In the summer, they appear, the prospective intensive hobby gardeners. Three different balconistas can be classified - each with a different design factor.
f you can feel the warmth of the approaching summer on your skin, the untrained city dweller thinks about looking for at least sunglasses as protection against the visual dangers of the biosphere in various drawers between batteries, nails, different generations of Leathermans and several dozen orphaned chargers. Immediately afterwards, the remaining sunscreen contingents, which have mutated over the winter into lacquer-like substances, are applied once again, only to then, driven by fear, purchase astronomical sun protection factors with light metal additives in the drugstore of confidence.
Quite contrary to the dialectical disposition between ingenious striving for dominance and non-invasive vegan dreams of life, creative symptoms of illness become noticeable, which, when looking at green consistent surfaces or colored blossoms and fruits, release anabolic steroids in large quantities, following the emotional irrationality. Unbridgeable, creative hurdles of winter living room cosiness made of Kvadrat fabrics, George Nelson sofas and olfactory Erzgebirge smoking manikin idyll are skipped in the intoxication of this hormonal release, as if Allen had injected Johnson dopamine pure.
Like a doped foreign rule
The whole thing feels like a doped heteronomy that makes the prospective intensive hobby gardener burn uncontrollably to the shores of the DIY stores. Once stranded, the flickering sales promotion videos on the shelves of garden centres look like branded agitprop versions of Homer's siren songs. Freely adapted from Lenin, in the context of propaganda and agitation a sowing of a special kind is introduced into the raised beds of urban private green belt thinking, in short: He (the garden/building market) has to convey many ideas, so many that only (relatively) few people will immediately adopt all these ideas in their entirety, since they may only have a balcony.
The agitator (fertilizer/pesticide provider), on the other hand, who talks about the same question, will pick this out for all his listeners (the hobby garden activist) as the best known and most blatant example (fly, mosquito, cabbage whiteworm, fast beetles, scarab beetles, crickets, nematodes, nudibranches, snails, spider mites, voles and field mice, rabbits and hares, not to forget the vegetable fraction of mildew, rust and burnt fungus)
In the realm of high-tech green care
Now at the latest, those driven by pest enemies feel welcome in the realm of high-tech green care. From now on, a bouquet of the garden-fighting product design ideas will be poured out over his or her world of needs in a manner appropriate to the target group. There are colourful lawnmowers lined up on artificial lawns, whose wind tunnel-tested bodies make every Bugatti Veyron 16.4. look pale and, when used effectively, can wrest many seconds away from the daily aerodynamic mowing business; all with sporty wide tyres and brute rim design, by the way.
Those who carry a guilty conscience with them will switch to hybrid models and act sustainably in the hurricane of rotating knives. If the air for cutting the lawn in the Mekong delta of the home garden becomes scarce, there are nimble scarifiers and, for the graphic designer among those willing to look after the lawn, a multitude of trimmers which make it possible to define the peripheral areas of the garden zone grid down to the millimetre in the sense of Ottl Aicher. User ergonomics are also not neglected. Grandiose slip resistance and dizzying rotation speeds beyond the 10000 mark make the guardian of order of the turf design stagger with happiness.
Getting into the right sunlight
Gone are the memories of the golf lawn maltreated by child and dog, who spread out a diorama of failure as "Little Verdun" in front of the neighbour. With a new chance and professional survival equipment, the new member of the Special-Gardening-Forces-Unit can put many things back in the right light. From now on, the once failed replicant's dreams of returning to his home planet and to the blessed garden floe will not let go of him.
The hope of being accepted into the society of those who let the green planet resurrect from raised beds and drip irrigation despite the nuclear winter dies, as in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", at last. However, the dream of the monumental placativity of an existence in a deck chair with Bluetooth sound box, house pumping station, Multimaster with "all purpose E-Cut saw blade (44 mm)" and "Stihl chainsaw with 1/4 "saw chain pitch" quickly bursts as a consumer-generated garden dystophy.
