The process of fertilizing a lawn is explained in detail

How much grass should you cut? How high should you leave it? Watch this video for tips on mowing your lawn in Beaverton, Oregon.

You never know what you’re gonna bring home from the home improvement store – maybe some new patio chairs or a bag of cement – or it could be professional landscaper Ahmed Hassan. It’s like winning the landscape lottery: Ahmed waits at stores looking for the perfect weekend warriors who could use his help. Some Great Backyard tips for you backyard in Beaverton, OR.

Ahmed explains the essentials of creating patios and walkways.  These same techniques can be used on Beaverton lawns.

Nothing is more embarrassing than having the ugliest yard on the block-especially when your neighbors call you out! Armed with creative solutions, in one day licensed contractor Jason Cameron transforms a negligent neighbor¿s troubled yard into an outdoor show place.

San Francisco may have started something with its innovative Pavement to Parks or “parklet” program, which turns transportation infrastructure into public spaces. New York City is also a leader, given its recent decision to redesign sections of Broadway as permanent pedestrian malls. Now, Vancouver has gotten on board with its own Viva Vancouver program that features a set of eight streets that have become new mini-parks. Vancouver says these new spaces are “people places” designed to give residents ”extra space to walk, bike, dance, skate, sit, hang out with friends and meet your neighbours.”

One brand new parklet, Parallel Park, features a new deck-like structure in place of two parking spots including built-in seats and wood-cubed tables. Designed by landscape architect Travis Martin, Associate ASLA, with van der Zalm + Associates, this pocket public space is made of clear cedar.

On the Facebook site for Parallel Park, there are more details on how the space is designed: “There is a lean bench on the left. The benches along the back alternate between working and lounging heights. The box seats or tables are placed to provide seating for individuals, couples or groups of 4-8.”

According to The New York Times, turning underused transportation infrastructure into new public spaces isn’t just happening at the small scale either. With the success of the second phase of The High Line park (see earlier post), cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and St. Louis are also now looking at how to reuse their own abandoned railways.  

Learn more about the projects in Viva Vancouver and see more photos. Explore San Francisco’s Pavement to Parks initiative, which recently expanded.

Also, see a Google Sketchup animation focused on how to transform transportation infrastructure into public spaces.

Image credits: Parallel Park / BriteWeb and Viva Vancouver

In an effort to draw in more people year-round, Chicago’s Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and Navy Pier, Inc. announced the launch of a new $155 million redevelopment framework and design competition aimed at creating ”more aesthetically appealing public spaces” on Chicago’s Navy Pier, which already attracts more than nine million visitors a year. The idea is to create new spaces that are “authentically Chicago” but steer that part of the city away from becoming a permanent theme park, which is a bit how it feels now. Landscape architects, architects, and urban designers are invited to submit their visions for reinventing Chicago’s “pierscape.”

Under the new framework, existing piers will make room for new cultural institutions – the Chicago’s Childrens Museum and Chicago Shakespeare Theater — and a new boutique hotel at the Pier’s east end, along with additional retail and dining. Sarah Nava Garvey, newly elected by the NPI Board to serve as its first Chair, said: “The Centennial Vision reflects our belief that we can create a popular attraction that is also a high-quality attraction, such as Millennium Park.” Navy Pier General Manager Marilynn Gardner added that “inviting and intriguing public spaces are essential to Navy Pier’s future success.”

The competition’s scope is massive: Public spaces up for a revamp include Gateway Park, Crystal Garden, Pier Park, the South Dock and East End Park, in addition to smaller areas tucked along the length of the pier. According to the organizations, “recreating the ‘Pierscape’ would include changes to the landscape and streetscape, introduction of public art and water features, and relighting the Pier’s exterior. Special emphasis will be put on environmentally sustainable solutions in reprogramming and redesigning public spaces.”

The framework aims to create a “more cohesive visitor experience, and improved traffic flow and vehicle-pedestrian interface at the entrance to the Pier.” In addition to improved access, designers must also focus on the addition of public art, lighting, signage, graphics, street furniture, and other street design elements in their proposals. It sounds like the city is looking for more park and less theme park. 

Much of the new vision is informed by a report developed by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) critiquing the pier and offering ways to improve it. Already, public input into the vision is being collected in an effort to further refine the plan before designers start creating options.

