Search

This paper extends debates investigating the importance of domestic yards and gardens in shaping identities and the everyday practices and performances of human–nature interaction in a tropical city. It presents findings from a pilot study investigating backyards in a small but ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Cairns, Australia—a site that raises questions about the normative constructions of "nature" in much of the literature. The paper explores how Cairns residents make sense of their backyards, especially in terms of how they relate to them as "tropical". Living in Cairns means managing excess water during the rainy season, dealing with new kinds of pests, and being critically conscious of the temperate bias of Australian garden retailers and house/garden magazines. The paper frames these experiences within a longer tradition of tropicality or a (western) way of making sense of/imagining tropical regions and environmental difference. In so doing, it opens up a new cultural geography of the suburbs, displaces normative constructions of "nature" and shows how the legacies of European colonialism still play out in a dominant Australian culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gardens open to the public are popular tourism attractions. Even though human geographers have studied gardens from the perspective of actor–network theory (ANT), there has been little empirical research into the ways in which gardens open to the public are produced by a hybrid of human and non-human entities. In addition, despite its linkage with Foucault's relational notion of power, recent ANT-inspired studies are not explicit about the investigation of power relations between human and non-human actors. Therefore, this paper explores what kinds of heterogeneous power relations emerge when gardens open to the public are produced by a hybrid of human and non-humans. On account of its suitability for ANT, ethnomethodology was employed as a methodological underpinning and qualitative data were collected from fieldwork conducted in gardens open to the public in Scotland. The paper contributes to the geographical school of tourism by suggesting four types of heterogeneous power relations: coercion, acquiescence, negotiation and synergistic transaction. Coercion refers to a relation in which one actor's will or identity is forcefully marginalised by another actor; acquiescence is a relation in which an actor unwillingly accepts its marginalised status whereas another actor maintains its ruling status; negotiation denotes a situation in which power balance between heterogeneous actors are provisional; synergistic transaction is a hybrid assemblage that brings a greater effect, than that of a single actor, on the enhancement of tourism spaces. The paper concludes by discussing how the proposed typology helps ANT researchers rethink the production of tourism spaces, and by asking readers what other types of heterogeneous power relations are possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of digitalization in the bioeconomy and agriculture was selected as one of the main themes in the first Open Bioeconomy Conference held in Hämeenlinna, Finland, in September 2020. Technology Innovation Management Review February 2021 (Volume 11, Issue 2) Editorial: Iivari Kunttu, Guest Editor Welcome to the February issue of the Technology Innovation Management Review. The contributions included in this special issue of the TIM Review provide insights into the rapid digitalization and data-driven development currently taking place in the area of bioeconomy and food production. [Extracted from the article]

At present, China is at an essential stage in the progress of social civilisation. At the same time, China's current economic level is developing rapidly and the level of urbanisation is also increasing. However, the uncontrolled development of urban space and excessive consumption of land resources have led to many urban ecological and environmental problems. As a result, there is an urgent need to improve the urban habitat. Plant landscaping is an important part of the urban environment. In addition, plant landscaping is also a crucial part of the visual arts and plays a key role in the shaping of urban spaces. In the context of the urban construction boom, people are increasingly demanding quality in the urban environment. Spatial scale, as a vital factor influencing the visual effect of planting, is gradually becoming a focus of landscape design. Urban greening based on plant landscape can not only improve the urban ecological environment and enhance people's quality of life but also resolve the contradiction between the demand for urban green space and the continuous reduction of urban greening land. Therefore, plant landscaping is recognised as a key step towards global sustainable development. However, according to current research and application practice, the development of urban greenery is limited and hindered by the value of plant landscaping and its applications. In addition, no comprehensive theoretical system has yet been established at the plant scale. In other words, there are still problems of scale in plant landscaping, such as unreasonable density, disproportion, and unclear hierarchy. Therefore, this paper begins with the definition of plant spatial scale in the city and analyses plant spatial types and scale characteristics from multiple perspectives, so as to establish an overall knowledge of plant landscaping. After that, through a study of the current situation of plant landscaping in cities, a quantitative analysis of the visual scale of plant space in urban squares is carried out to address the issues of plant scale design in this research. The focus of the analysis is on the scale of plants in relation to related elements. Furthermore, this study explores the influence of visual aesthetic scale and psychological scale on planting based on the functional scale of plant elements. Finally, the above quantitative analyses are applied to derive some relative data criteria and to summarise the design strategies for the spatial scale of planting in the city. The findings of this study can provide some guiding suggestions and references for the future construction of urban greenery, thus promoting the orderly development of plant landscaping in cities., Competing Interests: The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Lin Tian.)

