Biodegradable Containers

We are all familiar with those plastic containers that plants are sold in. You know, plant your garden and you’re left with a pile of plastic containers. What do you do with them? In the past huge amounts of plastic plant containers have ended up in our landfills. At Phillips Garden we have done our best to reuse those containers ourselves or give them back to growers so they could reuse them. Fortunately, a couple years ago a recycling program was started by the Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association. Now all of our plastic containers and trays are recycled.

While the recycling program was a good first step, at Phillips Garden we are always looking for better choices when it comes to a more sustainable and responsible way of doing things. That’s why we were excited when our friends at Rush Creek Growers started using a new biodegradable container  for all of their annuals and herbs. They are pretty nice looking containers (see photo above). The pots are made from mostly rice hulls as well as bamboo and straw. Everything is bound together by a water soluble starch based binder (say that 3 times fast). They are made to last 18 months for growing purposes and then can be thrown into the compost pile. Pretty cool. We applaud Rush Creek Growers for their commitment to this.

Rush Creek Growers

MNLA Recycling Program

Sculpture

In 2006 we comissioned a San Francisco based artist Su Chen Hung to create a sculpture for the front of our studio space. She came up with a spiral design made of steel and bamboo with spiraled ground-cover of Creeping Thyme that mimics the sculptural design. This piece is called “Walk around Time”, and acts as both a wind chime and a piece of art:

This design in Minneapolis at Phillips Garden Studio, inspired Su Chen to create another piece in Taiwan taking the idea of the bamboo spiral further. This piece was created in 2008 and is called “In Praise of Light and Sound” it can be found at the Shisanhang Museum of Archeology in Taipei, Taiwan.