h a l f b a k e r yThis ain't rocket surgery.
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Ivy everywhere
Encourage the climbing plant, to make cities a greener place | |
Houses in the country, (in this country atleast, where most are made of stone/brick, not wood) can sometimes be seen covered in ivy. This is something seldom ever seen in towns, and never in citys. Why not, as well as dotting saplings along the pavement at the side of new developments, also plant some
ivy, next to the wall. It would take a while to have any great effect, but eventually the first stories, then the second, and so on, of all those boring grey sky scrapers would be verant and lush. Could improve air quality in towns, and it would certainly look better.
An improvemnent would be to maybe stary the ivy in long boxes, below window hight on floor 2. This would preclude the Ivy being used as climbing frame for criminals or acrotwats. Also; each floor should have its own plant in a box. This may help keep the ivy under control, would lead to a smaller main root on each floor, ather than one huge one at street level. It would also make it easier to water the particularly high up regions of the plant. And if one section became troubled with some Ivy malady, it wouldn't necessarily spell death for the whole building's ivy.
And yes, Ivy could of course be replaced in this scheme by things more fragrant and less poisonous. I mainly thought of ivy for its hardy nature.
A building that would benefit
http://jonathan.raw...y=leicester&photo=1
That's me, middle tower, second storey, behind the tree. [Zircon, Aug 28 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
No ivy required
http://www.argylehotel.com/home.html
[angel, Aug 29 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]
[link]
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Yeah, well maybe architects could start intending them to have ivy growing all over them. excuse my ignorance, but what's a Goh board? |
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"Goh" (or just "Go") is, I believe, the correct name for the board game marketed as "Othello". |
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I do quite like this idea although I think ivy can be quite damaging to buildings in the long run (not sure). There are places where it would be inappropriate (I have sympathy with UB here; I can imagine the sublime understatement and simplicity of a dry garden style design ruined hideously by pot-plants...{{{{shudder}}}}), but on the whole I'd like to see modern cities taking a leaf (ahem) out of ancient Babylon's book. |
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I can just see it - the Hanging Gardens of Glasgow. |
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Good point [UB] I feel faintly silly. Except that I've had some difficulties getting to google just recently, I keep getting a 'open file from site or save to disk' dialog when I try and access it. For the Ivy maintainence I'm envisaging some sort of vertical gardening cradle. It would be good if this was manned by, well, a man (or woman) for the emploment this would bring. Vertical gardening operatives they would be called.
At a push an automatic system could be used; a giant set of lawnmower blades that are periodically lowered from the roof. Preferably this would happen at night. The cut off bits could be added to some sort of corporate compost heap. This would be great for;(a) the environment (b) getting rid of all those troublesome shredded documents.
Also [Guy Fox] I was thinking that about damage (we had a back garden wall at home that was particularly disrupted by ivy. But then I realised that most buildings you DO see with ivy on are really old ones. So I'm thining that with the right gardening knowledge
and care to hack off any major stems that start to work their way into the wall, we could be on the verge of a whole new range of programs presented by Mr A. Titchmarsh. |
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You are mistaken. Not only is there an Ivy in New York (Columbia), there is plenty of ivy, and cities don't come any intense than this one. In fact, not only are there ivy-covered walls on my street, there are even vine-covered walls, one of which produces half a dozen bottles of good wine a year. I have photos at home; I'll post them if I remember. |
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(I will refrain from yelling Baked, however, since your own blighted spot may well be lacking in ivy, and I am in very much in favor of greening cities.) (Btw, you can keep ivy from damaging the brickwork by putting a trellis a few inches from the wall. According to This Old House.) |
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Are you telling me there's no ivy in Leicester? |
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[DrCurry] If the ivy you speak of in the States is on new buildings then I take your point, plus I guess other there there's less ugly-ass 50's and 60's buildings that were thrown up after the second world war; A lot of american large buildings are gracefull (chrysler etc.) I'm currently sitting in an 18 story concrete prefab monster that looks a lot like a big grey cheese grater. This would be massively enhanced by a spot of greenery. The rest of the post 50's buildings on my campus are't much better, looking variously like the bridge of a star destroyer, and an accident involving some bricks, some glass, and a drunk architect. Ironically the only buildings with any ivy on at all are the earliest buildings (which were once a sanitarium and now fittingly hold the universitys admin. escalon) These are the most attractive, and least requiring covering up on site, but the ivy still enhances em some.
I awknowledge that there are alot of buildings about with Ivy on, more than I at first thought, but my idea was more about whold cities, and sky scrapers ivyfied. |
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Don't worry, we have our fair share of buildings that were hit over the head with an ugly stick. If you're at a university, I would suggest some guerrilla beautification (if the gardeners weed it out, make a bequest for ivy once you're an alum - these places never turn down money, no matter what the stings attached). |
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I like ivy but I would prefer jasmine everywhere. It is just
coming into bloom where I live (it's a bit early this year)
and you can smell the perfume on the breeze. Jasmine is
probably my favourite smell, and it's very pretty too. |
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