The problem of module discrimination and identification in the field of landscape design is the focus of researchers. Based on multimodal intelligent computing, this paper constructs a landscape design system based on deep neural network. The article first uses a deep neural network to train multimodal garden landscape images, and then performs pooling and convolution operations on garden landscape images on the multimodal training model of convergence speed on the edge and solve the problem of low model accuracy. In the simulation process, the neural network module of MATLAB software is used to extract the spatiotemporal features of the dynamic garden landscape image from the three directions of the bottom block of the garden to achieve feature complementarity. This method only uses 15% of the features of the original feature set. The complexity of the recognition system also reduces the recognition error rate. The experimental results show that by adopting the design of feature series fusion, maximum value fusion, and multiplicative fusion in the score layer, the feature series fusion achieves a high accuracy rate under the multiplicative fusion of the three modalities, reaching 77.1%, and the test error is within 0.118, which effectively improves the multimodal characteristics of the integrated landscape and makes the modeling results more accurate., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Xueyong Yu et al.)

Sustainability of intervention programming is challenging to achieve under real world conditions, since few models exist and many studies do not plan far beyond the funding period. Programming content in early care and education centers (ECECs) is often driven by guidelines. However, implementation is very sensitive to contextual factors, such as the setting and implementer (teacher) characteristics. This paper presents the model, definitions, and methodology used for the sustainability action plan capitalizing on a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, developed for a multi-site, multi-level garden-based childhood obesity prevention study, Sustainability via Active Garden Education (SAGE). The Ecologic Model of Obesity is applied to develop a sustainability action plan (SAP) and accompanying measures to link early care and education (ECE) environment, the community, policies, and classroom practices to an early childhood obesity prevention program. The SAGE SAP provides an example of how to iteratively evaluate and refine sustainability processes for an obesity prevention intervention utilizing CBPR approaches and will be applied to assess the sustainability of SAGE in a cluster randomized controlled trial. This SAP model can also help inform intervention delivery and scalability within ECECs.

Copyright of Space & Form / Przestrzeń i FORMA is the property of West Pomeranian University of Technology, Department of Architecture & Urban Planning and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the early years of Republic of China, Jingyi Garden in The Fragrant Hills of Beijing, the former imperial garden of Qing Dynasty, had turned desolate after the depredation of Anglo-French Allied Force, then the construction of modern garden architecture had started with the operation of The Children's Philanthropical School of Fragrant Hills. Through reviewing historical literature and field investigation, this paper analyzed the historical background, planning and construction of these modern garden architecture, as well as their types and characteristics, and the utilization of original natural and historical environment of original Jingyi Garden. Based on this, this paper tried to display the historical prospects of modern garden architecture in Jingyi Garden, analyze their characteristics and discover their unique historic value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of productive gardens on public building roofs is an active way to use urban idle space. It has ecological, economic, and social values and helps alleviate many urban problems caused by the rapid advancement of land urbanization. This paper takes the productive rooftop garden of an urban commercial complex as an example, and assesses its development status based on methods including ArcGIS, field research, and questionnaire interviews, combined with the overall aspects of the country and key case analysis. The results indicate several key aspects of the current status of such gardens in China. (1) As affected by natural and social factors, the current spatial distribution of productive rooftop gardens of commercial complexes in Chinese mainland is uneven, with 84.21% located in the southeast coast and the Sichuan region. (2) The operation and development of this type of productive landscape is in good shape. The number of rooftop gardens has continued to increase since 2013, and the scale is generally greater. Currently, the business model which combines nature education and parent-child amusement experience activities is the most stable. (3) Cases in good operating condition tend to have relatively related characteristics in layouts, traffic functions, landscape elements, and space design. (4) Questionnaire interviews show that citizens are highly willing to participate in rooftop productive landscapes, while operators still experience challenges in policies, funds, and planting knowledge in practice. This paper analyses the existing problems in the development status and strategy of the rooftop productive landscape. It proposes complementary optimization strategies to serve as a reference for the rooftop design of commercial complexes and the utilization of a significant amount of idle space on the roofs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analytical framework for evaluating the impact of the two main processes identified in Madrid timber-framed courtyard buildings reinforcing the courtyard's