In the first round, teams will submit expressions of interest of October 16. Then 10 teams will be asked to submit more detailed presentations. Following this stage, five finalists will be given $50,000 to create design proposals. A winner will be selected in February 2012. 

Learn more about how to submit a proposal. For those in Chicago, submit comments about the redevelopment vision.

Image credit: Navy Pier Inc.

Strootman Landscape Architects, a Dutch firm, transformed a set of courtyards in a conventional office building in Arnhem into an escape for grown ups. There, playful, textural design elements are abstractions of iconic Dutch rural scenes. “Giant pebbles refer to a river beach, pines refer to the Veluwe, a green hillside refers to undulating landscapes, ferns to the forest, ladybirds to sunny fields, and a ‘white-picket- fence’ to horse ranches.” In Landezine, Strootman writes that these scenic references offer visitors an opportunity to distance themselves from their day-to-day routine. 

The “voorhof” or forecourt functions as an ”urban lobby.” Visitors enter here and can take a seat before heading inside for appointments. Within the forecourt, the paving is made up of dark-grey concrete filled with stone chippings. ”The colour of the stone chippings is grey-green and has the same shade as the natural stone slabs on the façades of the surrounding building.” 

A large red outdoor circular seating element acts like a tree basin (see image at top). Made of polystyrene, the seat-sculpture enables visitors to either sit upright or lounge about. Pines planted within the seat will eventually fill the forecourt. Around the trees, pine cones are arranged as a textural element. 

In contrast, the “binnenhof” or inner courtyard is designed for employees and has a ”softer and greener” feel than the forecourt. An “ornamental garden,” the courtyard features a large green hill made of light-weight polystyrene blocks covered in a thin layer of soil. Strootman adds that they used plastic blocks because trucking in all that soil would have been too costly.

The hill, which is ringed by a white picket fence, also includes ”parking spaces” for 20 moveable “cart-seats,” which are “panelled-stone wheelbarrows.” The landscape architects designed the seating to encourage visitors to grab their own car-seat and drive to their favorite location. “After use, the cart-seats are placed in their storage racks again.”

One of our favourite elements of this urban playscape: “Cheerful mowing robots that look like ladybirds” move about silently trimming the lawn, doing their own ballet for visitors. 

In other news, FASLANYC announced their second annual Waits awards, named in honor of singer and actor Tom Waits. To win a Waits, a project must be “highly tactical and lo-fi, simple and sophisticated, ultimately working to demystify the act of intervening in the landscape.” Read through the winners, which are each matched with a song.

Image credits: Strootman Landscape Architects

A new study published in PLoS Biology, a scientific journal, estimates that there are 8.7 million different species on Earth, give or take 1.3 million. Previous estimates have ranged from 3 million to nearly 100 million. According to The Guardian (UK), this study finds that some three-quarters of all species are on land, and a majority of these are insects. Only one quarter reside in the oceans, even though 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered in water. As famed biologist E.O. Wilson explored in The Future of Life, estimating the number of species is incredibly difficult, largely because a huge share of species are still undocumented. Attempting to put a number on our collective ignorance of the world’s biodiversity, the report argues that some 86 percent of all plant and animal species and 91 percent of ocean species have not been “named and cataloged.” Climate change make things even worse: Scientists estimate mass extinctions of up to 10 percent of all species, meaning that many unknown species will die off before they are even identified.

Dr. Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia told The Guardian that counting all species accurately is important for setting a base line: ”Scientists have been working on this question of how many species for so many years. We know we are losing species because of human activity, but we can’t really appreciate the magnitude of species lost until we know what species are there.”

The researchers analyzed data on 1.2 million species, and used Carl Linnaeus’ taxonomical “tree-like” system to determine “patterns between [...] hierarchical groupings which they could use to infer the existence of missing species that scientists have not yet described. That allowed them to use data from higher orders – such as anthropods, where there is a lot of data – to predict the number of creatures at the species level.” Their final estimate: 7.8 million species of animals; almost 300,000 different types of plants; more than 600,000 different species of fungi, mushrooms, and molds; some 36,000 species of single-celled organisms; and 27,000 species of algae. The authors didn’t delve into bacteria.

Robert Mays, a UK government advisor, said the findings were realistic: “It is sort of saying that the trunks and lower branches of the tree seem similar from group to group. At one end of the thing, you have birds and mammals that really are completely known. At the other end, you have just got a handful of branches and twigs. But if you do the big assumption the trees are similar, then it seems sensible.”

