Gardening stories that had us wanting to intensify our green thumb.

The urban homesteading movement gained serious speed this year, proving that you don’t need to move to the suburbs to enjoy the simple pleasures of growing your own vegetables, raising your own chickens, and starting your own bee colony. And despite some groups’ best efforts to kill the momentum, it doesn’t look like the trend is disappearing anytime soon.

One great offshoot of the urban homesteading movement is the spread of new, innovative ways to grow things indoors. Forget standard windowsill planters; this is the 21st century. Here, a sampling of Shelter’s favorite herb kits, terrariums, and other gravity-defying, thought-provoking indoor gardening objects from the past year.

It’s a very small world after all in these mini moss terrariums made from vintage glass and upcycled objects. Michelle Inciarrano and Katy Maslow specialize in miniaturizing scenes, and they take custom orders.

The Plantable concept table/planter from JAILmake reflects on “the distance we place between ourselves and the processes involved in making our food.”

These gravity-defying ceramic sky planters use Slo-flo irrigation technology to minimize water use.

It’s a greeting card! It’s a garden! The City Postcarden is both, with a little water and tending, of course.

The Eco Orb Terrarium kit from Tend Living lets you build your own miniature glass orb garden from a Tilliandis plant, reindeer moss, sand, and accents.

The Zozio from Pousse Créative might look like a “standard windowsill planter,” but it is so much more. This eco-friendly planter doubles as a bird feeder and is ideal for vertical gardens.

The Miroir en Herbe from h2O Architects blurs the boundaries between nature and culture.

Grow your own herbs from the comfort of your kitchen with a selection of indoor herb garden kits and accessories.

Wine bottles get a second life with these Growbottle Upcycled Hydrogardens from Potting Shed Creations, available in Oregano, Chives, Basil, Parsley, and Mint.

And finally, with the addition of Mike Lieberman’s 2012 series on Urban Gardening, expect good harvesting ahead and get your garden planned out now.

The post 2011 in Review: A Good Year for Gardening appeared first on EcoSalon.

The new antiquarian tends to live in a world of mystical, sometimes macabre, always evocative objects from times long past.

This year saw the continued proliferation of the new antiquarian, a special breed of inquisitive human characterized by intense nostalgia, an appreciation for simple pleasures, and a preference for taxidermied animals. The new antiquarian reads Victorian literature while sipping on cocktails with bitters. The new antiquarian would never click through a Timeline to recall memories when there are precious keepsake boxes on hand for that task.

From the coffers of 2011, a review of some of the coverage that best exemplifies this aesthetic.

Anatomically correct décor

The design world’s love affair with sourcing inspiration from the mechanics of the human body was in full swing this year, as demonstrated by Scott Campbell’s upholstered armchair.

Strange taxidermy

Enrique Gomez de Molina is reinventing taxidermy as a surrealist art, mashing up insects, birds, animals, and found objects into quirky one-of-a-kind pieces.

Keepsake Boxes

Mementos deserve homes as precious as the memories they preserve. WE-ARE-FAMILIA has engaged cross-disciplinary artists from around the world to contribute found mementos to one-of-a-kind Keepsake Boxes that sell for up to $10,000.

Animal Farm glasses

Some glassware is definitely more equal than others, like these Orwell-inspired tumblers hand-sketched on glass from recycled wine bottles.

Typewriters

There’s nothing like the clickety tap tap of a vintage typewriter to make one feel like a modern-day Hemingway. Donna Brady and Brandi Kowalski restore classic typewriters like the Remington, the Corona, and the Royal Standard at their Brooklyn studio.

Antique sitting chairs

This 19th-century French sitting chair, made entirely of tree branches, is just one of many lustable antique objects available at Obsolete in Venice, California.

The good china

This hand-painted collection of bone china from New Orleans artist Shelley Hesse for Anthropologie is fit for formal dinners. You could even get away with using them year-round.

