifestyle of smaller but smarter spaces’.

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a Swiss woodie

Brendan — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 05:20:20 +0000

Tree Museum by Enzo Enea- Photography by Martin Rütschi ©

An open-air tree museum located on 10ha of land near Lake Zurich has just opened it doors. This open-air museum is the brainchild of well know Landscape Architect ‘Enzo Enea’ and showcases an array of trees he has collected over the past 17 years.

I personally love to stroll around the MCA or the Art gallery of NSW on a lazy Sunday afternoon, so put a museum outside on the shores of the beautiful Lake Zurich….a few amazing 100 year old maples…. chestnuts.. and I’m there! I also grew up with the notion of planting a tree to mark certain milestones in life such as a birth, marriage or death and love the subtle significance they offer in history. It’s great to see them getting the respect they deserve.

What makes this museum a truly special place, is the fact that the trees being exhibited were destined to be cut down to make room for development’s in the inner cities. One of these being a 150 year old Horse chestnut tree that was a centre meeting point in a Swiss town during World War 1 and 2. It still has the pins in the bark!

Enzo Enea has designed over 600 gardens in his time, with some very prestigious clients such as Prince Charles, Tina Turner and the Queen of Bahrain and has achieved this with a well respected practice employing 150 staff in Zurich. Click here to view his website for more info…

Or click here to check out some more images of the Tree Museum courtesy of Landezine.

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the indoor vertical garden

Jen @ Eco Outdoor — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:44:21 +0000

Another great garden profile from Dwell Magazine >

Botanist Patrick Blanc has been bringing the wilds of the rainforests to Parisian walls for over 30 years, most recently at the Jean Nouvel–designed Quai Branly museum. One lucky family, however, doesn’t have to go any farther than their living room to take in the wonders of Blanc’s vertical gardens.

The creator of the “plant wall,” a living canvas for indoor and outdoor vertical space, is in high demand. His trademark technique for a top-down, no-fuss, no-muss irrigation system, not to mention the 30 years of botanical research on three continents under his belt, have made him an urban garden guru. Recent creations include the hip Pershing Hall hotel and the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the swanky Siam Paragon mall in Bangkok, boutiques in New York and Paris, and restaurants in Los Angeles and beyond. With the lavish opening of the Jean Nouvel–designed Musée du Quai Branly in Paris in June, where he created a lush, 8,600-square-foot façade with 15,000 plants, big-scale commissions are flooding in.

Blanc’s work began, however, with homes—notably his own, a tropical rainforest doubling as an apartment on the outskirts of Paris, in Créteil. Even as major jobs began to elbow out most private commissions, some homeowners managed to persuade Blanc to create outdoor vertical gardens, seeking to add a “rural” element to their city views. The indoor vertical garden—Blanc’s true calling as a low-light specialist—however, had to wait until 2004, when Jean-Marc Dimanche phoned  up from his 4,400-square-foot home, which was under  construction in the Left Bank’s 14th arrondissement, with an idea for the 20-by-23-foot interior wall that  was beginning to take shape.

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little vertical gardens

Jen @ Eco Outdoor — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 05:11:39 +0000

Here at Eco we love a bit of green goodness in life and this little ditty from Pete in Sydney is no exception. It’s called a Vegetal Screen which I guess is supposed to mean vegetation cover or something of the like. The company Vertilignes tells us they are reinventing vegetation in the interior space and within urban architecture. Re-invention or not, it’s a super styling, super mod little greenbit that we’re loving.

So how does it work?

For those of you who are familiar with the concept of the green wall or living wall, the Vegetal screen’s front is fitted with holes and tubes which can accommodate up to 28 plants and is fitted with an irrigation system. The Vegetal screen is watered vertically allowing water to drip down from one allotment to the next and what’s more, the patented design allows you to take out any plants which are not feeling so well and replace them with better looking ones.

Cute huh?

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not far from the tree

Jen @ Eco Outdoor — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 03:32:31 +0000

Another little ditty from Toronto which caught our eye is a residential fruit picking program called Not Far From The Tree. The aim of this fruit-picking program is to prevent locally grown fruit from going to waste. Toward that end, it sends teams of volunteers to harvest the fruit on trees whose owners are not inclined to do so themselves. Of the resulting bounty, one-third goes to the owner, another third goes to the volunteers for their labour and the final third is distributed via pedal power to charities and community groups in the neighbourhood.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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a young urban farmer’s garden

Jen @ Eco Outdoor — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 03:22:35 +0000

Young Urban Farmers is a new Toronto-based venture that lets consumers enjoy home-grown vegetables without having to do the gardening themselves. Young Urban Farmers specializes in edible vegetable gardening, with a focus on organics. The company’s Young Urban Farmer garden service can set up either raised garden beds or direct in-ground gardens, both complete with all the materials necessary. Soil mix, transplants and seeds, garden tags and stakes are all supplied; optional extras include trellises, shiitake mushroom logs, worm composters and education kits. All customers need do, then, is specify what they hope to grow and choose between YUF’s basic service option — which includes an initial garden setup, a gardening instruction manual and a mid-summer checkup — or the full service option, which includes ongoing maintenance roughly twice a week.

Article borrowed from Springwise

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reuse. reimagine. reclaim. recycle.

Jen @ Eco Outdoor — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:34:28 +0000

A cute little garden idea from our friends over at Urban Gardens.

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food map design

Jen @ Eco Outdoor — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:51:32 +0000

The urban-rural gap is quickly shrinking and interest in local, organic food is continuously increasing. And today, it’s not unusually to find gardeners harvesting their own produce even in a concrete-filled, car-centric city like Los Angeles. Enter Jon Wilson a former architect and now architect of the LA-based Food Map Design.

You can check out more here

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ECO Outdoor | Design Feeder » sustainable greenery

whats your plan for october 1st ?

Spring Expert In-Store

the ol’garden shed

www.workshopshed.com

www.studio-shed.com

www.studio-shed.com

www.etsy.com - Colourful Garden Shed magnet

searchingforstyle.blogspot.com - Christie Brinkley_hamptons _shed

www.trendhunter.com - Living_wall_eathouse

design-ties.blogspot.com - gardenshedflickr

http://thegardenerscottage.blogspot.com - Garden + House

a Swiss woodie

the indoor vertical garden

little vertical gardens

not far from the tree

a young urban farmer’s garden

reuse. reimagine. reclaim. recycle.

food map design