GOOD

Woman Fights Homophobia With Her “Relentlessly Gay” Garden

Baltimore resident Julie Baker has big plans for her colorful front yard.

Image via YouTube

While people have spent the past decade fighting about gay rights and gay marriage, the debate moved into heated new territory earlier this week when one woman decided to finally put a stop to gay … gardens. A couple of days ago, Baltimore resident Julie Baker received an angry note from a neighbor stating her garden had become “relentlessly gay” and it was time for her to put a stop to it. Instead of cutting back her operation, Baker decided she’d fight back by making her garden bigger, badder, and way—way—gayer.

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Activists Revitalize Abandoned Detroit Home With Over 4,000 Flowers

Florists and organizers join together to reimagine empty property, and change the way the world sees their community.

Photo by Heather Saunders Photography

Type the words “abandoned house Detroit” into Google, and the following adjectives come up: death, dying, decay. Recently, a group of florists and organizers in Detroit came together and decided that they wanted to change the image (and search results) of their contentious city—simply by planting flowers inside an abandoned home.

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Why We're Planting Wildflowers Across LA County

We're so excited to be presenting an amazing project by artist Fritz Haeg, entitled Wildflowering L.A.

We're so excited to be presenting an amazing project by artist Fritz Haeg, entitled Wildflowering L.A. The project is huge, occupying the entire urbanized region of the county, and will come together by dispersing native wildflower seeds to local residents and businesses in the fall, then gathering the photos, stories, cuttings, and mapped locations at a central project headquarters during the period of peak bloom in Spring 2014.

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People Are Awesome: A Detroit Florist Gives Away Bouquets Just for Being Kind

When times get tough, the tough celebrate community spirit and sharing.


We've told you before that in these times of hardship for so many, others have made it their mission to lighten people's burdens wherever they can. In South Carolina, they're buying each other's coffee. Throughout the Midwest, they paid for one another's gifts around the holidays. Now, one florist is looking to brighten the flagging state of Michigan one bouquet at a time.

Lori Morrison has been selling flowers for three decades in Plymouth, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit whose name it once shared with a brand of automobiles that has since ceased production. The struggling auto industry gave way to a struggling Michigan, where nearly 15 percent of the population now lives below the poverty line. Wanting to give back to the people who have kept her flower shop running in these financially trying times, Morrison came up with something called a "Good Job Bouquet," a simple reminder that someone in the Detroit area still cares.

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Stop with the Roses for Your Mom, Consider Bananas Instead

Tim Berners-Lee, the author of How Bad Are Bananas, makes the case for a low-carbon Mother's Day.


Mike Berners-Lee is the founding director of Small World Consulting (and Tim's brother). In his new book, How Bad Are Bananas, he examines the carbon footprint of everything from text messaging to having children. He extols the virtues of reducing our carbon footprint and our climate impact. His message is simple: We all have unnecessary junk in our lives and much of that's worth cutting out—without cutting out the fun. Take a rose, the iconic Mother's Day gift, for example.

GOOD: What’s the carbon footprint of a rose?

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Climate Change Robs Flowers of Their Fragrances

We've previously heard that climate change might make the world smellier, but that's not the case in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where...

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