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Delighted to read that “Pictures of Life and Death,” a garden featuring fungi, lichen and moulds by a team from the Christchurch Botanic Gardens took first place at the Ellerslie International Flower Show in Christchurch, New Zealand this week.

Jeremy Hawker, Christchurch Botanic Gardens Botanical Services Team Leader, describes it as a “dramatic, theatrical exhibit where fungi, mould and lichen will thrive. There will be a sense of being below the earth and looking out to a glimpse of blue sky, hence the name Pictures of Life and Death.” Inspired by the mold in Hawker’s coffee cup, the Botanic Gardens’ team spent months foraging for mushrooms throughout the region that they continued to grow on decomposing logs to include in the exhibit.

The Human Flower Project offers this as an example of bellephobia trending. Technically speaking, fear of beauty is “callophobia,” but only a phobophile would care about such details. I’d like to see it as an example of the dawning recognition that indeed, fungi can be exquisitely beautiful. Look at the love shown for the plant life in Avatar (another winner made in New Zealand and undoubtedly influenced by the work of Paul Stamets).

Here are some gorgeous views of the garden and an interview with Sheena Baines, the co lighting designer, who describes it as “The whole sequence is based on death and life and the cycle. We basically destroy the earth with volcanoes and earthquakes and then we rebuild it. It’s kind of death and destruction spawns new life.”

• I’ve been cultivating my own fungi in the fernery, spawning oyster mushrooms from Mushroom Gourmet. To date, all of the fruiting bodies that have appeared so far are party crashers, but lovely ones, such as Japanese Parasols.
• Ecovative Design grows product packaging material called “ecocradle” out of mycelium, that’s 100% compostable and biodegradable.
• It turns out coffee waste is the ideal growing material for many fungi.

Emily Harris Dream to Reality Entry from Emily Harris on Vimeo.

Emily Harris has a wonderful vision of establishing rooftop gardens for Auckland city-dwellers, so that they can grow their own fresh, healthy food, right on the roof of their apartment buildings.

I’d love to see it become a reality. Let’s make it happen in Wellington too! If you like Emily’s plan and want to help make it a reality, vote for it with a thumbs up at HappyZine’s Dream to Reality competition.

Captivated by New Zealand’s vegetable sheep via Anne Galloway (Raoulia and Haastia species, not to be confused with sheep made from vegetables). You can listen to the story of one good sheep captured in Canterbury and sent to the Auckland Museum. If you want to grow these “extremely dense, cushion forming perennial with tightly packed rosettes of overlapping, oblong, gray-hairy leaves,” at home, here are cultivation notes. More beautiful photos and notes at botany.cz.

• 8 Most Important Doctors by Malcolm Harker via Love PlantLife
  1. 1. Pure oxygen-rich, nutrient dense water and foods
  2. 2. Sunlight and fresh air
  3. 3. Love and laughter
  4. 4. Appropriate exercise
  5. 5. Bare contact with the earth and elements
  6. 6. Firm breathing
  7. 7. Relaxation, meditation, music and sound sleep
  8. 8. Being at peace with oneself and in harmony with the environment

• The Foodprint Project, a collaboration between Nicola Twilley (Edible Geography) and Sarah Rich, kicks off a series of international conversations on urban foodscapes and opportunities to transform our edible landscape through technology, architecture, legislation and education. First event: Saturday February 27 in NYC.

• Homegrown Evolution’s self-irrigating planter resources.

Coffee and bananas are staples — essentials — on my shopping list, papaya and passionfruit whenever in season. But usually, I’m referring to the end produce, not the plant. Today, all four plants found their way into my home.

Is there any scent that puts your heart more at ease than roasting coffee beans? Not for me… that’s the fragrance that wafted through the air of my family’s business across from the Folger’s plant in downtown Kansas City when I was growing up. Apparently though, the scent of flowering coffee resembles jasmine so much that it was first described as Jasminium arabica. And it’s recommended as a plant whose fragrance drifts or wafts on the air. Oh how little I know about my favorite first daily drink (or drug, if you insist). Looking forward to getting to know you in a whole new way, coffee!

