Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: Garden

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June 12, 2016

Spectacular Waterfall Takes Over The Palace Of Versailles

Like Henry V111, Louis XIV is one of history's best-known kings.

Easy to see why. Both brought enormous changes to their respective countries.

Louis' spectacular palace and gardens are still being updated.

A new attraction at the Palace of Versailles is making a big splash—literally.

Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson created the Waterfall Installation, a towering structure that sends a torrent of water into the palace’s Grand Canal. The waterfall is but one of many dramatic installations by Eliasson that dot the 17th-century palace grounds as part of a summer art exhibition that opens today to the public.

Eliasson’s transformative works were commissioned as part of a recurring summer project that previously invited artists including the likes of Jeff Koons and Anish Kapoor.

The breathtaking Waterfall Installation cascades down from a height of around 40 meters and was created to realize the plans of Louis XIV’s garden architect, André Le Nôtre, who had wanted to add a grand waterfall to Versailles but never did.

“This waterfall reinvigorates the engineering ingenuity of the past. It is as constructed as the court was, and I’ve left the construction open for all to see—a seemingly foreign element that expands the scope of human imagination,” said Eliasson in a press statement.

The exhibition’s outdoor installations also include the Fog Assembly, which shoots out a circle of mist, and the Glacial Rock Flour Garden that evokes imagery of retreating glaciers. The palace interior is also transformed with the power of light and mirrors in the works Solar Compression, a suspended mirror ringed with light, and The Curious Museum, an installation that uses mirrors to create large-scale optical illusions.

By Lucy Weng

With many thanks to Inhabitat

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February 05, 2016

A Japanese Company Is Building The World's First Autonomous Farm

All those farmers out there: you might want to think about switching careers (or looking forward to retirement), because Spread, a company based in Kyoto, Japan, says it wants to make the world's first fully autonomous farm within the next two years. The firm hasn't gone into huge amounts of detail about its plans, but the technology is reportedly in place to make its ambitions a reality by 2017.

Koji Morisada from Spread explained to reporters this week that robots will take care of almost every aspect of the farm's operations, from watering the seeds to harvesting the crops. That crop will be nothing but lettuce to begin with - an area the company already has an extensive amount of experience in - and it's expected that some 30,000 heads of lettuce could be produced every day once the farm is fully operational.

Humble human beings are still going to be required for one important task, however: planting the seeds.

The grounds of the farm will cover 4,400 square metres (around 47,360 square feet), with lettuce growing on shelves stacked from the floor to the ceiling. One of the big benefits of having robots running the operation instead of humans is there's no need to facilitate so much elbow room. And that means more lettuce space.

Spread hopes that its robot-run farm will cut down on energy usage as well as personnel costs. A growing number of businesses in Japan are looking to robots to fill gaps in the labour workforce and boost its economy. Unlike human beings, they're able to work around the clock and don't even ask for any monetary reward at the end of the day.

According to Spread, the pesticide-free lettuce produced by its new project will have more beta carotene than other farm-grown lettuce. Beta carotene is a well-known antioxidant and helps the body produce vitamin A (it's also the pigment that gives carrots their orange colouring). Even if you have philosophical qualms about robots growing your food, it should be very good for your body, at least.

While farms run entirely by robots are still some way off, the industry as a whole has embraced new technologies that can replace the role of human farmers in completing mundane, labourious, and even dangerous tasks. We've previously reported on the ways in which autonomy can boost production, and Spread will be hoping its robot-run lettuce farm will set the trend for similar projects in the coming years.

"In the future it will be difficult to steadily secure food using only conventional agriculture due to the rapid growth in population and other changes," says Spread's CEO Shinji Inada. "We believe our mission is to create innovations that can address the changing times based on the agricultural technology and skills that have been inherited from previous eras and take on an important role that will connect us to the next generation."

By David Nield

With many thanks to Science Alert

Some related posts:

Air Bonsai Lets You Make Your Own Floating Tree

Water Lilies: Beautiful Blooms On The Water

Keukenhof: The Garden of Europe
Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island - Canada
The Socatra Dragon Blood Tree
The Bomarzo Monster Park
A Tree That Grows 40 Kinds Of Fruit
Wollemi Pines: Secret Plantation In Blue Mountains To Ensure Species' Survival
Jamie Oliver: How Being A Special-needs Student Changed My Life
How Non-French Chefs Are Saving French Food
Britain Is A Nation Of Skilled Chefs But 1 in 10 Can't Cook, BBC Good Food Survey Finds
Manuka Honey - The Only Healthy Honey
Eating Mediterranean Foods Could Prolong A Healthy Brain For 5 Extra Years
Sri Lanka’s Sirilak Garden: History And Spices
How Paris Fell For The Good, The Sad And The Ugly Vegetables

January 29, 2016

Air Bonsai Lets You Make Your Own Floating Tree

Owners are affectionate about the upkeep of their bonsai plants. After all, they require a continual source of maintenance in order for them to look their best.

However, Hoshinchu has taken their hobby for indoor gardening to the next level by introducing the Air Bonsai project on Kickstarter. This labor of love, which adds another dimension to plant care, has been met with a wealth of support already.

