HELLE NEBELONG

On the 17th April, the University of Ulster presents Helle Nebelong, Landscape Architect, City of Copenhagen and Sansehaver, under the theme -
'Play: Exploring the boundaries'

Helle Nebelong is a Danish landscape architect MAA, MDL and Master of Public Management. Since 1994, she has worked for the City of Copenhagen and more recently, as a private consultant initiating and coordinating events relating to roads and parks, urban planning and design.

Helle is especially passionate about designing spaces for children and how to adapt and improve the city for everyday life, currently being responsible for developing an action plan to improve accessibility in Copenhagen. She has had her own private practice - www.sansehaver.dk - since 1990, with emphasis on the design of healthy, inspiring natural spaces for children, the young disabled as well as elderly and senior citizens.
Her work is well known both at home and abroad via lectures and articles both by and about herself. The essence is healthy, attractive and inspiring spaces where people’s well-being and creativity develop through a spontaneous sensual perception of nature, culture and architecture. Some of her best know projects in Copenhagen are The Garden of Senses in Faelledparken and the Nature Playground in Valbyparken.

Helle is President of the Danish Playground Association, Vice-president of IPA Denmark and a member of the Nature Action Collaborative for Children Leadership Team.
Since 2007 Helle has represented Europe in the design and planning field for the Leadership Team for the Nature Action Collaborative for Children, NACC, with the mission ” to bring together early childhood educators, representatives of environmental organizations, community planners and environmental designers to effect changes that make developmentally appropriate nature education a sustaining and enriching part of the daily lives of the world’s children.“

Mission

Helle Nebelong believes in the positive influence of nature and beauty on the human balance, physically and mentally. Living in this globally and technologically fabulous era, it is crucial that we maintain an inherent biological connection to, and knowledge of, nature. Helle is particularly enthusiastic when designing spaces for children where they can play freely, and making physical surroundings accessible and usable for all, including handicapped persons.

Cases:

The Nature Playground in Valbyparken, Copenhagen
Garden of Senses in Faelledparken, Copenhagen
Children's Millenium Garden
Aalholm School yard, Copenhagen
Murergaarden, Copenhagen


Articles:
Natures playground, article from Green Spaces issue May 2004

Presentations:
Portsmouth presentation 2002

More to come..
Contact:hellenebelong@hotmail.com

SEED BOMBS - GUERILLA GARDENING

Seed bombing, also known as "Seed Grenades" is a technique of introducing vegetation to arid soils or otherwise inhospitable terrains. A seed bomb is a compressed clod of soil containing live vegetation that may be thrown or dropped onto a terrain to be modified. The term "seed grenade" was first used by Liz Christy in 1973 when she started the "Green Guerillas". The first seed grenades were made from balloons filled with local wildflower seeds, water and fertilizer. The seed grenades were tossed over fences onto empty lots in New York City in order to make the neighborhoods look better. It was the start of the Guerrilla Gardening movement. (Wikipedia)

Tsuchi Dango {Earth Dumpling}) consist of mixing the seed for next season's crop with clay, compost, and sometimes manure then formed into small balls. Much less seed is used than in conventional growing, resulting in fewer plants which are smaller but stronger with a higher yield.

Seed balls are very easy to make and are great for seeding waste areas in your yard. Use a combo of wild flower, mustards, radish seeds and wheat to create a haven for beneficial insects. ow the balls in winter in our next-door neighbor's yard. They had a long piece of bare ground adjacent to our garden that was full of weeds and bermuda grass *yuck*. This method has been successful in attracting many beneficial insects into the garden and has transformed the bare and unsightly spot into a beautiful wild garden.

HOW TO MAKE SEED BALLS

Seed balls are a method for distributing seeds by encasing them in a mixture of clay and soil humus. Some native North American tribes used forms of seed balls. More recently natural farmer Masanobu Fukuoka has applied them, as have others inspired by his work.

Seed balls are simply scattered direct onto ground, and not planted. They could be useful for seeding dry, thin and compacted soils and for reclaiming derelict ground. This method takes a fraction of the time or cost of other methods to cover large areas and is also very applicable in small areas.

