Archive for the ‘Summer 2009’ Category

26 Jul

Our Favorite Brownstone Stoop Container Garden

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: , , , , .

photo

We finally snapped a picture of my favorite Brooklyn brownstone stoop gardens this afternoon.

This brownstone planter is simple — just two plants — and elegant. The plants take advantage of their location; passers buy look up into the grass and little blue flowers. If this planting was viewed at ground level, the little flowers might get lost, but here their lacy best can be appreciated at eye level. The plants manage to show off the container without making the container the star.

Unlike some containers that peek and then loose their appeal, this planter has looked great since spring. It breaks the “thriller, spiller, filler rule” with much success. Does anyone recognize the plants in this container?

For another great container garden in the same neighborhood, check out this Brooklyn window box overflowing with petunias.

21 Jul

Butterfly Stops By Our Lantana

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: , , , , .

butterfly_rooofgarden_lantana.jog

My mom visited us this weekend and got the chance to check out our roof garden. Mom noticed this butterfly enjoying our lantana hanging basket and we snapped a quick picture.

Early this summer, butterflies enjoyed our sedum. Since then, butterflies have become regulars at our roof garden and we’re hoping to plant more next year to attract them. This Butterfly’s Delight collection looks great for bringing on the butterflies.

The lantana has worked well as a hanging basket. It takes a beating from the wind and more than full sun conditions and barely wilts, thought it does require daily watering.

20 Jul

A Rooftop and Terrace Vegetable Garden in Brooklyn

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: , .

terrace_vegetable_garden_brooklyn

Mapleton-Bklyn is an amazing diary of a hard working, first year Brooklyn vegetable garden. Check out the variety of things Chris is growing over there — even dino kale!

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Chris speaks honestly about the hassle (“it would be nice not to have the apartment look like a construction site.”) and joy of growing in Brooklyn (“my squash leaves just grew 1.2mm in the past six hours”). Check out all his hard work, aphids and all. For even more Brooklyn veggie photos, check out Chris’ Flickr site.

Images: Mapleton-Bklyn

17 Jul

Lee Valley Sale, or Why I Bought a $72 Watering Can

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: , , .

hawswateringcan

Lee Valley is running free shipping sale through this weekend. Good thing too — our nasty neighbor has decided that we cannot use the hose on the roof anymore, so we ordered another large Haws’ watering can.

Without access to the hose, we’ve been making double and triple trips down to our apartment to fill up our watering cans and take them too the roof. I like to think that this is keeping us fit and making sure we don’t waste a drop of water.

Now $72 is a lot to pay for a watering can!! But when you’re taking two trips up and down three flights of stairs trying not to splash water on the co-op carpet, you might as well treat yourself. We’ve also found that the rose — aka watering can nozzle — helps to direct water to our containers, where as the plastic Home Depot cans drip and spill. Plus we’re starting to fall for the romance of hardworking, beautiful British gardening tools.

We’ll let you know if we’ve completely lost it or if the $72 Haws fetches water 10 times better than the $7 Home Depot plastic job.

Want to see where the Haws obsession started and learn more about their company? Here’s my first post about Haws.

15 Jul

Roof Garden Plant: Daylilies

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: , .

rooftop_garden_brooklyn_daylily

We planted a pot of daylilies in our Brooklyn roof garden at the recommendation of the helpful team over at Liberty Sunset Garden Center. In the spring and early summer, the lilies gave us a big punch of green. And the daylily started flowering during the first week in July, just as our Ameria maritima and a few other perennials stopped flowering.It was great to have the daylily bursting into flower for our 4th of July party.

Each flower doesn’t last long (hence the “day” part of the name!), but the plant keeps pushing out more flowers.

The daylily is presenting a few problems too. When it rains, the dead flowers from the daylilly fall off and get stuck to the roof surface. The flowers aren’t as attractive as we were hoping. Did all the June rain do something to the flowers? Or should we experiment with putting it in an even sunnier spot next summer? Or is it just that this particular variety (we can’t find the tag from this plant so we don’t know the exact name of it) doesn’t produce especially beautiful flowers?

By the way, daylilies are also grown in the roof garden on Chicago’s City Hall. And here’s the daylily collection at White Flower Farm. We’re wondering if other rooftop and container gardeners have any daylily advice for us.

14 Jul

A London Rooftop Vegetable Garden

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: , , .

london_vegetable_rooftop_garden_bluesonicboy

Check out Dom’s rooftop garden in Hackney, London. This is his first year in this building, so he call this vegetable garden “a big experiment.”

Dom’s tomatoes are growing in grow bags — “really just bags full of peat/compost/growing soil that are specially designed for vegetables and fruit,” he explained. “They’re great for vegetables in confined spaces but their one major drawback is that you can never tell how dry or wet they are.”

We haven’t had any problems with rodents in our garden here in NYC, but Dom’s not so lucky. “Rocket, spinach and lobelia all failed because the squirrels tampered with the soil, sending seeds everywhere. Grey squirrels are a real problem in London.”

For more pictures of Dom’s London garden, check out his Flickr page.

13 Jul

Brooklyn Apartment Window Box

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: , , , .

brooklyn_apartment_window_boxes

Happy Monday! We walk past these window boxes every morning on the way to work and wanted to share them this morning.

These Brooklyn window boxes hold piles of petunias, a bleeding heart bush, and some pansies peaking out too. We’re inspired by how big these window boxes are and by how much dimension they have.

brooklyn_windowbox_closeup_apartment

These window boxes prove that there’s always space to grow something. Check out more of my window box posts here. If you don’t have a back yard, how about a roof, a stoop, a tiny tree pit, or a window sill like this one.

12 Jul

How Can We Make This Pole Look Better?

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: , .

pole_eyesore_roofgarden_lantana

Our roof garden sits in the center of our roof. Our chairs stare out directly at this rusty exhaust pole. We hung a lantana there and strung up solar lights, but we want to do more. We need your help . . .  what else can we do to make this pipe look better?

We aren’t able to paint the pole or sit pots at the base.  Any solution needs to hang from the pole. This is a windy, full sun spot, so the plants need to be tough.

Do you have some suggestions?

12 Jul

Use Shoe Organizers to Create a Wall Garden

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: .

shoe_organizer_wall_garden_apartmenttherapy

Could a shoe organizer make a comfortable home for a bunch of plants? We found this whimsical planter on Apartment Therapy.

shoe_organizer_wall_garden_timeoutny

Then we found step-by-step instructions on how to make a shoe organizer garden on Time Out NY and Instructables. We’re wondering how these look after a full growing season, so we’re going toscour the web for more pictures.

11 Jul

Under Construction: Marie’s Manhattan Roof Garden

Posted by Chris P in Summer 2009. Tagged: , .

 

Building a roof garden in New York City

 

Marie from 66 Square Feet is building a new roof garden. Check out her construction photos on her site. What a project!

Image: Marie from 66 Square Feet (thanks for sharing!)

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