The awakening from euphoria
Many of the startup gardeners wandering disorientated between the shelves only wake up from their euphoric consumer mood when they see the cash register. Some of them have a garden that is far too small or no garden at all, and even a well-tested Brill scarifier with high horsepower quickly breaks down on the screed of their balcony at home - no more dreams of talking shop about tree grafting, germination and pollination as a Glieneck bridge to an alienated neighbour with subsequent synchronisation by six-branch drops.
But there are alternatives in the search "for life, the universe and all the rest" and when only a balcony calls. In the facade green area, which has few square meters of square, there is even a much higher probability of scoring points in the fight for the visibility of one's own garden skills than with a green concept hidden behind meter-high fences. Similar to the front door in the context of a row house, the balcony is the ideal projection surface for the apartment owner and is ideally suited to communicate his or her own design requirements to the outside world. It also bears witness to the egomania or altruism of the occupant - a nudism of the soul on the façade.
Authentic discourse of error and stroke of genius
The ritual encircling of the balconied focal points of the urban experience space offers, precisely for this reason, a particularly authentic discourse of error and stroke of genius. For example, the installation of a satellite dish in the living environment turns out to be a fatal creative error, with which a resident of the associated apartment sends out an orbital cry for help. The concave antenna sheet metal surface documents a need for opportunistic permanent contact with the transmitters of this world. Rotationally symmetrical loneliness is aesthetically packaged in this iconographic element of the media world. The conglomerate of greyed cables and multi-feed LNB's, helplessly arranged and reception-contaminated on the balcony, sends out any kind of pleasure-oriented interpersonal.
Three core target groups classifiable
This offset electro-smog of irrelevance does not play a role for the serious pot plant fraction, at best it is pitifully looked down upon these testimonies of astra-isolation. The common balconyista, on the other hand, is highly ambitious but can be roughly classified visually into three core target groups:
One of the most frequently found balcony concepts, for example, is a seedling of Aristippus of Cyrene and ultimately fails precisely because of the consequences of the unbridled hedonism he propagates: the "fun balconyista". As a rule, vast quantities of beer bottles clog the infrastructural dimension of these balcony worlds.
This glass blockage, which is often shattered when you walk on it (neighbourhood problem!) is often accompanied by an endless fluorescent tube with flashing function applied using a wrapping technique. The unstable, slightly rusty three-legged do-it-yourself DIY grill of medium dimensions is also part of this pleasure-oriented chaos theory. In terms of design, however, the barbecue lacks the finesse and the post-traumatic party syndrome of fat residues and half-burned charcoal, which aesthetically gives the concept the finishing touch. "Urban gardening" here turns into "urban headbanging" and the omnipresent DIY store equipment is rather characterized by a will to perfection in the sense of party functionalities.
But back to the focus of our considerations: Only a few plants manage to survive in this pleasure Namib and, like a "Welwitschia mirabilis", resist the slow dying with extreme modesty. For these profane biotopes ground cover, multi-resistant cacti or papyrus plants in an ever-moist water pot are indicated - design factor 0 (Scale 0-6).
The second group
A second group, the so-called "Common-Balkonistas", are much more ambitious in their approach to pot plant abundance. During big sporting events they sometimes raise a flag in modest dimensions, but even in the barbecue area things are quite different. The first doubts about the enjoyment of large quantities of meat become loud. Increased consumption of grilled vegetables is sued.
The hipster cap is joined here by the high-tech ventilation grill with minimal charcoal consumption. Cherry blossom berries, various types of palm trees, hibiscus or citrus plants are used for the plants. Mediterranean herbs promise an aromatic counterpoint to the technical odour dimension of the 3-way catalytic converters in the street area and refine instead of the red wholesale market marinade of cochineal scale insect and aromas, authentic the sustainably produced barbecue food.
But if you think that the risk of infection with the garden/ DIY store design virus is low in these culture sociothopes, you are mistaken. Electrification in a hedonistic guise finds its buyers precisely in these target groups. LEDs as colourful light chains with traditional E27 sockets are often used as a reminiscence of the often missed beer bliss under the chestnut tree. The ambitious positioning in relation to the design environment is also manifested by the use of expensive and highly pigmented paints from the specialist trade (DIY stores beware!).