crucial role in architectural heritage sustainability: their development caused dwellings to darken (1737–1950), and the existing challenge is to open new patios according to the listed buildings' protection policy. Critical findings in archival research and existing building assessments led to completed data collection and analysis. When exploring construction expansion, from the house towards the collective prototype around a gradually reduced patio and dwelling darkening (1737–1786), buildings resulted in open, semiopen, underlighted and closed designs. Study area on-site assessment uncovered the transition from the older low-rise type (1–3) floors to the modern closed model of up to (4–6) storeys. Construction enlargements, consequently reducing original green areas and courtyards, call for reversing that process or formulating a new strategy. It debates the partial demolition of listed buildings in upgrades and its agreement with the needed "blue courtyard" strategy (PGOUM), resulting from joining new rear individual patios to create a communal building block courtyard. The uncovered "in-between" type (1864), which integrates two open-air collective spaces, an inner courtyard and a back garden, appears challenging to explore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensible or expandable garden hoses have become popular. However, their behavior may be surprising to physicists. In this paper, the stress–strain equations that explain this behavior are derived and compared with experiments. The results clearly demonstrate that, since deformation is very large, conventional definitions of strain and stress are not useful and so-called real definitions are needed instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the use of plant lists and related documents in addressing questions about the collection and circulation of plants and plant knowledge. The focus is on plants cultivated in Lisbon's Ajuda botanical garden up to the mid-nineteenth century, and additionally on plants from the island of Madeira. Three plant catalogues, prepared between the early 1770s and mid-1840s, are analysed, together with register books and documents that habitually accompanied plant shipments sent to the garden. The study shows which plants were present in the garden and how the collection evolved, as well as which world regions were represented. In comparing Madeiran plants listed as present in the garden with those documented as being shipped from the island in the late 1790s, the paucity of shared names is striking. On the one hand, this may reflect document loss, while on the other it suggests that Madeiran plants may have been transported from their native range to other European locations by means of complex exchange networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recurring debate in cities and in the literature is whether gardening food to eat is essential or recreational. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, some political jurisdictions closed gardens, deeming them non-essential to life – including the province of Ontario where fieldwork for this study was conducted. This paper analyzes mixed methods data generated pre-pandemic to understand the role of urban agriculture in the lives of gardeners in Toronto, Canada. When people produce food for the home, is their activity recreational or an essential source of food? We employ a social-ecological lens and find that gardening supported health and wellbeing and provided participants with an important food source, oftentimes culturally significant. Qualitative and quantitative data describes the rich experiences of gardener participants in the diverse city. We argue that gardens are essential and seeing them as part of culinary infrastructure makes space for nonmarket food production in food systems analyses. Viewing gardens as essential should prompt policy decisions, particularly during crises, which support social-ecological, nonmarket food sources as important parts of culinary infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article appraises the role of the country garden in the interwar development of Sylvia Townsend Warner's writing and politics. Reading Warner's interrogation of genre and form as an example of the Georgic, it examines her published texts alongside personal papers and garden spaces to demonstrate how she worked to interrogate, and highlight, the social costs of misrepresentative literary landscapes. As she considered what it meant to inhabit a rural country cottage, and then a small country house, as a poet with keenly felt social responsibilities, her texts and gardens provided a way to work through her landscape anxieties. The cultivation of landscape on and off the page informed her development of a radical way of writing about landscape, and the gradual development of a radical politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flowers have been a form of commemoration of the most important events or people in our lives since ancient times. Roses breeders have always had the idea of paying homage through their creations. In this paper we will try to highlight some hybrid tea roses that are famous by their name, the importance they represent for the collections of roses or their perfume that reminds us of the old gardens from childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, several biblical gardens were constructed in the harsh climate of Poland. They try to convey spiritual values through the medium of garden art and design. Rarely are they built from scratch with a granted budget; the majority of them represent the effort to revitalize degraded urban space and cultural heritage. In most cases, they are constructed and maintained as a challenge by groups of enthusiasts with no institutional financial help. From the very beginning, they are attracting numerous visitors, individuals, and organized