Garden Art, Air Plants, Tillandsia and Airspace in Contemporary Gardens

Airplants (genus Tillandsia) offer much garden art inspiration. Tillandsia create amazing shapes with their tentical like leaves. They do not need any soil and are therefore able to be fixed to various materials and locations.  Landscape Architect, Flora Grubb in San Francisco has become well known for her arrangements of these plants. The idea of arranging Tillandsia is not new but Flora has certainly moved these plants from their original 70’s wood and rock arrangements (as shown below) .

Given the current trend of architecture morphing with the garden in a Patric Blanc style it is likely that we will continue to see  different garden typologies develop.

Flora has also been responsible for some beautiful succulent green walls. These wall planters have been inspiring many internet gardeners and she now has the product available for purchase .

Biospheres by Artist Tomas Saraceno uses the airplants in his art to explore ecology. For a full explanation on these Globes please refer to RETHINK Contemporary art and climate change .

2010 is a Year for Turquoise Garden Accessories and Contrasting Cut Flowers

It seems the flower industry may need to hand ball the colour of  the year to the garden accessories department.

Since turquoise is the colour of 2010 (according to Pantone) I thought I might list the Flower Industries recommended flowers for the year but was suprised to read they are recommending:

‘…green carnations, chrysanthemums and blue hydrangeas, all of which it says, can be presented in turquoise containers’   as reported in Horticultural Week Daily.

Its a hard task trying to find flowers that are just the right shade of blue to be called turquoise. Couple that with the need for ‘cut flower performance’ and there are not many flowers left to colour match with Pantone’s Colour of 2010. Plants are like children. Its difficult to get them to do what you exactly want. Luckily garden accessories don’ t complain. Check out these turquoise patio planters.

For anyone interested in the science of colour I am going to borrow an explanation on  Turquoise from Wikipedia. Turquoise is a slightly greenish shade of cyan. The color is based on the gem turquoise. The term comes from the French for Turkish.The first recorded use of Turquoise as a color name in English was in 157.

— Color coordinates —
Hex triplet		#40E0D0
RGBB	(r, g, b)	(64, 224, 208)
Source		X11

Lego – the new serious building material – Contemporary Gardeners Get Ready for Lego Garden Accessories

Top Gear is a program that I strangely enjoy given my disinterest in the whole car porn thing. Even weirder James May from Top Gear held me totally in awe last week on television as he showed what is possible with Lego. He built (with the help of some product designers and architects) his childhood dream – a house made from Lego. What sheer greatness. Yes things fell a part but it looked so tremendous with its carefully orchestrated coloured patterns. It also leaked. And now they can’t find anyone to house it long term – not even legoland!!!.

Now I see that Lego was identified as having a revival back in Feb 2009 by Cool Hunting. Check out this kitchen top

Now most excited to see what garden accessories may come from this new trend. Given The Future Laboratory are predicting gardens to be more  interactive perhaps we will be building our own garden accessories with lego.

Contemporary gardens and the return to ornamentation – is that the same as accessories?

OK Icon magazine are claiming that ornamentation has returned to architecture  December 2009. Where does that leave gardens and their accessories? Anyone? Critical theorists can you please come forth? How are contemporary gardens explained by this theory?