The use of tools in this environment is naturally limited to a few tools. For plant pot care a chic polished aluminium shovel is always within reach and if something goes wrong there is one of these battery powered suction monsters with 15 cyclones, in two rows and a digital V6 engine. Seen from a distance, this "Common" version of Urban Gardening comes very close to the image of a successful gardener. Design factor 4.
The third group
But if you want to find queens of this discipline, you have to be prepared for a long search and you must not ignore the very private backyards of the big city. Here in the Enchanted, the "extreme balconyists" sit and, like Rapunzel, let down the tendrils from the airy heights of their balconies on us envious green voyeurs looking up.
Tyrolean hanging geraniums, hanging Suftsteinrich and Dichondra are blossoming above us as visual worlds of experience. One can only guess what coexistence with almost extinct varieties of zuccini and tomato or the view of flower refuges destroyed and believed forgotten by Roundup must feel like. A rich world of experience for the owner/inhabitant seems guaranteed and the raised bed strategies, miniature greenhouses and computer-controlled drip irrigation systems leave us incredulous.
When the owner of the biotope with tangled hair and a "Haws Long Reach 8.8 l watering can" enters the balcony, the viewer falls reverently to his knees. He imagines what it is like to be an "extreme balconyista". Up there in the sky of "Urban Gardening", the ultimate garden tools are certainly to be found: classic topiary shears, which have been formally defining the miniature garden since 1730, hand forks, garden claws, hand rakes and last but not least, hand shovels, all of which have a wooden handle and are of brilliant sustainability. One looks in vain for glowing ornamentation, however; everything here is in keeping with the plant world. Design factor 6.
The plant world will prevail
Much could still be said about the phylogenetic development of all balconistas and their highly individualised design world, but in the end the plant world will prevail over breeding efforts in the balcony and garden sector, no matter how good the design or technologically mature the instruments are.
Charles Darwin already knew this 150 years ago: "Everything that is against nature will not last in the long run".
In the summer, they appear, the prospective intensive hobby gardeners. Three different balconistas can be classified - each with a different design factor.
f you can feel the warmth of the approaching summer on your skin, the untrained city dweller thinks about looking for at least sunglasses as protection against the visual dangers of the biosphere in various drawers between batteries, nails, different generations of Leathermans and several dozen orphaned chargers. Immediately afterwards, the remaining sunscreen contingents, which have mutated over the winter into lacquer-like substances, are applied once again, only to then, driven by fear, purchase astronomical sun protection factors with light metal additives in the drugstore of confidence.
Quite contrary to the dialectical disposition between ingenious striving for dominance and non-invasive vegan dreams of life, creative symptoms of illness become noticeable, which, when looking at green consistent surfaces or colored blossoms and fruits, release anabolic steroids in large quantities, following the emotional irrationality. Unbridgeable, creative hurdles of winter living room cosiness made of Kvadrat fabrics, George Nelson sofas and olfactory Erzgebirge smoking manikin idyll are skipped in the intoxication of this hormonal release, as if Allen had injected Johnson dopamine pure.
Like a doped foreign rule
The whole thing feels like a doped heteronomy that makes the prospective intensive hobby gardener burn uncontrollably to the shores of the DIY stores. Once stranded, the flickering sales promotion videos on the shelves of garden centres look like branded agitprop versions of Homer's siren songs. Freely adapted from Lenin, in the context of propaganda and agitation a sowing of a special kind is introduced into the raised beds of urban private green belt thinking, in short: He (the garden/building market) has to convey many ideas, so many that only (relatively) few people will immediately adopt all these ideas in their entirety, since they may only have a balcony.