groups to previously neglected spaces. The scope of this paper is to present the phenomenon of their construction, discuss the selected case studies, and try to identify whether their creation is strengthening the resilience of cultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical Chinese gardens have a distinct layout structure. By studying the traditional Chinese conception of space–time and its characteristics, this article explores the spatiotemporal narrative structure and typological patterns of the Lingering Garden, which is highly representative of Souzhou gardens in China. While existing literature addresses the sagittal and cyclical concepts of space–time, this paper advances a separate and interactive view of space–time using Yin-Yang transformation logic. Field research revealed that three space–time natures emerge as three spatiotemporal narratives in the Lingering Garden (sagittal, cyclical, and separate-and-interactive) with different characteristics. These modes intertwine in different ways in the garden's five areas to form the Lingering Garden's holistic spatiotemporal narrative structure, which nurtures dynamic experiences and infinite imagination. This result helps us better understand other Chinese gardens and supplements the theory of gardening art; however, more case studies should be done to determine its generalisability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Il Capitale Culturale: Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage is the property of Il Capitale Culturale Studies on the Value of Cultural Heritage and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Szociológiai Szemle is the property of Hungarian Sociological Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Potestas: Estudios del Mundo Clásico e Historia del Arte is the property of Potestas Estudios del Mundo Clasico e Historia del Arte and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based on case studies in Dublin, Ireland, this paper examines the motives for individuals to establish community gardens therein. The paper also outlines the capacities required for community groups to successfully establish and sustain community gardens in Ireland. These capacities include the involvement of individuals with a range of expertise, the presence of supportive community groups/organisations and state agencies, and access to resources, including land. The research findings, detailed in this paper, indicate that community gardens in urban settings encounter a number of challenges, including the absence of a mechanism for community groups to access land. The article provides a framework for community groups and community organisations to develop community gardens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Garden balsam optimization (GBO) is a new proposed evolutionary algorithm based on swarm intelligence. Convergence and time complexity analyses are very important in evolutionary computation, but the research on GBO is still blank. Same as other evolutionary algorithms, the optimization process of the GBO algorithm can be regarded as a Markov process. In this paper, a Markov stochastic model of the GBO algorithm is defined and used to prove the convergence of GBO algorithm. Finally, the approximation region of the estimated convergence time of GBO algorithm is calculated, which characterizes the evolution of the evolutionary process of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Architectural Journal / Jian Zhu Xue Bao is the property of Architectural Journal Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Architectural Journal / Jian Zhu Xue Bao is the property of Architectural Journal Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the role of timber in articulating a modern American project in nineteenth-century Lebanon. It focuses on the architecture of the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, an educational institution founded by American missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1866. The paper examines the evolving role of timber within this foreign missionary project—deployed in multiple forms and scales—and traces the shifting values ascribed to its use. I argue that the missionaries used timber to elaborate specific relationships towards students and the city, reflecting cultural, racial, and religious notions of superiority, carving out an American "garden" in the "wilderness" of Ras Beirut. I analyze these theological aims and their practical application through the conceptual lens of Edward Said's "modern Orientalism". The deployment of timber as a claim-making and space-making device frames the construction of the Syrian Protestant College as a modern, imperial project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical activity and nutrition preschool programming must involve parents in positive long-term healthy habits. This paper describes parent outreach in the Sustainability via Active Garden Education (SAGE) study. Newsletters were sent home with children to promote family opportunities to increase physical activity and fruit and vegetable intake. The content was generated via a community advisory board participatory process. Messages linked SAGE curriculum topics with home and community activities. Parents rated frequency of receipt, helpfulness, satisfaction, and use of content. Most participants were Hispanic (>78%) and women (>95%). Most reported receiving newsletters; nearly all reported that they were helpful. Favorite newsletter components included recipes, pictures of their children and seasonal produce spotlights. Most reported doing physical activities from the newsletters (51.9%). Few reported doing featured physical activity (8.9%) and fruit and vegetable (12.7%) community activities. Newsletter outreach methods are a simple strategy to add value to preschool-based interventions promoting healthy families.

