Interview with Robin Horton

About 9 years ago, I took a week-long post-professional design workshop with renowned designer Milton Glaser at the School of Visual Arts in NY. On the last day, the assignment was to develop a concept for a print magazine including its name, design, all the content, even an advertising plan. Everyone of course thought it impossible to do such a thing in 24 hours. But Glaser had been assigning this for twenty years and each year everyone produced something.

My idea was Urban Gardens. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure why it came to me but I had an instinctive feeling that it was a good concept with commercial potential. I felt attuned to design and urban living, and thought that there was a large range of products having to do with exterior living and design that could attract advertisers. “Green” however was just a color back then, not as much a part of the collective awareness as it is today, though I included in my plan stories about kitchen gardening, recycling, and xeriscaping.

It was stressful but fun to produce and I felt very excited and confident presenting the idea. After the presentation, Glaser remarked, “who would want to read that, and who would advertise?” I had a good rebuttal, but not good enough to convince him.

The following week, the front page of the NYTimes Living Section (now the Style section) was all about urban gardens. I felt validated by this, yet was in no position to start a print magazine. I shelved the idea until 4 years ago when I decided to resurface it as a blog. I launched Urban Gardens in April 2009 and in the same year it was nominated in the Lifestyle category for a Webby, hailed by the NYTimes as “the Internet’s highest honor.” It then received both silver and gold Garden Writers Association awards, and a Creativity design award. In its three years, the readership has now grown to between 35-50K readers and 29K+ social media followers.

I’m seeing more and more lighted containers, which is cool as they multitask as both planters and outdoor lighting. Multi-functoning products are a great thing for small spaces, many of which happen to be urban.

Another trend is the soft planters, like Bacsac which I saw for the first time a few years ago at Maison et Objet in Paris. They are now available in the US. They are lightweight permeable containers that are easily transported and moved. They come in a variety of sizes made of the same material so they are modular—you can arrange and rearrange them as you like.

Vertical gardening of course has become extremely popular, and for good reason. For city dwellers without a lot of floor or ground area, it’s a great way to maximize space. Since I launched Urban Gardens, I have seen a number of commercially available vertical gardening systems come on the market. Many are already familiar with the pocket systems from Plants on Walls and Woolley Pockets -- modular felt pockets or panels made from recycled PET water bottles.

There are a number of other systems made from hard materials, some in metal or, like the Ballavaz or the ELT EasyGreen® Living Wall System, of panels of a high-density durable polyresin that can be recycled or reused over and over again.

Some, like the GroVert from Brightgreen, (below) can be delivered pre-planted. And since these systems generally include a drip line system, they are easy to maintain.

Most of these systems are modular, like one of my favorites, the Urbio, which enables assembly according to the needs of one’s particular space. For small spaces indoors or out, the MiniGarden is a nice compact piece that works well for apartment dwellers.

Mobile gardens on wheels, like the contemporary Garden365 from Eserro, are a trend I think we’ll see more of as an aging population will need products that are easy to move and these containers also allow small space gardeners to chase the sun.