A simple example of how you can extend your boundary right across to the other side of a narrow road simply by lining up 10-20 pots along the crash barrier.
Location: Shibuya, Tokyo
Originally posted on Tokyo-DIY-Gardening.org
A very practical and compact construction comprising of beer crates filled with small pot plants and a letterbox wired to the front. Placed in front a small serving window style food shop/residence, this extension of function across the footpath looks like it is packed up at night with the use of a hand truck.
(Originally posted on Tokyo-DIY-Gardening)
Materials: Wire, Beer Crates
Location: Shibuya, Tokyo
This well tended local neighbourhood park garden is actually a quiet memorial to a deceased spouse.
Chatting with the lady who was working on the garden (planting tulips) I learned that she was carrying on the work of her husband, who had passed away the year before. He had worked in some area of the city agriculture/environmental works department and had shared his love and knowledge of plants and gardening over the years of marriage.
His volunteer work maintaining this patch in a local park had been his gift to the neighbourhood.
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
(Originally posted on Tokyo-DIY-Gardening)
Using hooks and modified clothes hangers, this suburban car port has been transformed into a hanging garden.
(Note: This garden is also multifunctional, with the upturned ends of the clothes hangers used to dry shoes and store slippers – see here)
Materials: Clothes Hangers, Hooks
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
(Originally posted on Tokyo-DIY-Gardening)
Using many metres of plastic twine, a local coffee shop owner has trained a flowering creeper up and down both sides of the paved lane outside their shop.
Even though seemingly random, the complex web of twine takes a non-trivial amount of time, thought and effort to construct.
The web has been prepared to guide an independent creeper along the fence line of a vacant lot, creating a lush green waist high curtain.
I especially like the way the corners have been densely woven (images 8,9,10), enabling thick growth and thus a cool and shady habitat for insects, cats and other animals.
Materials: Plastic Twine
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
(Originally posted on Tokyo-DIY-Gardening)
This goya is being trained up and over the pathway in front of the apartment building to the balcont of a first floor apartment.
I like the way that the owner has not only appropriated the patch of earth in front of her residence but also created a physical (and visible to all) connection between the two.
Materials: Plastic Twine
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
(Originally posted on Tokyo-DIY-Gardening)
The top of the rubbish drop-off point for this apartment complex has been transformed into a bright community flower garden. A lovely twist to the usually forboding and odorous gaping deadspace.
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
(Originally posted on Tokyo-DIY-Gardening)
Pot plants outside a suburban residential office demarcate parking space, prevent cyclist curb-cutting (safety), set the limits of the official office zone of use, and beautify.
Materials: Pots
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
(Originally posted on Tokyo-DIY-Gardening)
Loose bricks arranged around potplants in an attempt to beautify a mom-n-pop suburban retail space.
Materials: Bricks
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
Thanks to Merlyn Berthelsen for sending in this great water collector constructed from corrugated iron fastened with rope to a plastic barrel and gardening rods.
Materials: Corrugated Iron, Plastic Barrel, Gardening Rods, Rope
Location: Aichi Prefecture
[Thanks to Joseph Tame, Tokyo-based freelance marketing manager, new media producer, entrepreneur, performer and marathoner for this garden fix originally posted on his microblog]
“With the onset of string winds, I replace *Twinkle’s* ex-jewellery stand with this ex-umbrella, carefully dismembered with my favourite pair of pliers.” (Joseph adds – “I did actually ask my wife before I took her jewellery stand to use as a stake to hold the sunflowers up.”)
Materials: Umbrella, Plastic Twine
Location: Meguro, Tokyo
Curbside dead space transformed into edible space. Tomatoes, goya, cucumber, and eggplant are standard members in Tokyo pavement vegetable gardening but this is the first time I have seen a small bush of hot chilies on an appropriated sidewalk plot.
As opposed to most other pavement gardening this bush is planted directly into the soil between the footpath and the road, and space is demarcated by a large-ish flowering bush on the sidewalk side and a white picket fence on the driveway entrance side.
A high level of public trust is necessary for people to feel they can grow precious and delicious plants in the open – “A city that’s safe for vegetables and plants is one that also welcomes people” (Ref).
Materials: Demarcating Bush, Plastic Picket Fence
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
[Originally posted on Tokyo-DIY-Gardening.org]
A row of tomato vines protected from the harsh Tokyo summer with a whole lot of umbrellas.
Japan’s annual umbrella consumption is estimated to be around 130 million (more than one per person, per year) [ref] (324,102 were lost and turned over to the police lost-and-found in Tokyo, 2001 [ref]). Now you know where part of that ends up….
Materials: Umbrellas
Location: Tachikawa, Tokyo
Roadside bush tethered with packing strap.
I like that rather than trim or kill this errant plant, the owner of the residence has opted to tie it to the fence to reduce impact on passing pedestrians/cyclists….. A mix of respect for plant life and hassle involved with disposing of plant cuttings?
Materials: Packing Strap
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
The sharp ends of these bamboo support stakes are made safer by placing the cut off ends of mayonnaise bottles on top.
I like the strongly practical, domestic feel that this has. No fuss, no pretense of elegance. Just growing some plants and keeping kids’ eyes out of harm’s way.
Materials: Mayonnaise Bottles
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
Thanks to my Tokyo-DIY-Gardening collaborator/co-instigator Jared Braiterman for this lovely short post on the super-glue that holds together much of Tokyo’s DIY green.
http://tokyogreenspace.com/2010/09/25/s-hooks-are-tokyos-super-glue/
“I love how someone has intervened in the landscape, and done so in a way that is completely removable and dependent on what already exists.”
Materials: S-hook
Thanks to Tokyo design researcher Jan Lindenberg for this great find: Unusable public seating repurposed as rock garden at Mt. Takao, West Tokyo.
Materials: Public Bench
Location: Mt. Takao, Tokyo
Tree in use as a storage system for outdoor cleaning implements.
Materials: Tree
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
Ornamental gardening fence/demarcation constructed from metal rods topped with golf balls (for safety and decoration) and slim bamboo sticks – all threaded with rope and string. A cute judo wrestler surveys the scene.
Materials: Golf Balls, Golf Clubs, Metal Rods, Rope, String, Figurines
Location: Akishima, Tokyo
