Create an ideabook for your next remodeling project!
Browse more than 1,500,000 photos from top designers and save your favorites
Urban Gardens
Top Ideabooks
Gardening
Top Ideabooks
- Enjoy the Peak of Spring Gardening — Here's What to Do in May
- 11 Perfect Plants for a Moonlit Garden — in Pots
- 6 Beautiful Plants for a Shady, Wet Site
- 6 Captivating Roses for an Alluringly Fragrant Garden
- 5 Essential Considerations for a Landscape Design Project
- Get on a Composting Kick (Hello, Free Fertilizer!)
Green Decorating
Top Ideabooks
Gardeners Champion Nature's Cause in the City
Garden advocates and artists in San Francisco have joined forces to find creative ways to bring nature back into the urban landscape
Lisa Lee Benjamin wants you and everyone you know to get excited about the bugs that live in your city. Through the creation of urban habitats, she hopes to make room for the flora and fauna we need for a healthy environment — and encourage people to “grapple with where they draw the line between wild neighbor and pest.”
Urban Hedgerow is a group of San Francisco "instigators" and artists, formed by Benjamin and horticulturalist Jason Dewees, aimed at creating public awareness of the extraordinary — and necessary — environmental processes happening around us every day. By creating pockets of nature deep within the city, they hope to redefine what makes a landscape good.
Urban Hedgerow is a group of San Francisco "instigators" and artists, formed by Benjamin and horticulturalist Jason Dewees, aimed at creating public awareness of the extraordinary — and necessary — environmental processes happening around us every day. By creating pockets of nature deep within the city, they hope to redefine what makes a landscape good.
Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
Urban Hedgerow team members reuse urban finds to make wall-mounted shelters for pollinating insects and even migratory birds.
Hedgerows were originally used in farms as property divisions and lane lines. To Urban Hedgerow, a traditional hedgerow is “a row of trees and shrubs at the margins of country spaces, one that people lightly manage and partly neglect. It’s a space that attracts and harbors wildlife and offers people wind protection, enclosure and pest management.”
The classic hedgerow is an obvious interaction of the managed and wild landscape — untamed trees beside carefully planted farm fields. In a similar way, Urban Hedgerow installations like this one bring fragments of the wild into the city, redefining the fringe.
Hedgerows were originally used in farms as property divisions and lane lines. To Urban Hedgerow, a traditional hedgerow is “a row of trees and shrubs at the margins of country spaces, one that people lightly manage and partly neglect. It’s a space that attracts and harbors wildlife and offers people wind protection, enclosure and pest management.”
The classic hedgerow is an obvious interaction of the managed and wild landscape — untamed trees beside carefully planted farm fields. In a similar way, Urban Hedgerow installations like this one bring fragments of the wild into the city, redefining the fringe.
| Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
|
| Public awareness and support are critical to Urban Hedgerow's success, so the group aims to create pieces that are attractive, fun and attainable. This panel of foraged and reclaimed materials designed and built by Benjamin and Kevin Smith hangs at Flora Grubb Gardens in San Francisco. This art piece and potential habitat invites us to ask how willing we are to invite nature into our domestic landscapes, even in a subtle way. |
Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
This Urban Hedgerow prototype is designed to hold bundles of foraged twigs and plants for bug habitats. It was displayed at the Farmer's Block exhibition in San Francisco.
| Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
|
| Benjamin and collaborator Moose Curtis created an Urban Hedgerow installation at London's 2012 Chelsea Fringe Festival. It focused on building awareness of two species of a local butterfly: Vanessa cardui and Vanessa atalanta. In an installation titled “I Love Vanessa,” Benjamin tagged countless street weeds and plants with butterfly-size tags identifying them as critical butterfly habitats. Being presented with sidewalks as hosts to the beautiful Vanessa butterfly, passersby may rethink the value of “weeds” and what they mean to animals. |
| Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
|
| Curtis power washed images of the butterflies on sidewalks and walls surrounding the installation as an additional reminder of the wild creatures that occupy managed spaces. |
| Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
|
| Check out a map of butterfly image locations. The installation will remain intact in Chelsea until the art naturally weathers away. |
| Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
|
| Many things go into the choices of locations selected for Urban Hedgerows. Public spaces are important, because they maximize exposure and enable pedestrians to take notice and ask questions. Proposed habitats in San Francisco coincide with critical paths for migratory birds. "Reclaim Market Street!" (shown here) was created as a temporary green space in the middle of San Francisco's Civic Center. By staging a native habitat at this political and pedestrian center of San Francisco, designers, artists and plant experts were able to share their expertise and collaborate with the public on a communal stage. |
Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
Nesting birds and insects can find shelter in this habitat built with Green Roof Shelters. Native plants and collected organic materials like wool and bark are tucked inside recycled and reused construction materials.
While Benjamin works with artists to create attention-grabbing shelters, the real needs of nesting birds and bees still must be met. Even then, the result is not always foolproof. “I once watched a bee go straight into a screw hole after a week working on a hand-crafted mud concrete panel for nesting bees," Benjamin says.
While Benjamin works with artists to create attention-grabbing shelters, the real needs of nesting birds and bees still must be met. Even then, the result is not always foolproof. “I once watched a bee go straight into a screw hole after a week working on a hand-crafted mud concrete panel for nesting bees," Benjamin says.
| Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
|
| Small hedgerow prototypes, such as this, enable portability. There is still a lot left to be discovered about the lasting importance of these mini urban habitats. The ecological benefits that humans receive from native plants, bugs and insects is undeniable — pollination, decomposition and carbon removal are just a few. Benjamin believes that awareness at the personal level will determine how we affect our environments moving forward. “The insects will very well survive without us, but we will not survive without them," she says. "All in all we are just another animal, so we should start behaving like one.” Pay attention to what is happening right around you and respect what’s already there, she says. |
Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
Rolled burlap, twigs and other natural materials cost little and create colorful and textural habitats.
Benjamin suggests leaving some areas of your garden natural, or planting host or pollinator plants. Think about garden “problem” areas differently. If considering your own hedgerow, Benjamin reminds us to to be creative, intentional and resourceful with materials. Ask yourself what the animals would choose if they were in your place.
Benjamin suggests leaving some areas of your garden natural, or planting host or pollinator plants. Think about garden “problem” areas differently. If considering your own hedgerow, Benjamin reminds us to to be creative, intentional and resourceful with materials. Ask yourself what the animals would choose if they were in your place.
| Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
|
| |
Like it? Save it to your Ideabook »
Urban Hedgerow invites everyone to campaign and collaborate with them or on their own for “the unseens that fuel our existence," Benjamin (shown) says. "I hope soon we can just be a place for people to contribute all the great things they find to inspire each other to create.” Check out Urban Hedgerow for more information.
More:
9 Flowers That Draw Butterflies
More:
9 Flowers That Draw Butterflies
Ideabook published on June 22, 2012.
What are you working on?
News From Our Partners
Latest Ideabooks
People found the photos in this ideabook after searching for:
View over a million photos:
basements · bedrooms · dining rooms · entries · family rooms · garage and sheds · halls · home offices · landscapes · laundry rooms · powder rooms · wine cellars and more.
Wood stacks are also popular here not only to store firewood but to create garden boundaries and habitats for insects. I created a kit form of what I call the Mallee Woodbox. Its sold online at yagoona.ch
Also - too funny about the bird going into the screw hole instead of the carefully crafted niche!! Oh the things nature teaches us about design. :)
http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s3531551.htm
I love Design's Woodboxes too!