Banana plants make gorgeous indoor ornamentals even if they never fruit, but I love the idea of cultivating options beyond the corporate banana monoculture. The passionflower vine twining up the pergola in my NYC Skygarden delighted me with its abundant purple blooms. It was sold as an annual but kept going for years. This golden passionfruit vine aka sweet granadilla looked so beautiful with healthy heart shaped leaves in the store, I hope it can thrive here in the windy Seagarden.

Juicy ripe papayas are divine pleasures, and the green fruits make great som tam (a spicy Thai salad). Alas, the Hawaiian papayas sold in the US are genetically modified and the New Zealand stores are filled with irradiated imports from Australia. Excited to see if they will grow here — the leaves and aroma of the plant itself are lovely regardless.

Topping off this tropical Tuesday, my parents arrived bearing flowering mandevilla and hibiscus flower plants.

All of today’s additions will enjoy the comforts of container living, moving indoors or out depending on season and Seatoun weather. If you have any secrets for cultivating any of these exotic beauties outside their native environments, I welcome your suggestions.

• If you like the scent of roasting coffee wafting over you, Wellington is your town! Cafe L’affare is a delightful cafe (with great daily specials) built around the roaster: 27 College St, Wellington, New Zealand 04 385 9748. Mojo Coffee just opened a new roastery and headquarters at Shed 13 on the Wellington Waterfront. What are your favorites?

This morning as I was moving the okra seedlings to make room for UV film installation on the windows, I noticed each leaf of both the clemson spineless and burgundy varieties had little crystal beads on their undersides. They look like tiny dew drops and feel like tobiko (flying fish roe). That’s eggs. Eggs! Who is laying eggs in my okra?

Okra doesn’t seem to have too many natural pests, and I hadn’t seen eggs like this on any other plant.

Turns out they’re sap beads — not eggs at all, as The 5b Garden discovered before me. In fact, it’s a good sign, boding well for future offspring according to Laura Silver, cultivating Okra on her fifth-floor Brooklyn, New York balcony. Apparently, both okra and orchids can release little sap balls when they’re happy.

I’d noticed greens harvested early in the morning for omelets tasted better and stayed fresh longer than the greens picked in the afternoon or evening. Now I know why — especially for lettuce — during the night, much of the salt contained within the leaves returns to the roots, as the day gets warmer, the salts return to the leaves. Thanks Backyard Homestead, Mini-Farm and Garden Log Book by John Jeavons.

Pictured above (clockwise from top left): spinach, cosmos, nasturtium, marigold, cos or romaine lettuce, lacinato kale, taken on 17 January 2010 in the vegetable garden.

This beautiful bush sprouted up almost overnight in the front natives garden. At first I thought it was gorse due to the yellow flowers, copious seed pods, and speed of conquest. But gorse is a spiky thorny thing, where as this had smooth leaves. Or, as they say at the California Invasive Plant Council, “sparsely pubescent (appearing glabrous), palmately compound leaves.”

The key to identification was the flowers, which reminded me of the lupines that took my breath away riding from Husavik to Akureyri in Iceland. All of a sudden the barren-moon landscape filled up with clean rows of purple blossoms as far as the eye could see. From there, it didn’t take long to figure out it was Yellow Bush Lupine (Lupinus arboreus), designated a New Zealand national plant pest.

The Icelandic Forest Service introduced Lupinus nootkatensis from Alaska in 1945 to prevent soil erosion in barren areas and to nourish the soil by fixing nitrogen from the air. In New Zealand, Lupinus arboreus was planted along coastal sand dune areas in order to provide shelter and nutritional support for Pinus radiata trees, protecting farms from sand encroachment. Both have proven to thrive a bit too well though, and are now considered invasive.

“In New Zealand weeds are almost always plant species that humans have introduced to the country,” according to the Department of Conservation. Many of the plants considered weeds here are ones I tended with love in my New York garden. They include Buddleia davidii, Lantana camara and some species of Passionflower.

