You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the Tree Church in Ohaupo, New Zealand. A heavenly 100-seat chapel set among a 3-acre landscaped garden, the church boasts walls made of living trees planted around an iron frame. In 2011, Barry Cox, who runs a tree relocating business, decided that his backyard was missing an old stone church like the ones he had studied and admired on travels to Europe. — Slate

Richard Serra’s new sculpture, 'East-West/West-East,' is a set of four standing steel plates rolled in Germany, shipped via Antwerp, and offloaded, trucked, and craned into place in the middle of the western Qatari desert...the steel is the same that he’s used in his other pieces, and it will oxidize in the same way, albeit more quickly in the hot, salty conditions of the Brouq Nature Reserve. The plates will [ultimately] turn a dark amber—approximately the same color...as the Seagram Building. — The New Yorker

Daniel Campo, an urban planner and professor of planning at Morgan State University, is particularly interested in those recreational spaces that aren’t planned or designed, but are appropriated by residents for their own purposes. [...]

Dylan Gauthier, a public artist, educator, and writer based in North Brooklyn, walked around these parks with Campo to discuss the benefits of unplanned spaces for recreation [...]. — urbanomnibus.net

Three landscape architect-led teams have been named finalists by the city of Minneapolis to design the new two-block long park called the Commons near the new Vikings stadium. [...]

The three finalists are:

The Olin Studio, Philadelphia and Snow Kreilich Architects, based in Minneapolis
Hargreaves Associates, San Francisco, Damon Farber Associates, Minneapolis and VJAA, Minneapolis
WORKSHOP Ken Smith, New York and Perkins + Will, Minneapolis — bizjournals.com

Our friends at DawnTown continue to uphold innovative ideas in the Miami architecture scene with their Wynwood Gateway Park Competition. Just recently, the winners were announced for the international competition, which challenged participants to design a 14,000-sq.ft urban park and garden to be realized at the Wynwood Gateway Complex near Downtown Miami. The competition garnered over 238 submissions from interdisciplinary teams from over 20 countries. — bustler.net

If you couldn't get enough photos of the 22 installations at the 15th International Garden Festival in Quebec's Reford Gardens, you're in for a little treat. Established in 2000, the International Garden Festival is one of the biggest events of its kind in the world and it continues to gain recognition...The Gardens will remain open until September 28, 2014. — bustler.net

Sixty-five international designers created 22 garden installations at the 15th International Garden Festival, which opened this past weekend at the iconic Reford Gardens (aka les Jardins de Métis) in Quebec, Canada. Established in 2000, the event is one of the biggest garden festivals in the world. Located along the edge of the St. Lawrence River, the various installations are a playful reminder about the value of landscape architecture and nature in everyday living. — bustler.net

Well before American women could vote, these college-educated few rose to the pinnacle of their fields as garden designers, writers and photographers. Declaring American gardens to be distinct from those in Europe, they took as their mission the beautification of America, whose cities were polluted and whose residents were suffering from decades of grinding income disparity and rampant industrialism. [...]

“It really was landscape gardening as social activism.” — washingtonpost.com