Showing 11-20 of 21 results
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Standing in the shadows of giants
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 30/08/2015
» Small is beautiful, but giants are far more awe-inspiring. That I found out during a trip to northern Thailand recently.
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Growing farm fresh kids
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 03/05/2015
» Not many teachers would use a farm as an educational tool for grade school children, but Preciosa Soliven, PhD, is no ordinary teacher. As the founding president of OB (Operation Brotherhood) Montessori Centre, which operates five schools in and around Manila in the Philippines, she motivates children to develop into self-dependent adults from the age of three.
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Try hedging your bets
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 05/04/2015
» Reader Poonsri Pupipat wrote to say that she lives in a very busy lane used as a shortcut by all types of vehicles from early morning to late at night. She planted rows of Polyathia longifolia var pandurata trees, known in Thai as asoke India, along both sides of her fence to alleviate noise and air pollution, but two died recently.
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Where have all the gardeners gone?
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 08/06/2014
» Is the Chatuchak midweek plant market dying a slow but natural death? Last Wednesday I went to see how the market was faring after the latest coup d’etat, and found it to be just a shadow of its old self.
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Fruitful search for elusive trees
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 30/03/2014
» I had two people in mind when I went to Kasetsart University at the start of the annual agricultural fair, better known as Kaset Fair, last Saturday. Ken Banks had written to say that in his 11 years of visiting Thailand and finally living in Khon Kaen, where he moved from beautiful Hawaii, he had never seen a breadfruit tree until recently, when he spotted two trees on a street across from the Khon Kaen train station. “They look a lot like the Hawaiian variety, based on the leaf color, shape and luster,” he wrote. “This is a delicious, unseeded cultivar that I would dearly love to have.”
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Hedging your bets with bamboo
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 06/10/2013
» When we talk about reafforestation and greening the environment, the first thing that comes to mind is to plant trees. Millions of trees have been planted as part of environmental awareness programmes initiated by conservation groups, government agencies, and companies wishing to improve their corporate image. But I have yet to hear about bamboo being used to rehabilitate degraded forests.
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Roots run deep for tree enthusiasts
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 22/09/2013
» It is common knowledge that the Chatuchak Weekend Market takes on another identity as a plant market every Wednesday and Thursday. What most people do not know is that they can go shopping for plants as early as Tuesday afternoon, when the plants arrive at Chatuchak. The place starts to get busy at 2pm as six-wheel trucks and pick-ups arrive from suburban nurseries and the provinces to unload their cargo. By 5pm many stalls are ready for business.
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Bad news lavender lovers _ These sweet smellers can't take the heat
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 24/03/2013
» Pavan Khimesra has been unsuccessfully trying to grow lavender in his Bangkok home. ''The seeds just do not seem to germinate,'' he wrote. ''I understand that the plant grows in the Mediterranean climate so it might be possible to grow it in Bangkok. I am trying to grow the munstead dwarf, hidcote dwarf and true lavender varieties, which I think are all types of Lavandula angustifolia. Lavender grows in hardiness zones 4-10 as classified by the US Department of Agriculture [Bangkok is 10], and in the American Horticultural Society's plant heat zones 2-11 [Bangkok is 12].
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Raising Cane: Explore the bounty of bamboo
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 27/01/2013
» I had only seen bamboos with round culms, or canes, so when the late Dioscoro Umali, former regional representative for Asia and the Pacific of the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organisation, told me that he had a square bamboo in his collection, I thought he was pulling my leg. "Yes, there is a square bamboo," he said with a laugh when I expressed disbelief. "I got my square bamboo from Bhutan."
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Despite development, Phuket's botanical bounty remains
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 18/11/2012
» The once sleepy tin-mining town of Phuket is now a thriving metropolis, with traffic jams a regular feature of every day. If the intrepid tourists who fell in love with the natural beauty of a deserted beach called Patong, where they stayed in 25 baht a night bamboo huts in the early 1970s, were to return today, they would not be able to recognise the place with its many five-star hotels, bars and shops. In Patong the only place not overrun with buildings is the beach itself, but even this is covered from tip to tip by reclining chairs for rent.
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