It’s not just plants introduced from abroad however, “even a native species can be considered to be a weed in a particular site if it affects an important natural value on that site.” Here are some helpful guides to identifying uninvited plants that are taking over the garden party:

• Common Weeds of New Zealand Gallery from Royal New Zealand Institute of Horticulture
• Pest Plants and Weeds in the Bay Of Plenty

It turns out Lupines are as nutritious and problematic for people as they are for the landscape. Italians eat the seeds as lupini beans in brine, and Egyptians make them into snacks known as Termis. (If you’re in the USA and come across Aisha’s Termis in the grocery store, give it a go — it’s delicious. Intriguingly made in Massachusetts from lupine beans imported from Australia.) I love the springy skin that pops open to a tender inner bean in your mouth.

The problem is the alkaloids in the beans make them bitter and can be poisonous if not prepared properly. Mark Bittman details the days — or longer — it takes to get ready to eat. Barbara at DISH’N'THAT suggests at least two weeks. I love slow food and I love cooking, but “soak, rinse, repeat: Forever.” is not a recipe for me.

So goodbye to you Lu, you pretty, poisonous, pesty plant. I’ll smile and be happy to see you out and about, but I don’t see a future for us growing together.

Love this Ignite video of Kati London, co-creator of Botanicalls, a device that will let you know when your plant needs watering via Twitter. The Botanicalls system and applications use networked open source hardware and software to allow plants to communicate with people on people’s terms – using the telephone, text messages or twitter.

• If you’re in Wellington this weekend, check out the linux.conf.au 2010 Open Day of talks, hackfest, makers space and little blu kids area at at Town Hall Saturday 23 January 2010 from 11am to 2pm.

When collating my dream plants for Seagarden, the lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) was high on my list. With roots in the mud, stems growing up through muddy water, and exquisite fragrant blossoms emerging high above the water untouched, the lotus exemplifies purity and freedom. Heliotropic and self-fertilizing, the lotus is a sacred symbol to Hindus, treasured as one of the eight auspicious symbols in Buddhism, and also revered by the ancient Egyptians, for whom it symbolized the sun, creation and rebirth. And its seeds make a delicious sweet soup I came to love while living in Taiwan, as well as a delectable paste used in many Chinese desserts.

The lotus has inspired significant scientific discovery as well as spiritual. Wilhelm Barthlott studied the Lotus Effect, resolving in an electron microscope the nanoroughness on the leaf surface that repels everything that tries to settle on it, including water, honey, glue, dirt and even fungal spores, leaving it always dry and clean. When a drop of water rolls around it, it picks up the debris and cleans the leaf surface. Today, dozens of self-cleaning products such as paint, glass, roofing tiles, and textiles incorporate the lotus effect. This same quality is now also being used to make solar cells that absorb more energy from the sun, increasing efficiency by up to 25%.

One of the most stunning lotus ponds I’ve encountered is at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney, where the images above were taken. The one just above is by Tim Entwistle, Executive Director of the Royal Botanic Trust, who blogs at Talking Plants. The top one is by David Midgley, cc 2008, who also blogs about plants at kipili.com.

As the lotus symbolizes awakening to reality, it was a bit dispiriting to face the reality that lotus plants would be most unhappy in my Wellington water garden. For though they remain untouched by most things, they cannot abide wind and and prefer warm humid temperatures. But I was heartened to discover that water lilies (Nymphaeaceae) might do well.

There are two main types of water lilies, hardy and tropical, and between them over 60 varieties. I saw a yellow “Nymphaea Ray Davies,” that I could imagine belting out “Thank you for the days,” but the healthiest plants on offer seemed to be the tropical lilies. So I brought home one each of A. Siebert (pink), Mrs. Geo H. Pring (white) and St Louis Gold (yellow) from Glenbogal, whose site has good information on keeping them happy (as does Nymphaea Fidelity).

• In this video, Janine Benyus, co-founder of the Biomimicry Institute, talks about Lotusan, self-cleaning facade paint, as an example of the how designers can use biomimicry.
• Sarah Fain has Starfish Envy is the compelling blog of a lovely lotus chronicling her adventures in self-fertilization.