What if all our urban community garden islands had pollinator pathways leading to them from our large, continuous open spaces? A group in Seattle isn't forgetting the value of our native pollinators in their community. This neighborhood has joined forces to transform the sterile strip of narrow land between their road and sidewalk (commonly referred to as the "death strip") to a floriferous insect freeway for our native pollinators. This pollinator pathway is intended to connect 2 neighborhood green spaces, Seattle University and Nora's Woods. Find out more about what this community is doing at their website.
To learn more specifically about which native plant species attract our native butterflies and moths, visit Dr. Doug Tallamy of the University of Delaware's website and download his extensive database of native plant species and which butterflies and moths they attract.
For attracting bees, look to the University of Georgia if you are in the southeast. If you haven't heard, bees are in great decline and may be attributed to the pesticide clothianidin. To learn more about this pesticide, check out a film about it called, Nicotine Bees and if you feel passionate about it, sign a petition to the EPA to ban clothianidin here.
If you're ready to learn more about our pollinator friends, check out the Xerces Society's bookstore
(a)biotic recently visited the NC Art Museum's new sculpture garden in Raleigh. Ben Monette of (a)biotic participated in the design of the garden as a past employee of Lappas + Havener. Also, the garden is featured in the January 2011 edition of Landscape Architecture magazine.
(a) biotic's conceptual design for a memorial space at iPark, titled Re-compose, was a winner of a design competition held by the iPark Foundation and was showcased at the Thanatopolis Exhibition in East Haddam, CT on October 9, 2010. (a)biotic was honored to contribute to this important space and aid in revolutionizing the way we remember the deceased. Below is an excerpt describing the exhibition from the iPark website and the corresponding narrative that (a)biotic submitted along with the conceptual drawings can be found on the page "what has (a)biotic done recently".
The Thanatopolis Exhibition
The Thanatopolis Exhibition on Saturday, October 9, 2010 is an inter-disciplinary art project. It is intended to showcase – visually and aurally – new and interesting ways to re-imagine our culture’s, and our personal, relationship to death, memory and memorialization. The Exhibition will foreshadow the look and feel of a future memorial park on the I-Park grounds.
I-Park is soliciting proposals that will advance the Thanatopolis project, including concepts that address specific commission elements. But proposals are also welcome that respond to the spirit of the Thanatopolis project in ways perhaps as yet unforeseen.
Memorial-themed proposals will be evaluated by a distinguished Selection Panel on the basis of creativity, cultural relevance, site responsiveness, feasibility and efficacy in evoking, nurturing and attenuating memory.
