Wednesday 30 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: My New Favourite Tree Surgeon





I've been following The Independent Magazine's "Urban Gardener" Cleve West's daily blog posts as he constructs the BUPA garden for this year's Chelsea Flower Show. It's a good glimpse into the hour-by-hour trials of having to make an immaculate garden which will be scrutinized in miniature by the entire nation, in the space of just 19 days. Ugh.

However I have to admit my best bit of the blog so far is nothing to do with Chelsea: gleefully discovering Cleve's what can only be termed "mental" friend Mick Soft, on YouTube. Just start watching it. Everything about him makes me me laugh. What a cheer-up. Especially after you view all the take-themselves-very-very-seriously clips from real tree surgeons.

Tuesday 29 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: Totally out of it

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Though accused recently of being London-o-centric, if you gave me a choice I'd often rather be out of the city. Sometimes I think that's how I ended up living in the last street in London - walk round the corner to post a letter and you cross a slate parish boundary into Middlesex. 

Over the weekend I took advantage of the weather and my excellent local proximity to the M25 and headed for Great Dixter in Rye, East Sussex.

All I can say on the matter is bloody hell. I walked round the entire place with that funny feeling of almost wanting to cry, it all looked so beautiful. Meanwhile, in my head I composed an over-the-top thank you letter to the gardeners.

Dsc_1152jpegDixter was the garden of England's finest old codger Christopher Lloyd, who died last year (when I bought my plants in the nursery, I noticed from the till receipt that I paid my money to "Great Dixter Executors").



Fergus Garrett, who is now in charge, was much in evidence, helping to round up some wayward sheep. I guess that's hands-on gardening for you. He was quite busy with the sheep, so I thought probably not the best moment to bring up the thank-you letter.

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But if you have time, go now, go, go. It all looks amazing. I will continue to maintain that it's really good for you to go to a garden where everything is done quite so perfectly - it increases my belief in the possibility of humankind actually being any good. Which is more than I can say for the elbowing hell that is the Chelsea Flower Show.

One tip: I was "lucky" enough to get really lost travelling from an unfamiliar end of Sussex, thus arriving at about 4.15pm when the light was just shifting towards gorgeous (recently, a photographer finally explained to me why gardens look better in the late afternoon- apparently it's all about colour saturation and shadows).

There were only about ten cars left in the car park, so I'd actually recommend the
whole getting lost thing, because apparently the place had been heaving all day. But whatever time of day it is, just go.

Saturday 26 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: A Nice Blank Space

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If I was Alex from Shedworking, this huge new empty area at the end of my garden would be inspiring thoughts about all of the possible garden buildings I could install on such a vast terrain.

However this new bit has been created by removing a structure, rather than in order to install one. When I moved here there was an air raid shelter at the end of the garden, and though I made repeated feeble efforts to remove it over the years it has taken over a decade to give up on DIY and get the professionals  in. (Well, sort of professional. One of them at least is actually an actor who just finished touring in Peter Hall's Uncle Vanya. Which seemed terribly classy to me.) 

This morning standing outside I heard birdsong that I didn't recognise,and looked around for the interloper. A looping series of bubbly noises made me think of the sound of an old analogue tape machine rewinding. Looking up, I saw three goldfinches sitting in my neighbour's tree. I won't forget that call in a hurry - you can listen to it at the RSPB site. 

It's been a revelation to have a clear flat plot in the sunniest bit of the garden for the very first time. What I have to do now is strenuously avoid my gardener's instinct to plant it with anything. Well, maybe a couple of climbers to go up the fence. But nothing round the edge. I'm
determined to enjoy the sense of space for as long as I can.

Thursday 24 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: Rogue Treader

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A leisurely wander around the City of London last weekend became a joy, revisiting spots of green which are old favourites and discovering others I'd never seen before. Some of these great sights lent themselves to cameraphone pictures, like the gorgeous Zantedeschias pictured on the left, which are flowering away in the shadow of the Old Bailey

Others, like the two beautiful Handkerchief Trees I saw in Postman's Park, will require a personal visit. These Chinese natives are covered with most unusual flowers this time of year, hanging like white prayer flags tied to every branch. But they are frustratingly difficult to get a good picture of, because their very modest foliage and pale handkerchief flowers just merge into an undifferentiated green blur.

