Design of soft sided planters and indoor gardening. Woolly Pocket and Ambient.

Recently Woolly Pocket Gardening Company in the US released more soft sided planters onto the market. These planters have little zips  to provide planting flexibility.

Woolly Pocket’s complete range are designed to allow a plant to grow, live and breath in these soft sided pockets. The design of the planter is all about ensuring optimal health for the plant whilst looking good in the home.

Woolly Pocket advise there is no need to re-pot as the plant will only grow as big as the container. The material allows a plant’s root system to breath which in turn allows a root system to be air pruned rather than becoming pot bound.

Providing you do not over water the plant there will be no water on the carpet or floorboards either.  Miguel Nelson, http://www.woollypocket.com/ the designer of the planter, reassures me that it usual to over water maybe once but no big deal, just wipe with a towel and the owner is unlikely to do it again.

Woolly Pocket Indoor Planter

Meanwhile, in Germany a similar LOOKING product has been released by Ambiente but there is a major design difference. Do not be fooled. Ambient’s design does not allow a plant to be installed directly into the  pocket. This design is way of concealing ugly indoor pots – it is not designed to support the health of a plant. These are clothes for a pot .

Ambient planter pot screens

Landscapes in the SE of England

I was living in Sussex a few moons ago and I was always slightly disorientated. Partly because the roads needed to meanander around waterways, topography etc but also because the road corridor in the area was planted with exactly the same plantings over and over again.

The design rationale appeared to me to be ‘screen the road from everyone and lets not think how we are going to acheive this screen. Roll out the next 5 miles of woodland hedge ‘. 

Many town bypasses appeared the same as well  – there is practically no difference in the landscaping between the bypass of  East Grinstead, a town in Sussex, and the bypass to the town outside of the Rodings in Essex. Yet one is north of London and the other is south. Does this seem odd to anyone else?

Does this matter? Well yes because it could be so much better without much extra budget. The landscaping could be more interesting, varied and actually become part of the navigational structure  for the road user.

Perhaps the Highway Agency has never been called to defend their design approach.  Is the Highway Agency aware of what is happening in other parts of the world?