The post 2011 In Review: The New Antiquarian appeared first on EcoSalon.

Small was sexy in 2011. 

The world’s population hit seven billion this year and is projected to reach nine billion by 2050 – a sure sign that we better start figuring out ways to maximize space. The average house size in America has more than doubled since the 1950s, forcing us to consume more utilities and resulting in a housing culture where bigger is better. We think just the opposite.

These Shelter posts from 2011 highlighted the small space trend and showed that less can definitely be more.

Not only are narrow homes more energy-efficient, they’re also genius and popping up in cities from London to Tokyo.

Artists, professionals, and sustainability activists like Graham Hill and Jay Shafer are turning extreme micro-living into an art, but can others follow suit?

When her partner starts building a 130-square-foot wooden cabin from scratch, Merete Mueller decides to document the process. The result is “TINY: A Story About Living Small,” a film exploring the couple’s turn to minimalism and the concept of small living across America.

Small living is one thing, but dumpster homes? Artist Gregory Kloehn debuted Elite Waste, a luxury urban home installation housed in a trash receptacle, at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in September.

Guests at the Tubohotel in Tepoztlan lodge in 6-by-9 foot concrete tubes set in an organic orchard. What they lack in entertainment and facilities, they make up in pure novelty.

Mirrors can instantly make a small abode appear larger. We loved these 12 eco-friendly ones.

If you’re ready to make the leap to little, you’ll need some innovative storage solutions. Try these.

SEE ALSO:

2011 in Review: The Most Offensive Ad Campaigns Of 2011

2011 In Review: The 10 Stories That Defined Shelter in 2011

The post 2011 in Review: How Small Spaces Trumped McMansions appeared first on EcoSalon.

Scandinavia was consistently inspiring in 2011.

After looking back on a year of Shelter posts, we realized that our obsession with Scandinavia was embarrassingly obvious.

This year saw a steady stream of sustainable innovation, progressive thought, and great design coming out of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and their not-officially-Scandinavian-but-Scandinavian-in-our-hearts cousins, Finland and Iceland.

Here’s a list of eight things that set our hearts a-flutter about Scandinavia this year.

They know how to strike the perfect balance between indoors and outdoors. Rooms at the Juvet Landscape Hotel nurture a relationship with nature, while remaining minimalist and sophisticated.

They can pull off a girly microbrewery. The Mikkeller pub in Copenhagen underwent a feminine design transformation at the hands of Femmes Regionales. The result was delightful.

They make rest stops not so scary. Norway’s government-sponsored a National Tourist Routes program engaging architects like Margrete Friis and Peter Zumthor to design lookouts, concession stands, restrooms, picnic tables, and other sustainable rest stops along scenic country roads.

They champion post-secular worship and design. Helsinki’s Chapel of Silence provides a place for urbanites to meditate in silence, without religious affiliation. It’s also gorgeous.

They design treehouses that look like UFOs. Sweden’s Treehotel consists of five eco-hotel campsites designed by leading Scandinavian architects in the woods of northern Sweden.

They give their factory workers, even the fast furniture ones, five weeks of paid vacation per year. Workers at IKEA’s Sweden plant also get paid $19 per hour, and the whole country offers free healthcare, elderly pensions, and a host of other social goodies. Compare that to workers in IKEA’s Danville, Virginia, plant, who get paid $8 an hour and are often forced to work overtime at the risk of being fired.

They can look perfectly at home in a house with white floors. A peek inside designer Tine Kjeldsen’s home in Denmark reveals the perfect combination of exposed wood, raw metal, plush plum upholstery, and flawless white floors.

Their idea of luxury involves cycling, yurts, and designer hot tubs. As it should. Activities and design at Southern Norway’s eco-friendly Canvas Hotel celebrate their motto: “You don’t stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.”

Image: Leong Him Woh

The post 8 Ways Scandinavia Impressed Us This Year appeared first on EcoSalon.