As a kind of informal green space more closely related to the built environment, public rooftop gardens (PRGs) are novel green open space and important salutogenic resource for urban residents. It is one of the most easily accessible method for urban residents to be in contact with outdoor or natural elements from the context of high-altitude living. Given its potential health benefits to city dwellers, existing empirical studies are heavily focused on immediate recovery through visually accessing PRGs (through windows), neglecting the possibility of using PRGs physically as a place of interaction. This paper hypothesizes usage patterns will mediate the associations between the environmental characteristics of PRG and users' restoration. This is done through inputting data from 12 typical samples of PRG in Chengdu, China into structural equation model (SEM). Combining the concept of Perceived Sensory Dimensions (PSD) and Perceived Restorativeness Scales (PRS) with the usage patterns of the above samples, this study aims to examine the correlation of environmental characteristics, usage pattern and restoration, in which identify their relative importance in the context of PRGs. Through serials of numerical tests on the model, the study shows that out of the 20 theoretical pathways constructed by the environmental characteristics (x)-usage patterns (m)-restorative effect (y), only 14 forms a significant correlation. In addition, out of all PSDs, social, serene, refuge, space and nature dimensions are induced into restorative effects through four patterns of use: retreat, nature touch, interpersonal interaction and family-bonding activities. The findings also show that social and family-bonding are the most influential independent and mediating variables respectively in achieving restorative effects in the PRG. This study reveals important findings about how usage patterns mediate the association between the PSD and PRS of users. And it also has generated practical implications on how we can design public rooftop gardens from the perspective of restoration, which could potentially be the key to the future survival and development of PRGs in urban environments., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Chen, Gan, Zhou, Du and Zeng.)

Sustainable and resourceful utilization of garden waste with high lignocellulosic content remains a huge challenge, anaerobic digestion (AD) and hydrothermal treatment provide prospective technologies with achieving environmental and economic benefits. In this study, a 7-28 d AD was provided as a biomass pretreatment means and combined with hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) to treat three typical garden wastes (leaves, branches, grass). The results showed that AD pretreatment could effectively change the surface composition and structure properties of the feedstocks and thus modulating the properties of the hydrochar downstream. Compared to the unpretreatment samples, the specific surface area (SSA), higher heating value (HHV), energy density and nutrient elements (P and K) of hydrochar obtained by AD pretreatment were significantly improved and enriched, respectively. Specifically, the highest HHV of hydrochar obtained from leaves, branches, and grass were 25.71, 25.63, and 23.81 MJ/kg, which obtained with 21, 14, and 7 d of AD pretreatment respectively. The P contents of hydrochar of leaves and grass pretreated with AD for 14 and 7 d were 205% and 15% higher than those without AD pretreatment, respectively. Additionally, in this coupled system, the biomass energy recovery of 90.2% (78.2% biochar and 12.0% CH 4 ) was achieved on leaves pretreated with AD for 21 d. Energy recovery of 81.2% (66.8% biochar, 14.4% CH 4 ) and 71.3% (39.7% biochar, 31.6% CH 4 ) was obtained by 14 d of AD pretreatment on branches and grass, respectively. Thus, this study enhances energy utilization efficiency and reduces secondary waste generation, providing valuable new insights into AD coupled with HTC technology., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

In a recent paper, Renner et al. (Oecologia 195:825-831, 2021) concluded, without supporting statistical evidence, that increased density of managed honey-bee hives between 2019 and 2020 intensified competitive effects of honey bees on non-Apis bee species in the Munich Botanic Garden. Analysis of Renner et al.'s observations revealed that, contrary to their assumption, the change in hive numbers did not statistically alter honey-bee visitation to 29 plant species within or between years. Given this consistency, changes in the proportion of non-Apis bees among visitors of the surveyed plant species between years likely represent their responses to reduced overall availability of floral resources during 2020. Thus, Renner et al.'s observations do not provide convincing evidence that honey bees competitively reduced the abundance of non-Apis bees in the Munich Botanic Garden., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This paper explores - within a general game design-oriented approach - the metaphor of the "garden as a game world", comparing the self-enclosed worlds of video games with the concept of western garden. The first part presents the state of the art of previous studies about gardens in video games and gardens as a metaphor for video games. Then, the paper links the synthesis between nature and culture -connected to the deep roots of western gardens: the Garden of Eden - to the actions of players. Video game players, just like Adam in the book of Genesis, are invited to «cultivate and care for» (Gn 2,15) a land/garden they will never truly own, perceiving their own limitedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this paper is to analyse the text of the 12th book of Geoponica for the purpose of identification of vegetable plants, which were described by Cassianus Bassus. The analysis will serve as the first step for further inquiries that will include the reconstruction of recipes that require some of the vegetables presented in the text. The text of Geoponica is a basic source learn about the agriculture but also the culinary art of the Byzantine Empire, even though