The clay and humus ball prevents the seeds from the drying out in the sun, getting eaten by predators like mice and birds, or from blowing away. When sufficient rain has permeated the clay and the seeds inside sprout they are protected within the ball that contains nutrients and beneficial soil microbes. Seed balls are particularly useful in dry and arid areas where rainfall is highly unpredictable. www.primalseeds.org

	STEP ONE: INGREDIENTS A. Dry terracotta clay, finely ground and sifted through a strainer to remove large chunks of clay. Amount: 1 1/4 cup
	B. Dry organic compost. Amount: 3/4 cup C. 1/4 cup assorted seeds. Various wildflower & vegetable seeds can be used.
	STEP TWO: Mix B & C together. (Seed mixed with dry compost.)
	STEP THREE: Add A to B & C mix. Blend everything together well. Next, mist water onto the mixture while stirring. Spray just enough water to allow the mixture to stick/bind together.
	STEP FOUR: Take a pinch of the finished mixture and roll (in the palm of your hand) into penny-sized round balls.
	STEP FIVE: Put seed balls in the sun to dry completely for a day or two.
	STEP SIX: Broadcast seed balls onto dirt area. Water or wait for rain to allow seeds to germinate. Makes approximately 30-40 balls
	Seeds are starting to come up... ENJOY THE RESULTS!!!
Suggested seeds to attract beneficial insects: Clover, alfalfa, alyssum, nasturtium, yarrow, carrot, dill, daikon, celery, radish, fennel, caraway, chervil, gypsophila, coriander, calendula, mustard, anise hyssop, phacelia, agastache, and amaranth. Note: Please be advised to check with your local nursery or agriculture agency to determine which beneficial, native plant species would best serve the habitat which you are trying to restore. Nonnative invader species that are proven voracious spreaders should never be used as a tool of ecological restoration. Application rate: A minimum of ten seed balls per square metre, a higher density may be required to reclaim derelict land.

Seed Bombs by Kathryn Miller.

She designed these portable seed bombs for landscape re-vegetation purposes. They were thrown out into areas that were degraded, physically abused, or in need of vegetation. As a form of urban and suburban guerrilla activity, it was a small scale, non-sanctioned intervention in the landscape. The seed bombs were made available to museum visitors to take and throw somewhere they felt needed native plants, and in the process they assisted me with my project. The bombs contained seeds native to the area she was working in. She has made thousands, all hand packed. Sometimes she collects the seeds myself; sometimes buying them from special seed companies. Native seed are expensive so she often has to rely on writing grants to support this activity.

Seed bombing the Raytheon Plant, Santa Barbara, CA, 1992

Kathryn has targeted specific sites (bombing shown at top), and has also distributed the bombs to museum visitors. For more info, check out this past Seed Bomb exhibition at Pomona College. Her visuals show how man made disasters have impacted on ecosystems and environments throughout the world.

Lawns in the Desert
This series in collaboration with Michael Honer questions the idea of lawns which are entirely dependant on life support - imported water, chemical application, and endless manicuring.

NEST BOX

Putting up your nest box is really only half the fun - to get the most out of it, take up the Nest Box Challenge and help us to monitor the breeding success of birds in Britain's green spaces.

Nest Box Challenge is a joint project between BTO and the BBC Breathing Places campaign. BBC Breathing Places is a major BBC Learning campaign to inspire and motivate you to create and care for nature friendly green spaces where you live. Log onto bbc.co.uk/breathingplaces to find out more.

Why risk is so important?

The general assumption is that risk is important, but sometimes I think that we should just pause to think about why we agree that risk is so important. I thought I would just outline why I think it is important.

• You cannot be creative without taking a risk.
• You cannot discover your limits without taking a risk.
• You cannot declare or consumate a relationship without taking a risk.
• You cannot be passionate about anything without taking a risk.
• You cannot lead without taking a risk.
• I am sure I or you could add to this list, but interestingly, physical risk is only a small part of the issue.
• The need for risk crosses all boundaries (much like play itself).
• It is not gender specific, though the types of risk favoured may be .
• It is not racially specific, though different cultures do have different attitudes.
• It has nothing to do with ability or disability. Indeed it is probably more important the less able bodied a person is.

Perhaps most importantly the fulfilment of the individual is dependant on their capacity to take risks, which makes the capicity to manage and enjoy risk taking a vital building block of cohesive and vibrant communities. Risk entails almost certainly the experience of failure (unrequited love, a friendship rejected, a fall from a step misjudged); the inevitability of making mistakes, of being thwarted in one's endeavours, of not meeting a challenge one has set oneself.

In other words, concepts such a 'resilience' and 'self-confidence' come to life, in part, through pain (physical/emotional) and failure. What follows, is that we must take care not to prevent every fall (physical/emotional), nor attempt to intervene to prevent every mistake about to be made.

You cannot develop resilience in the absence of having somthing to be resilient about. You cannot get up and dust yourself down, if you have never stumbled.

