Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Bloom
Am I the last one to find out about this?
We were in a café in Richmond over the weekend, and said café is also something of a bookstore - just a few shelves of used books. BUT, they had some interesting garden titles, among them Bloom Book: Horti-culture for the 21st Century by Li Edelkoort. Had it not been for the price tag ($75) I would have bought it.
Anyhow, a little research this morning tells me that this is related to a similarly expensive magazine of the same name. Have you heard of it?
BTW, the poppyseed waffle at Café Gutenberg is DEElish.
Update: just found this blog post which is worth reading all by itself.
11 Comments:
I hadn't heard of the Bloom book or the magazine but I have heard of Li herself. She is a Dutch trendwatcher (Gaaaa, hate that word!). Must check the mag out though!
Poppyseed wafles eh? Wish I could buy those here too.
Yolanda Elizabet: I hadn't heard of Li Edelkoort until looking at the book last weekend, but I've since learned that her work is popular in the design world. Trendwatching (sorry, can't think of a better word right now) is big business I guess. It's always sort of creepy to go shopping and find everything in the same 5 or 10 colors declared popular for the season.
Entangled, reading about this stuff makes me feel like a country bumpkin, which I guess I am. Flowers, colors, scents, even thoughts as trends or trendy, seem very foreign to my way of thinking, no matter how good one is at predicting them. Thanks for an entertaining post with great links, the scent article was another foreign one to me, but fascinating.
Frances at Faire Garden
I've never heard of it either! It looks like a beautiful book. I will have to read it at the bookstore! LOL
Frances: I don't keep up with fashion in much of anything (you should see my wardrobe), but I thought the book was interesting just because it was so different from most gardening books. I would love to be able to sniff the scents in the Foliage issue of the magazine, but the price is a real deterrent. I could buy a lot of plants with that money ;-)
Layanee: Maybe if I have enough brunches and coffees at Cafe Gutenberg, I can finish reading the book before somebody buys it ;-) Or I might look for a cheaper used copy.
Spoken like a true gardener, Entangled, "I could buy a lot of plants with that money."
I've never heard of Li Edelkoort or the Bloom book. I'm like Frances ... it is entertaining - glimpses into a world that I didn't even know existed. I think it would be fun to make perfume ...
I have not heard of it ,book nor the magazine. are you go to get more details?
New to me, also...but then, I don't get out much, and I wouldn't know a trend if it bit me on the nose...other than I can name some of the new interesting plants, of course.
Kate: I'm basically "outside looking in" at the design world, but I do like to look. The blog I linked to in this post has a link to a fascinating website about plant fragrances.
Tina: The book is out of print, I think, but there are used copies available at amazon.com and alibris.com. The magazine seems to be harder to come by here in the US. I imagine that the only stores that carry it are those catering to artists and designers, like the Fashion Institute of Technology bookstore mentioned in the blog post I linked to. It's very pricey - $85 per copy. There's a contact form on the publisher's website for more info.
Jodi: I wonder if there's a trendwatcher publication specifically for new plants? I knew of one now-defunct magazine (to which I never subscribed) - it looks like he's now trying to turn it into an internet-based service.
Haven't seen the book but you can buy a used copy at Amazon for $45 if you don't have an aversion to owing a used book. I have no qualms about used stuff but we know of a person who buys popular hardback fiction because she doesn't "like all those nasty germs and things on the books from the library!" Good grief.
Ki: I buy a lot of used books - no aversions here. I have an aversion to paying retail list prices ;-) My spouse refuses to buy any popular fiction until it comes out in paperback. After he reads them, I take his paperbacks to the used bookstore and turn them into gardening books and cookbooks for me.
Actually, I ordered one of the used copies of Bloom Book from an amazon.com seller, but it hasn't arrived yet. I'll let you know what I think of it after I've spent some time with it.
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