it is rather hard to read due to the complicated style and quite a large number of technical terms (i.e. botanical, agronomical or astrological to name just a few). As already mentioned, the first part of the analysis is to identify the plants mentioned by Bassus, which will allow me to take further steps, i.e. to reconstruct the culinary recipes, in which the plants mentioned by the Author can be found. Without this precise identification, the reconstruction of the recipes would not be possible at all. In the 12th book of his Geoponica Bassus gave descriptions of several plants that should be taken into consideration while planning the garden, mostly for their medicinal or cooking properties. Amongst them, Author mentioned garlic, artichoke, melon, leek, radish, celery, and cucumbers. Having the rather big number of plants narrowed down will allow to demonstrate in vivo how they were served according to De re coquinaria by Apicius and present the practical usage of vegetables proposed by Bassus for cultivation. As Apicius' cookbook is the only one preserved from Antiquity, it will remain the major source of the recipes presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new evolutionary computing method inspired by the seed transmission process of garden balsam. Garden balsam, a beautiful and attractive flower, randomly ejects the seeds within a certain range by virtue of mechanical force originating from cracking of mature seed pods, which is different from natural expansion of most species of plants. The seeds scattered to suitable growth area will have greater reproductive capacity in the next generation, followed by iteration until the most suitable point for growth in a particular space is eventually found. This phenomenon can more intuitively show the process of searching the problem solution space in the optimization problem. The garden balsam optimization algorithm proposed in this paper incorporates two different types of search processes and has a mechanism to maintain population diversity. Through the optimization experiment on 24 constrained optimization problems, the results obtained by using this algorithm are compared with those of some known meta-heuristic search algorithms. The statistical analysis of the experimental results has been implemented by Friedman rank test and Holm–Sidak test. The comparison results verify the effectiveness of the algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper provides a critical assessment of geographic research on yards and private gardens, with a focus on how geographers study people's engagements with more than human organisms and surroundings. Geographies have come alive as assemblages of lively materials, distributed agencies, and animated political and material flows. At the same time, there is renewed interest on the part of geographers to better take into account lived experiences and the embodied politics of difference. Relations between people and their everyday surroundings are central to these critical analyses. This paper examines one such potent realm of these everyday engagements: the yard. These are spaces intimately bound up with uneven geographies of residential development, as well as places of creativity, care, and failure. Contemporary environmental efforts increasingly enroll the yard or garden as a crucial interface through which to refashion relations between water, infrastructure, particular species, chemical inputs, and food systems. This paper identifies two themes within contemporary yard and garden research, as well as ongoing tensions. I argue that the familiarity of such spaces to Anglophone geography challenges and invites further methodological experimentation and analysis. Yards and private gardens also provide purchase on pressing questions of social inequalities, property, and nature. Thus, I identify two directions for future yard research: developing more experimental methodological approaches beyond a focus on lawns and better situating yards within broader geographies of inequity and the production of geographic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Normally, gardens lower the ambient temperature, which would improve air quality, absorb pollutants, and produce oxygen. Trees reduce soil erosion, increase fertility, and help retain soil moisture. Decomposed leaves that fall in the garden become nutrients for tree growth and help microbes to thrive. When it comes to growing trees in a garden, one should try and choose native trees that are naturally found in a particular area. These trees are well adapted to the environment and require less maintenance. Many insects and birds rely on native trees for food and shelter. Therefore, they are best for the environment. However, not all native trees are evergreen trees. Many evergreen trees can be planted in a small garden. In this paper, a microplantation-based model was developed to enhance the biological impacts for a smart garden. Based on the garden requirements, the smart system was constructed. On this basis, the seeds are planted in the soil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gardens of historic psychiatric institutions represent a special type of heritage garden that possess both aesthetic and therapeutic purposes. Their existence and current state are affected by changes in the organisation of mental treatment. The article focuses on the possible use of these gardens as places of modern green therapies carried out in, and connected with, nature. Taking into account the state of the art on the beneficial influence of nature on human health and well-being, the paper provides an overview of historic and modern nature-based activities considered therapeutic. Subsequently, three case studies of contemporary psychiatric facilities operating in historic mental hospital sites are examined. Many activities linked to nature exercised historically in those gardens bear similarities to a contemporary spectrum of ecotherapies. An analysis of historic and contemporary plans of the sites and gardens and a description of the therapeutic activities carried out in nature are provided. Results prove that their potential is promising, but