Today’s Friday Film features green wall designer, botanist and author Patrick Blanc, perhaps the best known designer of green walls. His book, The Vertical Garden: From Nature to the City is getting a revised and updated edition which will be out in April. This video is part of the Greenroofs.com Greenroofs & Walls of the World Virtual Summit 2011, which [...]
On Being Misunderstood is a new feature at The Metropolitan Field Guide which will look at the variety of flora and fauna we live with which are too commonly misunderstood. From plants to wildlife, many of our daily interactions with these species are often negative or confused. Many of these reactions are based on misinformation. This new feature seeks to combat these misconceptions by bringing in guest writers to explain some of these species to us so we all have a better understanding and to set the record straight.
If you would like to contribute to this series as a guest writer, contact me and let me know!
The House Centipede, Scutgera coleaptrata
By Julie Feinstein
|
|
 Flickr user theilr |
House centipedes always seem to arrive suddenly. They dart into view with legs rippling and antennae waving. They run and stop, run and stop again. Humans snap to attention. Even gentle nature-loving people sometimes jump up to kill a centipede. The American author, William S. Burroughs, went so far as to say that a person who would stroke [pet] a centipede was a traitor to the human race. Continue reading »
Mar 022012
Today’s Friday Film features an inside look at the New Wild Garden from the 2011 Chelsea RHS Flower Show designed by Nigel Dunnett filmed by Dusty Gedge. The garden features a great many elements for wildlife including a stone wall for habitat with built-in insect shelters as well as an insect wall for solitary bees and other insects on the shelter. The shelter is constructed out of a reused shipping container by Green Roof Shelters and includes a green roof designed for biodiversity. Also part of the design is a beautiful rain garden which captures overflow water from the green roof on the shelter and a wild planting area for pollinators.
From the Vimeo description::
The centre piece of the Chelsea RHS Flower show silver gilt New Wild Garden designed by Nigel Dunnett. The new Green Roof Shelters Home Office for shedworking or just as a summerhouse combines elegant design with a range of features designed for biodiversity. A good depth green roof provides wildflower diversity for foraging bumblebees and a designed habitat wall/bee hotel provides nesting for solitary and mining bees. Continue reading »
Feb 272012
This is an excerpt from my latest post at the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. Click the link below to visit the full post.
If one really loves nature, one can find beauty everywhere.
-Vincent van Gogh
This is the second post in a short series about the importance of plants in the arts. The first post was Plants in Poetry and looked at the various ways plants were used as inspiration, symbolism, morals and as an appreciation of nature. In addition to poetry, plants have been represented a great deal in paintings. We can go into nearly any art museum and find a still life of a bouquet, everyone from Henri Matisse to Pierre Auguste Renoir to Paul Gauguin all spent time painting bouquet’s of flowers settled among indoor props. The landscape painting genre however kept plants in their native surroundings and paid special attention to the types of plants that were there. Of course many artists made names for themselves with their botanical illustrations alone.
One of my favorite artists focused a great amount of energy on plants in his paintings. Vincent van Gogh also painted bouquets, in fact his Sunflower paintings are perhaps among the most famous of bouquets. As I recently read through a book of his letters, I was struck by how much he loved nature and being outside.
…continue reading at Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens
 Northwest Flower and Garden Show 2012Last year when I wrote about the Northwest Flower and Garden Show I talked a lot about how the gardens didn’t feature wildlife habitat, but could have easily done so and I featured specific examples. I also expressed hope that a nature organization would partner on a display garden. This year, my hope was realized [...] |
 Friday Film:: Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in actionToday’s Friday Film features a fascinating and enlightening TED talk by Janine Benyus, natural sciences writer, innovation consultant, author, co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild and founder of the Biomimicry Institute. One reason nature is so important to us as humans is the lessons we take from it. Observing the workings of the flora and fauna in our own backyards and daily [...] |
|
 Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens Post:: Plants in PoetryThis is an excerpt from my latest post at the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. Click the link below to visit the full post. Plants are beneficial for a lot of reasons such as providing habitat and food for wildlife. However, lest we forget, plants are also important to humans, not just for food [...] |
 Foragings:: The latest news, resources, designs and moreNews Bloomin’ lovely gardens brighten up London’s East End:: A competition for residents of London’s East End, the winners were chosen for showing “ what they can do with plants, wildlife and the environment.” Can biodiversity be accommodated in today’s urban environment?:: Posing the question, this piece from The Ecologist looks at recent efforts including the International [...] |
Friday Film:: The Muse Green RoofToday’s Friday Film features a green roof in Islington, London designed by Bere Architects, Kim Wilkie and Dusty Gedge. It’s been a great success in attracting wildlife including goldfinches, house sparrows, butterflies and a variety of bees. The video features photos of a variety of plants from the roof and many of the insects which make [...] |
 Urban Species Profile:: American WigeonCommon Name: American Wigeon Scientific Name: Anas americana Family: Anatidae The American Wigeon is a dabbling duck, which are ducks that tip their front ends into the water to forage while their back ends stick up in the air. They maintain a large geographic range, breeding as far north as the Bering Sea and wintering from Canada [...] |
Friday Film:: The Importance of Parks to People and WildlifeToday’s Friday Film is a video from the Brussels Natural History Museum for their exhibition on urban wildlife and features Dr Peter Shepherd from BSG Ecology discussing why parks are important to people and wildlife. He talks about the importance of beautiful plants, the song of birds and other wildlife to people and without mentioning it by [...] |
 Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens Post:: 5 Wildlife Gardening Resources for the Pacific NorthwestThis is an excerpt from my latest post at the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog. Click the link below to visit the full post. Landscaping for Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest It seems that any time I talk with somebody about landscaping for wildlife or make a book recommendation, this is the first one [...] |
Follow The Metropolitan Field Guide