Each Air Bonsai is made up of two separate pieces: a levitating piece called the “little star “and an “energy base.” Both are equipped with like-charged magnets, allowing the plant container to repel upward from the base.

Visit the Air Bonsai’s Kickstarter page for more info and to pledge a donation.

By Jonathan Luk

With many thanks to Highsnobiety

Some related posts:

Water Lilies: Beautiful Blooms On The Water
Keukenhof: The Garden of Europe
Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island - Canada
The Socatra Dragon Blood Tree
Sri Lanka’s Sirilak Garden: History And Spices
The Bomarzo Monster Park
A Tree That Grows 40 Kinds Of Fruit
Wollemi Pines: Secret Plantation In Blue Mountains To Ensure Species' Survival
A Japanese Company Is Building The World's First Autonomous Farm

January 11, 2016

Water Lilies: Beautiful Blooms On The Water

Now will the water lilies stain the lake
With cups of yellow, chalices of cream,
Set in their saucer leaves of olive-green
On greener ware, motionless, opaque.

So wrote acclaimed English columnist and writer, Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962) in The Garden. Poets, novelists, painters and historians have often eulogised the waterlily, at its colourful best in this country now that summer is here. In public parks and botanic gardens and in water features in city courtyards, waterlilies are blooming in creams, pinks, purples, reds and yellows.

Among the loveliest water gardens you will find anywhere in the world are those at Longstock Park, in the English county of Hampshire,(above).

There, in the serene lakes and ponds, waterlilies thrive with other bog garden species and statuesque damp-loving trees like the swamp cypress (Taxodium distichum).

While most waterlilies flower during the day, the night blooming, scented species were cherished in Indian Mughal gardens for viewing on balmy moonlit evenings. You can see them flowering at Saheliyon-ki-Bari, known as the Garden of the Maidens, in Udaipur, in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan. This renowned garden was built by the King from 1710 to welcome his future bride who arrived with forty-eight young women attendants. Located on the banks of Fateh Sagar Lake, it is a green retreat that contrasts with the dry landscape of Rajasthan.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was a painter of light. He planted his garden at Giverny, an hour north of Paris, to respond to the changing light and would paint the same subject at different times of the day. He convinced local authorities to allow him to divert a local river to create a lake and planted it with waterlilies, which he painted on huge canvasses, now displayed in galleries around the world.

Named for the Greek deity Nymph, the waterlily (Nymphaea spp.) is a genus of about 50 species, both evergreen and deciduous. Along with the fabulous, giant Victoria amazonica, the water lily is a member of the Nymphaeceae family of eight genera of aquatic plants. And in Australia you can see the Blue Nile waterlily (N. caerulea), among others, at the 42ha Royal Botanic Gardens in Adelaide, in the Victoria House, purpose-built for Victoria amazonica, which flowers amidst leaves that can support up to 60kg.

Among the species used today to create hybrids, the white N. alba is deciduous and frost hardy, and bears fragrant semi-double blooms. N. lotus has fragrant, cream blooms that open at night, closing at midday, while the white N. odorata is native to north and tropical America and bears fragrant blooms some 12cm in diameter. Nymphaea nouchali is native to southern Asia and North Australia; in India it is used in fragrance production.

You can buy these aquatic species in containers, or by mail order, bare rooted. Plant them in an aquatic mix or compost-rich soil, in hessian-lined baskets (to prevent soil from drifting away), or in plastic pots: place stones at the base of your chosen receptacle to help it keep stable. Firm the soil down well, as, once submerged, air is dispelled from the container, causing the soil level to drop. Cover with gravel so that your soil does not wash away. Place the baskets or pots onto bricks, to allow the leaves to remain on the water surface, or, if the plant is leafless, just below the surface. Gradually remove the bricks as the plants send out roots to anchor in the base of your water feature.

While water lilies rarely attract pests nor suffer from diseases, they can be attacked by aphids, and the so-called China Mark Moth. This small brown moth lays its eggs on the underside of floating leaves, until its larvae cuts pieces out of the leaves in just a fortnightly cycle. You can remove the larvae, if you see them soon enough, and spray the foliage with a an environmentally-safe insecticide. As all water plants are greedy, feed with a slow release fertiliser.

Waterlilies are both beautiful and useful. Apart from their good looks, waterlilies oxygenate the water and crowd out non-beneficial algae, which consume sunlight and nutrients, while their leaves shade and protect fish.

Prunings
• I received a terrific present just before Christmas. A small packet arrived in the post; inside was a cloth bag containing the evocatively named Baa Baa Brew. It’s a 100 per cent natural liquid fertiliser made from natural sheep manure. Following the instructions I placed the bag in a bucket of water, left it for two days, then poured the solution onto my pots of orchids and buxus. A second brew was made with the same bag. Another great solution for those gardening in small spaces. baabaabrew.com.au

• It’s time to water your summer vegetables with a weak solution of fertiliser each week, so that they will grow quickly, to ensure sweetness, particularly among the leaf vegetables.

• The Botanic Gardens, Adelaide are open daily from 7.15am weekdays, 9.00am weekends and public holidays. Free guided walks of the Gardens start at 10.30am, seven days a week.

• Monet’s garden at Giverny in France, is open from April 1 to November 1. giverny.org

With Many thanks to The Australian