Working with nature and using plants as a visual canvas gave us the idea to use their presence not only as a projection surface, but also as living beings embodying at some point an individual presence.
Some businesses are already producing alternatives using plants.
A brave mix of oranges, pinks and blues using plants such as Lupinus 'Masterpiece', Eschscholzia californica and Echium pininana; it shouldn't work, but it does – very exciting indeed.
My mum has told me that when I was four years old I would pretend to be a teacher using plants in the garden as my "pupils".
For the barnyard, I'm playing with the idea of using plants that pick up the primary colors we painted on the three barn doors as my guide.
I once heard something to that effect from Niall Kirkwood, a landscape architect and expert in using plants to remediate industrial landscapes.
Depending on the situation, phytoremediation, as the process of using plants to help clean up contaminated sites is known, could cost half as much, or better, than the conventional approach.
"We're really using plants as art, in a museum of living things," said Francisca Coelho, a curator at the botanical garden, who has been working for weeks to build Mr. Jungles's vision.
But regardless of the mechanism, they say that by using plants that are growing in a hydroponic medium, it should be relatively easy to "harvest" the chemicals as they are produced.
More likely are biological methods — using plants to soak up CO2 and then preventing that CO2 from getting back into the atmosphere when the plants die or are burned.
Large methane digester tanks huddle in a corner of the Hunts' spacious garage for another research project on treating household sewage and using plants to filter the effluent.
