Showing 51 - 60 of 236
The best way to turn over that new leaf
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 03/01/2016
» I have a young friend who lives in Fresno, California. She teaches science in high school but does volunteer work in her spare time, taking a group of elderly people to a public park to do gardening. “There are plots in the park where the elderly can plant flowers or vegetables,” she said when we talked on the phone recently. “They love it. They find it invigorating. Growing plants has given them a new purpose in life.”
Colour for all seasons
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 20/12/2015
» Academy award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o made headlines recently for wearing a bright green sweater. Apparently there’s an arbitrary rule in the West that one must not wear bright colours in winter. Bright greens and reds are frowned upon by fashion critics; for them these colours are strictly for summer only. In winter people are supposed to wear only colours that are dark, darker and darkest, in deference to the death of flowers in parks and gardens.
I heard it through the grapevine
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 13/12/2015
» When I was in grade school, my father tried to germinate seeds of grapes imported from California at our home in the rice growing region of Central Luzon in the Philippines. He did not expect the seeds to germinate, as he knew the fruit was grown in a climate so different from ours.
Getting cross about pollination
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 06/12/2015
» I was standing in the back yard when I noticed bees and other insects hovering over the flowers on my coconut tree. This part of my yard is cemented and the coconut tree was planted in a big, woven plastic container and placed in one corner to provide shade. After many years the plastic disintegrated and as the coconut had grown very big, we could not transplant it to another container.
Raising a peep
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 29/11/2015
» Grant Howlett is an Australian expatriate with a reasonable knowledge of things botanical in his home country. But when it comes to Asian plant life, “alas, I have lots to learn”, he wrote. “I did reside for many years in the tropics of northern Australia, and many plants there are also here, like the foxtail palm which is originally from Australia but now prolific here in Thailand, but when it comes to trees I am lost.”
Grow your own grub
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 22/11/2015
» Readers must have heard of His Majesty the King’s por piang (self-sufficiency) economy for farmers. Based on the assumption that a farmer owns 15 rai of land, it advises the land be divided four ways: 30%, or 4.5 rai, for a pond or water reservoir, 30% for a rice field, 30% for vegetable and fruit orchards, and 10%, or 1.5 rai, for a residential area.
A landscape on the rocks
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 15/11/2015
» Frederik Majoor and his wife, Patraporn, live in a tropical paradise just a seven-minute walk from Surin beach in Phuket. They own three villas that boast a lush, beautifully landscaped garden, complete with a waterfall and a large pond designed like a stream and populated by 99 colourful Japanese carp, or koi.
The tree of life
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 08/11/2015
» I received an invitation to a symposium recently. Well, I thought that was what it was, for the invitation and the programme were in Vietnamese and there were only three words that I understood: Hanoi and Morinda citrifolia.
Many of a kind
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 01/11/2015
» Bromeliads had their day during the Thailand Bromeliad Fair held at the Southerners Association’s clubhouse on Kanchanaphisek Road recently. The event was organised by the East Coast Flowers and Ornamental Plants Association, which usually holds its annual plant fair on its own turf in Chon Buri. This time around, the fair featured only bromeliads, and it was held in Bangkok to make it more accessible to plant enthusiasts.
A question of design
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 25/10/2015
» The photos you see on this page came from Alastair North, whose garden design is intended to apply to a small to middle size urban or suburban garden of about 150-200 square wah, or 600-800 square metres.