However, others are critical of the estimate, arguing that if the methodology was changed, an entirely new estimate could easily be calculated. For example, other approaches have tried to classify the Earth’s species based on patterns derived from the size of species or their location, or their relationships with other species. According to The New York Times, Robert May, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, argued in the late 1980s that the diversity of land animals grows as they shrink in size. “He reasoned that we probably have found most of the species of big animals, like mammals and birds, so he used their diversity to calculate the diversity of smaller animals. He ended up with an estimate 10 to 50 million species of land animals.”

Terry Erwin, a carabidologists or beetle expert, found more than 1,100 species of beetle from a single tree in the rainforest of Panama. He estimated more than 30 million species of insects in tropical rainforests alone. On the approach taken in the new study, Erwin told The Guardian: “These guys base these on classification of animals, and classification of animals are human constructs. The reason it is predictable is that humans are predictable, especially in the scientific field. What they are measuring really is human activity. It is not real activity out in the wild.” Also, a specialist focused on fungi, David Pollack at University of Colorado, agrees and argues that there are far more fungi out there, up to 5 million (not the 600,000 estimated in this paper’s approach). Lastly, microbiologists argue that the diversity of microbes will only dwarf animals. “A single spoonful of soil may contain 10,000 different species of bacteria, many of which are new to science.”

The Guardian writes that one problem is that identifying and cataloging new life forms is “expensive and slow,” with only 14 percent of life forms represented in databases. Scientists point to a lack of funding. ”At the current pace, it would take 300,000 specialists 1,200 years to go through the laborious process of describing the new discoveries in scientific journals, and then entering them in electronic databases.” The lack of funding may be due to a lack of interest in these efforts among the public given most of the species to be discovered will be very small, and concentrated in remote areas.

Still, scientists are making big finds almost every day. “Last week, scientists at the Smithsonian Institution reported the discovery of a primitive eel in a reef off the coast of the South Pacific island nation of Palau. The new species, Protoanguilla palau, bore little relation to 19 other forms of eel currently in existence and some of its characteristics – such as a second upper jaw – were more in line with fossils from 65m years ago.”

Read the article and the study.

Image credit: Cristalino State Park, Alta Floresta, Mato Grosso, Brazil / Daniel Beltra Conservation Photography

Tidal Radiance, a new large-scale interactive sculpture by light artist and designer Leni Schwendinger, created for the new Port Pavilion on the pier along San Diego’s waterfront, is designed to be seen both by boaters on the water and strollers moving along the Embarcadero promenade. At night, this installation will be hard to miss given its lighting is programmed to follow the lunar cycle, while also changing for seasonal compositions, including whale watching and cruise season.

According to Schwendinger, during the moon cycle, the full moon phase emanates pale blues, while the new and quarter moon phases are represented by deep and medium blue hues (see image above). In addition, the lighting design moves beyond the sculpture to the base of the building: “Light projections onto the ground plane create an immersive environment–a visual and experiential installation to engage the public.”

The sculpture itself is purposefully a bit staid by day: the goal is to the set the stage for a dramatic nightime transformation. Schwendinger says: “I envisioned a monumental sea creature emerging from the shed at night.” 

The project uses light to explore change, both natural and programmed: ”Whether animated patterns or a calendar of seasonal light sequences, one of my continuing challenges is to utilize the property of light to brighten, fade, and disappear – and to respond to controlled voltages through highly sophisticated computer programming. This element of controlled changeability – combined with color symbolism – allows me to create public art that not only pleases the eye but communicates and displays nuanced messages about the environment we live in.”

Indeed, Schwendinger, who has done major projects for the New York Port Authority, and is working on redesigning the lighting for a new pedestrian-friendly Times Square (see earlier post), has long used “controlled changeability” to powerful effect. Her work on the Coney Island Parachute Jump, “Brooklyn’s Eiffel Tower,” transformed a theme-park landmark into a shifting beacon of light, reflecting seasons, holidays, and, again, the moon’s cycle.

Read an interview with Schwendinger and check out her blog, which covers her “NightSeeing Lightwalks,” or guided evening tours of lighting, in various cities.

Image credits: Leni Schwendinger Light Projects