Don’t Feed the Bag Monster!

Andy Keller, environmental activist, is on a nationwide tour to create awareness about the waste and pollution caused by plastic bags. The tour is coming to Chicago next week!

Craft Idea. “How-to” video of casting a leaf in concrete.

How-to video on casting a leaf in concrete.

New Containers for along Irving Park Road.

As you probably have noticed, the containers along Irving Park Road are in disrepair and have a very questionable remaining life span. It has been one of my dreams to replace some or all of these containers with something larger and easier to maintain. With larger containers we can plant trees, shrubs and perennials with the reasonable expectation that they will survive from year to year.

75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn’t

Can I really compost that? Yes you can!
By Colleen Vanderlinden | Planet Green

The beautiful Parrot Flower.

This is a flower from Thailand. It is also a protected species and is not allowed to be exported.

Roy Diblik: Champion of natives and influential plantsman – chicagotribune.com

Roy Diblik has no horticulture degree. He is not a landscape architect. He grew up in Berwyn, where yards were tiny patches of turf for playing baseball.

But over more than 30 years, project by project, plant by plant, Diblik, 57, has become one of the most original, sophisticated and influential plantsmen in the Midwest.

If you have visited the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park (luriegarden.org), you’ve seen plants he grew from seed. If you have been to the Art Institute of Chicago this summer and strolled by the Louis Sullivan Stock Exchange Arch, you’ve seen how he puts plants together. If you’ve gambled at the Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin, you’ve seen a site where he combines native plants in a stylized way.

Read the entire story here:

Roy Diblik: Champion of natives and influential plantsman – chicagotribune.com.

WOW! Pictures of garden topiaries from the Montreal Botanical Gardens.

Be sure and check out pictures of garden topiaries. Thanks Nancy Rimkus for sending these to me to post.

Lawn Mowing Takes a Cheap and Tasty Turn — for Goats

A cottage industry of entrepreneurs is flourishing by renting out goats to home warriors battling weeds, prickly underbrush, and other unwanted vegetation —

Pictures of Rick Bayless’s Bucktown Garden

But that garden is the end result of a man who knows what he wants and has the resources to achieve it. It made my attempts at planting tomato plants and training squash vines to wrap around a wrought iron fence seem even more feeble than they are.

Breakfast for the Birds – Suet Recipes.

The birds will go crazy for these suet cakes!