Just a lawn verge in the middle of a 4-lane road? Maybe - but it has mushrooms!
The organic and complex shadow of the herbs is a nice contrast to the concrete street light’s.
コンクリート街路灯の影に比べて、雑草の影は有機的とコンプレックスで魅力的です。
Research hotspot: while I was looking for informal greenspace, these trees featured “under diagnosis” badges.
研究のホットスポット：非公式緑地を調べに行ったとき、街路樹に「樹木診断中」のバッジが付けられました。
Few fences can’t be improved by having vegetation growing all over them.
多くの場合に、生い茂った塀はただの塀よりいい。
Lifecycle: the life of many plants starts at the same place where human artefacts end theirs.
生活環：人間の物の命が終わるところで、いろいろな植物の命が始まる。
Even isolated patches of street verge are colonized by a variety of plants.
孤立した道の端でも植物がいろいろ生えています。
町の中でも裏道がたくさん。Hidden paths are just as common in cities.
美しい庭の逃亡者！
Beautiful garden escapees!
A life of its own: when neighbourhoods are not polished to be squeaky-clean, space comes alive.
A nice example of how informal greenspace (here: street verge type) improves the urban visual environment by adding some green to the grey. The plants provide something organic to look at and break up the abstract geometric forms of walls and pavement.
Street verges are often the result of multiple influences: in this case, the original planting by the city, informal enhancement and modification by the residents, and “invasion” by pioneer species.
In this vacant lot informal greenspace meant to be parking space for the apartment block, spontaneous vegetation is thriving together with a resident’s mini-garden.
In Japan, many people have to be creative to find space for gardening. The picture on the right shows a mini-garden in the informal gap greenspace behind a high-rise parking lot; while tiny, it’s obviously well-loved. In Australia on the other hand, vast strips of suburban land are maintained (with high energy and labor cost) as minimal lawn with no little human use beside the questionable aesthetic value.
I wonder what magic the crafty minimal-space gardeners in Japan could do if they could work with Australian street verges.
Greener and more colorful neighborhood? Turn unnecessary road parts into semi-public gardens!
Less maintenance maybe more: the plants lining a sidewalk guard rail soften up this space and make it more visually interesting.