not yet used to its full extent because of organisation and financing within the context of health care systems. Using those gardens for the spectrum of green therapies may bring benefits for patients and the historic substance alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban community gardens are well known as safe and friendly spaces that help shape a sense of community. Their capacity to reflect these ideals in the higher education policy sector has been less examined, even though students are particularly well-disposed to reaping the healing benefits of gardens. COVID-19 displaced students and shut down campuses globally. With Australian universities reopening, fostering a sense of community and re-establishing campus culture is among top priorities. This paper uses a multiple case-study methodology to explore how a unique policy instrument—the university 'masterplan'–expresses the benefits of campus community gardens, as green community spaces, and how they might better aid universities in achieving strategic missions. The research compares dominant themes in the community garden literature with the visions of campus masterplans to understand how community gardens might be better positioned as tools for place and community building. The results provide a finer-grained understanding of green infrastructure in campus master planning for a post-COVID-19 moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-pandemic era has raised awareness on the importance of physical and psychological well-being for decreasing the vulnerability of both individuals and populations. Citizens in urban areas are subject to numerous stress factors which can be mitigated by green spaces such as parks and gardens. Sensor and internet technologies support nature-based solutions in various ways. In this paper, we show the results of ongoing research on the use of spatially distributed IoT sensors that collect climate data in an ~8 ha urban garden. The novelty resides in the method for merging the IoT data with a detailed 3D model created by a laser scan survey from a drone flight. The end products are 1 m resolution thermal comfort maps of user-defined scenarios, e.g., at specific times or aggregated in daily/monthly/yearly statistics that represent a thermal comfort distribution. For full replicability, the code is open source and available as an R package on Github. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper places William Pereira's designs for the campus of UC Irvine within the context of Post-World War II development in Southern California. Using Leo Marx's Machine in the Garden as well as Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cities, Pereira's work is evaluated for its ability to blend nature and artifice through his integration of landscape and architecture. Irvine is considered relative to existing planning ideologies of this era, including the development of suburban corporate campuses and auto-dominant suburbs. New developments and emerging growth enclaves reflected a desire to retain a sense of pastoralism, while accommodating the conveniences associated with modern living. The context of Marx and Howard, along with case studies of the mid-twentieth century help to frame the analysis of UCI's landscape and architecture. Planning texts, diagrams, and photographs are considered in the evaluation of UC Irvine's design and construction. Situating the campus as both town and garden, the analysis focuses on whether Pereira's modernist intentions to create a new space where both campus and nature could evolve together, were fully met. As a semi-natural, intensely social space, UC Irvine's development is laid out as a construction project, while serving the cultural needs of this mid-twentieth century academic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of New Architecture is the property of New Architecture Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Amin Maalouf writes in French language; however, due to growing up in an environment of high cultural and linguistic diversity, he is widely acquainted with the components of the civilization of different ethnic groups, especially the Oriental ones. The purpose of this paper is to focus on four selected works by Maalouf, namely Crusades from the Perspective of Arabs, Leo Africanus, Samarkand, and Gardens of Light. While drawing upon intertextual approaches, this study pursues what sources have inspired the author's writing; how these influences are manifested in the structure or content of his works; what changes the author made in the original forms, and, subsequently, what similarities and differences can be found between the mentioned texts; and finally, what motives and purposes does his method of writing accomplish. The research findings establish the relationship between Maalouf's works and religious texts of the Qur'an, the Bible, and the Torah, as well as works such as the book Al-A'tbar and Al-Kamil Fi Al-Tarikh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans have adapted to difficult environmental conditions throughout history to carry out agricultural activities that ensured their food security, modifying the surrounding milieu, building terraces on steep slopes or cultivating in deserts making the most of scarce water sources. One of the most interesting agricultural solutions to cultivate in wet areas is the use of floating gardens. In Inle lake, Shan State (Myanmar) local people, mainly belonging to the Intha ethnic group, build floating islands using local materials and ingenious techniques. These floating islands are mainly used to cultivate tomatoes and other vegetables, and they represent a model of sustainable traditional agriculture in an environment rich in biodiversity. Inle Lake was designated as a RAMSAR site in 2018, as an Important Bird Area (IBA), while the Inle Wetland Wildlife Sanctuary (IWWS) was established in 1985. Moreover, Inle Lake was the first Myanmar site of the Man and Biosphere (MAB) programme by UNESCO. Agricultural activities are carried out without harming the local wildlife and the traditional practices represent a model of equilibrium between food production