Play provision needs to articulate more clearly, more robustly - and publicly - what nurturing reslience and self-confidence necessarily entails. Much of the current language deployed to describe what play provision is trying to do is bland and meaningless to the point of distraction. We need the confidence to deploy a vocabularly that is not scared to roll up its sleeves. - PLAYLINK / Free Play Network

Sideways: A Smart Art Project

Known for their eco-chic automobiles, tomorrow Smart Car will introduce "Sideways: A Smart Art Project," a book that's in line with their counter-cultural identity and serving as the brand's creative anthology. Showcasing a myriad of colorful works of art, it's an inventive (and attractive) way to look at both the environment and contemporary motoring. Curated by top international magazines such as Dazed & Confused, WAD and Blend, Sideways features all kinds of art media from 100 different artists that make for a diverse cross-section of modern-day culture. Smart's head of marketing Anders Sundt Jensen comments, "Sideways looks at the issue of ecology in a new creative context, and it should therefore generate some interesting new takes on the topic. And this is a key motivation behind the approach of Smart itself."

glow-in-the-dark flooring

Mixing glow-in-the-dark particles with flooring materials, the Dutch company S. Lövenstein BV created one of those no-fuss design fixes that improves safety and convenience. The substance has limitless applications for things like signage or guide strips with the ability to be evenly and seamlessly distributed throughout a surface and masked into shapes and patterns. Integrated with contrasting colors, it serves a purpose in both light and darkness or it can be used strategically so that it only shows up when the lights are off—making it particularly useful in emergency situations. Maintenance free, it's a far superior alternative to complicated lighting systems that need energy and require wiring.

via Transmaterial

PS2 - Constructs

Once Upon A Now - 25 June - 14July 2007

'Once Upon A Now' by Anne Marie Dillon is a careful (re)-creation of a traditional Irish cottage. A single room opened up to expose a detailed interior. Her work method is similar to building conservationists or historians- a precise reconstruction of a rural cottage. But her material reconstruction also includes the world of feelings, dreams and nightmares. She covered the outside walls with cow dung, drowned the interior uniformly in soil; a haunted space populated by a blow up doll staring pointlessly at a small colour TV.

In the context of the recent building boom in Northern Ireland, the regeneration of the city centre and the progressive extinction of historic environments, this installation adresses questions of identity, architectural history and human feelings, mostly never addressed in picture postcard cottage nostalgia.

This installation is the first in the series entitled CONSTRUCTS, a loose sequence of projects around the issue of created space.

Leonia's Rubbish - 17July - 18August 2007

CONSTRUCTS II: Hannah Casey.

“Leonia’s rubbish little by little would invade the world, if, from beyond the final crest of its boundless rubbish heap, the street cleaners of other cities were not pressing, also pushing mountains of refuse in front of themselves. Perhaps the whole world, beyond Leonia’s boundaries, is covered by craters of rubbish, each surrounding a metropolis in constant eruption.” - I. Calvino, Invisible Cities.

This work in progress is the second in the series of CONSTRUCTS, focusing on different approaches in creating space. Hannah Casey uses cardboard and tape as the main material for her constructions, creating a site specific, private space or personal architecture within the project space. A playful approach and artistic DIY strategy to shape one's own environment and a critical opposition to the mostly profit driven regeneration in the city

AAA

AAA, APIJ, DPVI, EDL, OPAC, les habitants impliqués et
tous les partenaires du projet vous invitent à

la soirée d'ouverture du
passage 56
jeudi 6 décembre à 18h
au 56 rue Saint-Blaise, Paris 20ème

Henry Thoreau

"I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society." Henry David Thoreau

The great American writer, Henry Thoreau was inspired by nature and it became the topic of one of his most famous books - Walden or life in the Woods. In the spring of 1845 Thoreau built a singe room cabin as a retreat on his mentor Emerson's land in Massachusetts. Thoreau perceived that the people in his hometown of Concord "lead lives of quiet desperation" pushing to get by with "no time to be anything but a machine". Stripping down his existence in the cabin ti "only the essential facts of life" gave him the opportunity for his mind to roam and simplify this life in a time of industrial revolution. He soaked himself in nature's ability to act as a metapor for life and emerged from the cabin in 1847 a liberated, naturist and philosopher.

He encouraged us to make use of nature and its healing abilities: "We need the tonic of wilderness...We can never have enough of Nature =, we must be refreshed by the sight if inexhaustible vigour, vast and Titanic features".
Most of us have a 'wow' nature experience in our life. Can you remember a time in the past where you were literally stopped in your tracks as a result of coming across a stunning scene? Mine was in New Zealand, In that instant of awe I was not thinking about unfinished work or where I had to be the following weekend, I was absorbed in that moment, free from all anxiety, thouight and chatter abotu teh past or future.