Header image: Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage leaves prior to harvest aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA
21.08.2023 - 11:48 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty
In May this year, I said goodbye to Lavender Shed. Since then, we haven’t made much progress in erecting its replacement, Ryan’s new workshop. Now that the weather is cooling down we will pick up that project again, but it means that it will almost certainly be next year before we can remove Seagrass Shed and erect my greenhouse/shed hybrid.
So it is with a certain amount of envy that I have been looking at the pictures of the winning entries in the Cuprinol Shed of the Year Competition. As ever, the entries take modern garden rooms to the next level, and I am in awe of our nation’s creative talents. The overall winner this year is Bux End, a hobbit-inspired masterpiece that is designed to blend in with its environment and will be used as a hobby workshop for the making of armour and chainmail.
“We are massive The Lord of the Rings fans so when we decided to build our own shed we knew it had to be a hobbit hole. It had to fit in with the wildlife and nature that we have cultivated in the rest of our garden, so the grass roof was a big feature. Whenever we got any seeds for wildflowers, we have just thrown them over the top of the shed, and they have thrived.”
But wonderous as Bux End is, I am more excited by the winner of the ‘Unique’ category – the Space Shed. In 2010, writer and theatre director Jon Spooner accidentally set up his own space agency in his garden shed. He started the Unlimited Space Agency (UNSA) as a fun way to tell stories about science to children. UNSA’s early projects won some awards, people began to take UNSA seriously, and Jon discovered that he really enjoyed wearing his spacesuit.
In 2017, Jon and his team of artists and designers decided that the best way to inspire the next generation of
Header image: Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage leaves prior to harvest aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA
Move over, Mark Watney, there’s a new space botanist heading for Mars! Ryan and I have just finished watching the new Netflix series Away, which follows (over 10 episodes) the quest of five international astronauts to be the first people to set foot on the red planet.
Over our heads, on the International Space Station, chilli peppers are blooming and being hand-pollinated by astronauts.
Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! In this episode, Emma recaps important spacecraft Arrivals and Departures and learns about growing nutrients and medicines in space. There’s a new plant experiment running on the International Space Station, and exciting news from ESA.
Just over 3 weeks ago, I started the AeroGarden on its latest mission – rooting herb cuttings. Unsurprisingly, the mint was the first plant to take root, which it did in under a week.
Just over a year ago, when we were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I talked about the lack of diversity in space and mentioned Mary Jackson. In 2016, the movie Hidden Figures shared the stories of Mary Jackson and two other Black female mathematicians – Katherine Johnson and, Dorothy Vaughan. They worked at NASA when a ‘computer’ still meant a person carrying out mathematical calculations. The film is based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which I am reading at the moment. The book offers a more detailed and accurate account of the prejudice these women (and others) had to overcome.
Can we grow food on the Moon or Mars? That was the question that started Dr Wieger Wamelink, ecologist and exobiologist at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, on a research quest in 2013.
Gardeners of the Galaxy has completed its first solar orbit! Join Emma the Space Gardener for a birthday celebration and learn how GotG got started, hear the story of a space plants experiment you’ll never forget, and find out which plant Emma would choose to take into space.
Fifty years ago, Apollo 11 was hurtling along on its mission to deposit two white guys on the Moon. By the time the Apollo program was wound down, 12 people had walked on the Moon, and 24 had been in orbit around the Moon. (Only 6 got to drive a lunar rover.) They were all white guys. Since then, no one has been further than a Low Earth Orbit.
Join Emma the Space Gardener in the Gardeners of the Galaxy time machine to learn about the time that NASA encouraged schoolchildren all over the world to grow killer mutant space tomatoes. That can’t be right, can it?
Join Emma the Space Gardener on the Tiangong space station to learn about China’s botanical experiments in space, and why Chinese consumers are eagerly awaiting rice from heaven. Plus – what was the first plant grown in space?
Header image: Rendering of Tiangong Space Station in late July 2022, along with June 2022 with Tianhe core module in the middle, Wentian lab module on the left, Tianzhou cargo spacecrafts on right, and Shenzhou-14 crewed spacecraft at nadir. Image credit Shujianyang via Wikipedia.