a bit of green

As you might remember from the previous Bike Makeover post, it’s been a while I’d been drooling over these magnificent roll up panniers by Brooks; I was so charmed I couldn’t find another bag suitable for my bike. Normal bicycle bags seemed just too plain now, and most of the panniers I found couldn’t roll up at all. I kept searching and all the bags I saw were too bulky, too boring or too expensive, so my bicycle kept going with no bags at all. I showed the roll up panniers (that are much to expensive for my wallet) to my dad, and he exclaimed: ‘Alright, we’ll make one!’

Searching for vertical garden examples, I stumbled upon those plans for a free standing hydroponic plant wall.

It’s a proposal for a botanical garden or a public space, that consists of three large curved walls, free standing, with over than 11.000 plants on the sides of the walls. The plans were made by Peter Kastan, the co-writer of the blog Jungle Walls. The design is colorful, a mix of digital and traditional-like media. Enjoy!

Remember that post about vertical gardens?

I tried to gather information on how to make one, in case you’re one of those with green fingers and not enough space to exercise them, or just want your own green wall.
Green walls can be simple or more complex, depending on your needs. The cost of making a vertical garden mainly consists of the price of the structure materials, which is pretty standard, and the cost of the plants, which can vary greatly depending on your choice of flora.

Here’s a very nice project I stumbled upon, called Creating a Greener House. It’s about the restoration of a 1928 house where great attention was given to energy efficiency. The site contains details about insulation, energy efficient heating and cooling and ventilation. A heat reclamation device is also installed in the form of a shower heat recovery mechanism. Measurements of the actual energy savings have also been made.

If you’ve ever visited Greece in the summer you will probably know how hot it can get here. While going through one of our usual “over 35 degrees Celsius” weeks I discovered a very refreshing drink, Lipton’s lemon flavored Green Ice Tea. It was a very convenient discovery as I am currently trying to reduce my coffee and coke intake, without lowering my caffeine intake too much to cause withdrawal symptoms. However, Lipton’s product is sadly packed with preservatives, loads of sugar and taste enhancers. Not to mention that it costs €1.50 per 0.5 liter bottle.

Energy efficient heating is, in many countries, not as highly emphasized as it should be. The energy losses due to poor insulation and wrong heating choices can be huge. According to David MacKay’s excellent Sustainable Energy – without the hot air book, heating and cooling accounts for almost 20% of every developed country citizen’s energy consumption (37 kilowatt hours per day out of an estimated total of 195 kilowatt hours per day per person). Admittedly, this percentage is a mean number for the UK and in other areas more air conditioning would be needed, but in this areas less heating is also needed thus keeping things slightly balanced. As 20% is a rather big percentage and 37 kilowatt hours is a lot of energy, it is very reasonable to try to increase the efficiency of heating solutions (and air conditioning for warmer countries like the one I live in). This can be achieved by using more energy efficient heating devices, as well as improve insulation and using heating a bit more wisely.

As you know, when it’s hot, it helps if you eat light foods. Add to that the fact that we are both trying to lose some excess weight, and you will have two great reasons for eating lightly. So, last night we made a delicious open sandwich, which also enabled us to celebrate our little herb garden, as this was the first time we actually used one of the plants. It turned out great and it also adheres to the rules of Mediterranean diet, which is well-known for its health benefits.

Remember the post about window gardens? Well, we followed our advice and started our own window garden, our precious. Here are some preliminary results:

A glimpse of our tiny window garden; starring thyme and basil.

Package vertical garden installation.

The “Garden for a not too distant future” is an installation that is part vertical garden, part criticism about the lack of green space in cities and the growing hype of overpriced, difficult to maintain vertical walls. The installation consists of 110 transparent food packaging containers inside which were put leaves, branches found in the trees in the area and lights.

A green wall at São Paulo.

A green wall is a wall partially or completely covered with vegetation. Green walls can either be free-standing or part of a building. There are two main categories of green walls: green façades and living walls. The vegetation for a green façade is attached on outside walls, but there is also the case of indoor living walls where the vegetation lies on interior walls. Green walls are also referred to as living walls, biowalls, or vertical gardens.