The Garden of the Future

The Garden of the Future

            I wish I could sprinkle some magic dust on a seedling in the morning and have a 12' plant, beaming with flowers, by afternoon. I wish every plant in the garden were impervious to disease, drought and predators. I wish there were special glasses to make every flower look great to the observer, no matter who was wearing them or what his favorite colors were. I wish vegetables were grown to taste, such as bacon-flavored cucumbers or mango-infused corn. Those wishes won't be answered for a long time.

            The following thoughts, though, involve improvements that could be available now given the total dedication in finances, manpower and time of the government. Worthy endeavors all.

            RFID chips for rapid identification: It would be great to just point a wand at a plant and immediately know everything about it. I actually looked into these a few years ago after I discussed the idea with someone at a convention. While the expense was manageable, the hassle of programming for each plant, creating the chip, and burying it deeply enough to discourage squirrels, but shallow enough to be read easily by a wand, was too much. Also, setting up the database with easy entry of plant info such as name, hybridizer, flower and habit characteristics, date of planting, transplanting history, etc., was complex. In fact, it would be great if I could just pass the new plant in front of my hand-held DNA analyzer, discovered yesterday as a prize in a box of cereal. The data would be automatically loaded and backed up to the cloud. This is likely to be available sooner than other tools, below.

            Virtual Reality tours: Video games let you wander through an imaginary world. Let's create that world as your garden looks, at its best. Record every aspect, turning in every direction from every spot and then, when cold January comes around, July for Aussies, simply strap on your headset and view the garden in color with stereo vision and stereo sound. Tilt the joystick to move any way you wish at any point in the yard and remember how it was, and will be again. Look up to see the Cardinal among the crab apple blossoms, or the Red-shouldered Hawk enjoying the clouds. Look down to see the heucheras, ferns and hosta. Would it be too extreme to also breathe in the spring perfumes?

            Compact explosives to dig holes: Given some of these shaped charges, I would make my holes deeper and wider than I currently have the energy for. In fact, the grassy areas of my shady yard would quickly become a memory as those poorly growing blades would be replaced by shade-loving ground covers and larger bushes. But not English Ivy. I couldn't find any county permits for exploding one's suburban back yard.

A table-top Cyclotron at Houghton College. Photo by Tim Koeth from Symmetrymagazine.org

            A Table-Top Cyclotron: Casually wander into your garden shed and irradiate piles of seeds or pollen. Who knows what mutants will be produced from this? Such machines already exist, and would be great to get one from Amazon for $79.99 and start a mad-scientist eruption of hybrids in your back yard. They all would be different than your neighbor's plants, and a few might even be keepers. Getting a license for a nuclear reactor on your workbench might be the obstacle here. I should try to get a license for the compact explosives first.

            Genetically modified plants that glow at night: Why enjoy our flowers only in the daytime?  How about taking genes that control bio-luminescence from lightning bugs or fish and put them into our plants? I've seen videos of lightning bugs in the Amazon filling many trees and all flashing in sync. Wouldn't it be great to have your whole yard flashing that way? Or different beds flashing in their own rhythms? Or choreographed to music? And the colors change with the rhythm? That's all done now with Christmas lights. I want my azaleas to do that, too!

            Hunter-Killer Drones: Each of 100 sub-miniature drones in your yard would be equipped with an audio detector for seeking out mosquitoes, and a laser for shooting them down. After clearing the yard of those pests the drones would be reprogrammed to hunt down flies. It would take a little more engineering to zap ragweed pollen, but that's just a simple matter of programming.

            None of the above are physically impossible and could be implemented with sufficient political muscle. We need to encourage the governments of the world to fund the pleasures of creation by forming the Garden Party and electing our own bed of candidates!