The Chinese Wheelbarrow

From the very cool Low-tech Magazine, the Chinese wheelbarrow:

The Chinese wheelbarrow – which was driven by human labour, beasts of burden and wind power – was of a different design than its European counterpart. By placing a large wheel in the middle of the vehicle instead of a smaller wheel in front, one could easily carry three to six times as much weight than if using a European wheelbarrow.

 Read the rest here. So who will be the first to make one of these with an old bicycle wheel?

How To Design a Garden Step IV: Clues to Care

Clues to care at the Huntington Ranch

In the landscape architecture biz, “clues to care” is a phrase meaning that a garden has some sort of indication that humans were involved. Those clues could be anything from a couple of stepping stones, a bean teepee, to a piece of garden statuary. Particularly if your garden has a wild look or if you’re trying to grow vegetables in the front yard,  “clues to care” can go a long ways to keeping the neighbors happy.

Dr. Susan J. Mulley, a landscape architecture professor at Cal Poly Pomona is doing some interesting research on how people react to alternative forms of landscaping such as native plants and urban vegetable gardens. She’s doing opinion polls using Photoshopped mock-ups of residential, academic and commercial landscapes with food crops, native plantings and more conventional landscaping. The conclusion I took away from Dr. Mulley work is that most people like some kind of clue to care. In general, most folks don’t like a residential front yard that looks like a farm, or anything that looks too “wild.”

Clues to care include:

  • Defined pathways
  • Raised beds
  • Mulched beds and paths (vs. bare soil)
  • Artwork
  • Trellises and other attractive supports
  • Birdbaths
  • Benches

While the above items fall under the category of hardscape, clues to care also include aesthetic choices in planting and arranging the yard. For instance, it’s never a bad idea to plant lots of flowers, even if you’re more interested in food, and place them toward the front of the yard to appease the neighbors. Choose your flowers well and they’ll both please the neighbors and the beneficial insects.

And keep the yard tidy. Part of the mystique of the pristine suburban front yard is that it somehow takes care of itself–there is never any evidence of work left around. Similarly, your front yard garden should be clear of wheelbarrows and shovels and piles of manure &etc., and the less attractive parts of garden infrastructure, such as the compost pile, should be kept out of sight. If you can’t hide your compost pile around back, consider building a screen around it.

So why not use clues to care to make native and edible landscaping more appealing to the general public? The central principles of permaculture according to David Holmgren, are “care for the earth, care for people and fair share.” I believe that the “care for people” portion of those three ethics should include our aesthetic needs as well as our needs for sustenance. And clues to care–a human touch–are the means to fulfill those aesthetic needs. With just a few simple touches a garden can fulfill aesthetic, nutritional and wildlife habitat needs.

Right now our back and front yards really need some clues to care! I’ll document those clues as they are created.

USDA Releases New Hardiness Zone Map

The United States Department of Agriculture has just released a new zone hardiness map that reflects both a warming climate and new algorithms that take into account things like terrain, and proximity to bodies of water.  The map is also now searchable by zip code.

You can access the new map here: http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb .

For the background on how this map is different from the previous (1990) version, the USDA has a press release