and high levels of biodiversity maintenance. The paper focuses on the relationship between the structure of the floating islands, traditional agricultural practices and the diversity of local wildlife, with the aim of presenting facts that could be the basis for future interventions and policies in support of this unique agricultural system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress is required in response to how cities can support greater biodiversity. This calls for more research on how landscape designers can actively shape urban ecologies to deliver context-specific empirical bases for green space intervention decisions. Design experiments offer opportunities for implemented projects within real-world settings to serve as learning sites. This paper explores preliminary ecological outcomes from a multidisciplinary team on whether purposefully engineered native grassland gardens provide more habitat functions for insects than mainstream gardens in the City of Tshwane, South Africa. Six different sites were sampled: two recently installed native grassland garden interventions (young native), two contemporary non-native control gardens (young non-native) on the same premises and of the same ages as the interventions, one remnant of a more pristine native grassland reference area (old native), and one long-established, non-native reference garden (old non-native). Plant and insect diversity were sampled over one year. The short-term findings suggest that higher plant beta diversity (species turnover indicating heterogeneity in a site) supports greater insect richness and evenness in richness. Garden size, age, and connectivity were not clear factors mediating urban habitat enhancement. Based on the preliminary results, the researchers recommend high native grassland species composition and diversity, avoiding individual species dominance, but increasing beta diversity and functional types when selecting garden plants for urban insect biodiversity conservation in grassland biomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Architectural Journal / Jian Zhu Xue Bao is the property of Architectural Journal Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

To improve the effect of urban agricultural garden landscape planning and design, this paper combines the agricultural Internet of Things technology to construct a smart garden planning and design system. Moreover, this paper selects the LEACH protocol that can support monitoring for a long time according to actual application needs, introduces the latest swarm intelligence optimization algorithm, the gray wolf algorithm, to optimize some of the problems in the LEACH protocol, and conducts simulation experiments on the improved algorithm. The simulation experiment results show that the improved algorithm has obvious advantages in cluster head selection, data transmission within the cluster, and route maintenance. After constructing a smart garden planning system based on the agricultural Internet of Things, the effect of the agricultural Internet of Things data processing in this paper is evaluated. Finally, this paper constructs a garden simulation system and analyzes the performance of the system. The results verify that the agricultural Internet of Things has a good effect in the planning and design of smart gardens., Competing Interests: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Yi Xun and Guangpei Ren.)

Background: The right to fully enjoy the highest possible state of health is certainly nothing new in the agenda of the world's governments, and yet today it becomes a top priority not just in the restructuring of the health care system, but also in the promotion of multi-sector policies aimed at fostering and safeguarding the potential of every individual to achieve what could be defined, in general terms, as "common good"., Objective: The current paper aimed at singling out the most useful strategies to promoting and achieving a healthy, more resilient and fairer society., Methods: Starting from principles 1 and 14 of the Declaration of Rome, the aim was to analyse and develop the concepts of resilience and health, questioning their possible future variations against the background of the current health emergency and the increasingly radical widespread use of new technologies as universally-applied and cross-sectional tools for human progress., Results: The "health for all" objective can only be achieved if we act on three key aspects: 1. Adding life to years; 2. Adding life to life; 3. Adding years to life., Conclusions: Each individual should raise their health awareness as a key resource to leading a fulfilling existence and to developing the required qualities to fully tap into health possibilities - whether integral or residual - to tackle life.

For older people gardens may be paradoxical sites. Whilst gardening is associated in multiple ways with wellbeing and health, gardens may also become a source of frustration and worry as ageing bodies limit gardening activities. Yet determination remains. However, little of the well-established body of work on gardens and old age includes people in advanced age. In this paper, we draw on interviews with Māori and non-Māori 85-90-year olds in Aotearoa, New Zealand, focusing on how they talk about their wellbeing in relation to past, present, and future experiences of home gardening. Our research shows home gardens and gardening figure prominently and positively in the narratives of people in advanced age. Most of our participants described themselves as active gardeners; most also lived with multimorbidity, sometimes severe and complex. Applying positioning theory, we examine how our participants connect gardens and gardening to identity; connectedness; and adaptation and renegotiation of health and wellbeing in ageing bodies. Home gardens are 'more than therapeutic'; while they are protective of health and wellbeing, they are also enabling places for the expression and performance of agency in advanced age. These understandings have practical implications for supporting wellbeing amongst those in advanced age., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)