We’ve all heard of green roofs for homes, and for a few years we’ve had the luxury of sustainable pet homes that feature a green roof courtesy of Stephanie Rubin’s Sustainable Pet Design. But now ReadyMade magazine has made it easy for you to transform your pet’s current pad into an oxygen-producing oasis.
As ReadyMade points out, tossing your pet’s digs to purchase a Sustainable Pet Design home is pretty wasteful, and unnecessary. With some supplied from the hardware store and an afternoon of your time, you can build a green roof on your dog house that ensures your dog has a healthy space for catching a few Zs.
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Green Roof, Roof
Despite my swagger, I’m a softy. I well up in tears when I am moved by something–not usually landscapes or gardens. In most professional situations, I am able to contain myself. At Lawrence Halprin’s Heritiage Plaza in Fort Worth I was not…it made me cry. I felt privileged to be able to visit on a private tour while in Fort Worth with APLD. There I go again–moist eyes.
That a city with as much wealth as Fort Worth has let this park deteriorate is a travesty. That the 8 million dollars needed to restore it hasn’t been raised is shameful. Across town Phillip Johnson and John Burgee’s Water Gardens from the same era (1974) is a vibrant public space despite its stark and hard edged brutalist design.
Unlike the Water Gardens which could be dropped down in any open field, Halprin’s design honors the land it occupies and is/was a living hymn to the city’s past as well as its future. There is growing grassroots support for its restoration, but make no mistake about it, it’s endangered. Its future is in question–the necessary funds have not been raised.
Heritage Plaza was built in 1977. In an effort to help protect it, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places this year.
Surrounded by chain link fence since 2007, this modernist marvel of design and engineering is in an advanced state of disrepair and closed to the public. It is a ghost town. So empty in fact, that the day we
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By Michael Nolan
After Reg & I finished work on our upcoming urban gardening book “I Garden – Urban Style,” I had a lot of thinking to do.
Though I have spent decades living, loving and teaching the urban gardening lifestyle there was something I’d longed for since childhood that I wouldn’t be able to find in city life.
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Garden, Urban Garden

No Doubt, the mention of Wensleydale makes me think of Wallace and Gromit. But somehow the views of the Yorkshire region of England are just not captured in the cartoons. Perhaps claymation isn’t the best way to render a garden or a landscape….hmmmm…
This beautiful garden, designed by Josh Ward, is at the site of the former Wensleydale Train Station in Yorkshire, England. Now it is a holiday cottage, but the train still passes.


Taking advantage of the remarkable views while giving a little nod to the former purpose (I love the placement of the bench), this garden seems to take a train station and what might be a considered, for some, to be a negative and turns it into a positive. I think I would be be happy to stay here without a clock and I could relax without time constraints and mark my passing (holi-)days with the passing locomotives.

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