The agitator (fertilizer/pesticide provider), on the other hand, who talks about the same question, will pick this out for all his listeners (the hobby garden activist) as the best known and most blatant example (fly, mosquito, cabbage whiteworm, fast beetles, scarab beetles, crickets, nematodes, nudibranches, snails, spider mites, voles and field mice, rabbits and hares, not to forget the vegetable fraction of mildew, rust and burnt fungus)
In the realm of high-tech green care
Now at the latest, those driven by pest enemies feel welcome in the realm of high-tech green care. From now on, a bouquet of the garden-fighting product design ideas will be poured out over his or her world of needs in a manner appropriate to the target group. There are colourful lawnmowers lined up on artificial lawns, whose wind tunnel-tested bodies make every Bugatti Veyron 16.4. look pale and, when used effectively, can wrest many seconds away from the daily aerodynamic mowing business; all with sporty wide tyres and brute rim design, by the way.
Those who carry a guilty conscience with them will switch to hybrid models and act sustainably in the hurricane of rotating knives. If the air for cutting the lawn in the Mekong delta of the home garden becomes scarce, there are nimble scarifiers and, for the graphic designer among those willing to look after the lawn, a multitude of trimmers which make it possible to define the peripheral areas of the garden zone grid down to the millimetre in the sense of Ottl Aicher. User ergonomics are also not neglected. Grandiose slip resistance and dizzying rotation speeds beyond the 10000 mark make the guardian of order of the turf design stagger with happiness.
Getting into the right sunlight
Gone are the memories of the golf lawn maltreated by child and dog, who spread out a diorama of failure as "Little Verdun" in front of the neighbour. With a new chance and professional survival equipment, the new member of the Special-Gardening-Forces-Unit can put many things back in the right light. From now on, the once failed replicant's dreams of returning to his home planet and to the blessed garden floe will not let go of him.
The hope of being accepted into the society of those who let the green planet resurrect from raised beds and drip irrigation despite the nuclear winter dies, as in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", at last. However, the dream of the monumental placativity of an existence in a deck chair with Bluetooth sound box, house pumping station, Multimaster with "all purpose E-Cut saw blade (44 mm)" and "Stihl chainsaw with 1/4 "saw chain pitch" quickly bursts as a consumer-generated garden dystophy.
The awakening from euphoria
Many of the startup gardeners wandering disorientated between the shelves only wake up from their euphoric consumer mood when they see the cash register. Some of them have a garden that is far too small or no garden at all, and even a well-tested Brill scarifier with high horsepower quickly breaks down on the screed of their balcony at home - no more dreams of talking shop about tree grafting, germination and pollination as a Glieneck bridge to an alienated neighbour with subsequent synchronisation by six-branch drops.
But there are alternatives in the search "for life, the universe and all the rest" and when only a balcony calls. In the facade green area, which has few square meters of square, there is even a much higher probability of scoring points in the fight for the visibility of one's own garden skills than with a green concept hidden behind meter-high fences. Similar to the front door in the context of a row house, the balcony is the ideal projection surface for the apartment owner and is ideally suited to communicate his or her own design requirements to the outside world. It also bears witness to the egomania or altruism of the occupant - a nudism of the soul on the façade.
Authentic discourse of error and stroke of genius
The ritual encircling of the balconied focal points of the urban experience space offers, precisely for this reason, a particularly authentic discourse of error and stroke of genius. For example, the installation of a satellite dish in the living environment turns out to be a fatal creative error, with which a resident of the associated apartment sends out an orbital cry for help. The concave antenna sheet metal surface documents a need for opportunistic permanent contact with the transmitters of this world. Rotationally symmetrical loneliness is aesthetically packaged in this iconographic element of the media world. The conglomerate of greyed cables and multi-feed LNB's, helplessly arranged and reception-contaminated on the balcony, sends out any kind of pleasure-oriented interpersonal.
Three core target groups classifiable
This offset electro-smog of irrelevance does not play a role for the serious pot plant fraction, at best it is pitifully looked down upon these testimonies of astra-isolation. The common balconyista, on the other hand, is highly ambitious but can be roughly classified visually into three core target groups:
One of the most frequently found balcony concepts, for example, is a seedling of Aristippus of Cyrene and ultimately fails precisely because of the consequences of the unbridled hedonism he propagates: the "fun balconyista". As a rule, vast quantities of beer bottles clog the infrastructural dimension of these balcony worlds.
