Garden Design

"The Wildman" Steve Brill has moved into the digital age with an iPhone app that can help you identify wild edibles, with harvesting methods and tips to avoid poisonous lookalikes!

A physician by trade, botanic enthusiast, and accidental inventor, Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward devised the first terrarium in 1829, and thereby launched a new age of horticultural possibilities—where ferns and mosses would grow indoors, and tropical exotics would travel the world. 

Mimosa pudica, or the bashful plant, is the introvert of the garden, yet, with a coy choreography that is curiously beautiful, it is impossible not to touch, and has fascinated botanists for centuries. At a light caress, its fern-like leaves will fold inward; a gentle thrust will collapse the petiole.

 

At the University of Stuttgart, Germany, a new architectural discipline is evolving, with leaves, branches, and roots. The research group is called Baubotanik (Botanic Architecture), and it is where the architects are gardeners, and the plants are architects.