This glass blockage, which is often shattered when you walk on it (neighbourhood problem!) is often accompanied by an endless fluorescent tube with flashing function applied using a wrapping technique. The unstable, slightly rusty three-legged do-it-yourself DIY grill of medium dimensions is also part of this pleasure-oriented chaos theory. In terms of design, however, the barbecue lacks the finesse and the post-traumatic party syndrome of fat residues and half-burned charcoal, which aesthetically gives the concept the finishing touch. "Urban gardening" here turns into "urban headbanging" and the omnipresent DIY store equipment is rather characterized by a will to perfection in the sense of party functionalities.
But back to the focus of our considerations: Only a few plants manage to survive in this pleasure Namib and, like a "Welwitschia mirabilis", resist the slow dying with extreme modesty. For these profane biotopes ground cover, multi-resistant cacti or papyrus plants in an ever-moist water pot are indicated - design factor 0 (Scale 0-6).
The second group
A second group, the so-called "Common-Balkonistas", are much more ambitious in their approach to pot plant abundance. During big sporting events they sometimes raise a flag in modest dimensions, but even in the barbecue area things are quite different. The first doubts about the enjoyment of large quantities of meat become loud. Increased consumption of grilled vegetables is sued.
The hipster cap is joined here by the high-tech ventilation grill with minimal charcoal consumption. Cherry blossom berries, various types of palm trees, hibiscus or citrus plants are used for the plants. Mediterranean herbs promise an aromatic counterpoint to the technical odour dimension of the 3-way catalytic converters in the street area and refine instead of the red wholesale market marinade of cochineal scale insect and aromas, authentic the sustainably produced barbecue food.
But if you think that the risk of infection with the garden/ DIY store design virus is low in these culture sociothopes, you are mistaken. Electrification in a hedonistic guise finds its buyers precisely in these target groups. LEDs as colourful light chains with traditional E27 sockets are often used as a reminiscence of the often missed beer bliss under the chestnut tree. The ambitious positioning in relation to the design environment is also manifested by the use of expensive and highly pigmented paints from the specialist trade (DIY stores beware!).
The use of tools in this environment is naturally limited to a few tools. For plant pot care a chic polished aluminium shovel is always within reach and if something goes wrong there is one of these battery powered suction monsters with 15 cyclones, in two rows and a digital V6 engine. Seen from a distance, this "Common" version of Urban Gardening comes very close to the image of a successful gardener. Design factor 4.
The third group
But if you want to find queens of this discipline, you have to be prepared for a long search and you must not ignore the very private backyards of the big city. Here in the Enchanted, the "extreme balconyists" sit and, like Rapunzel, let down the tendrils from the airy heights of their balconies on us envious green voyeurs looking up.
Tyrolean hanging geraniums, hanging Suftsteinrich and Dichondra are blossoming above us as visual worlds of experience. One can only guess what coexistence with almost extinct varieties of zuccini and tomato or the view of flower refuges destroyed and believed forgotten by Roundup must feel like. A rich world of experience for the owner/inhabitant seems guaranteed and the raised bed strategies, miniature greenhouses and computer-controlled drip irrigation systems leave us incredulous.
When the owner of the biotope with tangled hair and a "Haws Long Reach 8.8 l watering can" enters the balcony, the viewer falls reverently to his knees. He imagines what it is like to be an "extreme balconyista". Up there in the sky of "Urban Gardening", the ultimate garden tools are certainly to be found: classic topiary shears, which have been formally defining the miniature garden since 1730, hand forks, garden claws, hand rakes and last but not least, hand shovels, all of which have a wooden handle and are of brilliant sustainability. One looks in vain for glowing ornamentation, however; everything here is in keeping with the plant world. Design factor 6.
The plant world will prevail
Much could still be said about the phylogenetic development of all balconistas and their highly individualised design world, but in the end the plant world will prevail over breeding efforts in the balcony and garden sector, no matter how good the design or technologically mature the instruments are.
Charles Darwin already knew this 150 years ago: "Everything that is against nature will not last in the long run".