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There was plenty to see, despite it being still early spring. I admired these purple tulips at the Barbican (right), where they were doing a great job of spicing up the dirty concrete entrance facade.



Grey and purple are a good combination and these tulips - I'm guessing they are "Negrita"
- are a really effective and dramatic foil to the Barbican's monstrous appearance - it all ends up looking almost intentional.  If you live in a concrete block or even a grey granite Cornish pile, a purple flower like "Negrita" will set things off beautifully, warming up the sombre tones to brown and lifting the whole ambience.


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And St Paul's has a rose garden (left, currently full of tulips) at the south side which is
ridiculously smart, causing me to burst out laughing looking at it for the sheer verve of all those bulbs in such neat rows.

Perhaps the tidiness is helped by the fact that there is no apparent way for human beings to actually enter it.



Watergarden_guidlhallHowever my favourite spot in the City remains the pool in front of the
Guildhall, where in summer insects hang over the water and fly amongst
the reeds (right). It is just by the old City church of St Lawrence Jewry,
which makes a great backdrop for photos.



The pool has been cleared over the winter, but the aquatic plants are just beginning to poke their heads above the water again now that the days are lengthening. What a lovely peaceful place it manages to be, slap-bang in the middle of what must officially be one of the most frantic spots on earth.



And now that I've made you look at these four City gardens, you can download a map or a self-guided walking tour and visit them and the other 196 City gardens.

Saturday 19 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: International Year of the Potato 4

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They all laughed when I tried to celebrate International Year of the Potato back in February. But Radio 4 recently had an interesting spot about how the UN's first speciality vegetable year is proving to be more timely than expected, as concerns about world food supplies grow in all quarters

Robin Lustig and the rest of the World Tonight team had a job explaining exactly what's driving the rise in food prices, especially the cost of carb-rich foods like rice. Some blame new rules about biofuels; more than one World Tonight contributor suggested it's just the developing world finally getting into the idea of eating three meals a day

Whatever the factors behind the price hikes, the reality is that people are going hungry. Bangladesh is leading the way by trying to encourage its mainly rice-eating population to switch over to potatoes. Starting, according to Radio 4, with the Bangladesh security forces, who are being ordered to eat potatoes to set a good example.

I wonder whether such a policy could be successful. Potatoes are very nutritious, so why aren't they grown worldwide already? Well there may be more logic to rejecting potatoes than seems at first sight. A cultural preference for one basic foodstuff over another is often not just cultural. 

Economists have spent a lot of time at looking at the way in which marginal developing-world farmers make crop choices; sometimes farmers want to grow the crop most likely to earn a bit of extra cash. But their emergency crop will always be the one least like to fail, like Bitter Cassava - not the one which is rich in protein and calories, but needs more resources. Potatoes need lots and lots of water, as any allotment holder will attest. It's what happens in the really bad years which determines what people end up living off.

Finally, my best potato fact of the day is that Belarus currently lead world potato consumption, at a staggering 745lb per capita every year. You say potato, I say diet.

Friday 18 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: It Took So Long To Bake It

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I'm currently getting up to about 110-120 emails a day from angry readers asking me "where's that floral cake you said you were gonna make us back in 2003?". I am extremely sorry it's taken me quite so long.

The truth is not because it's such a very special cake - actually, it's a pretty ordinary fruit cake. The reality behind my long delay is decorative, because for some reason I decided to eschew the easy route of just putting real flowers on the cake and instead decided on the utterly fiddly and time-consuming strategy of making them entirely out of sugar

Dsc_1043jpegIn the all-new-to-me but nevertheless bonkers world of floral
sugarcraft, the normal laws of the universe, productivity and stuff are
suspended. How long would it take to arrange some real flowers on a
wedding cake? Maybe an hour? Hey! But how long would it take to make
the same flowers out of sugar? About three weeks you say? Excellent!
Let's do it!






The king of the time-and-motion-bloodbath that is floral sugarcraft is one Alan Dunn; you won't be surprised to learn that he is American because they do take cake-decorating to a whole other level over there.

He doesn't confine himself to cakes - he does table arrangements and even bouquets. (Why would you want a wedding bouquet made out of solid sugar flowers? I can't answer that.)

My fellow friend-in-cake-baking Amanda gave me Dunn's book, and then we spent some time in the pub gawping at the illustrations. We were ever so slightly disappointed to discover that the carving of individual blooms and fernery doesn't rely on artistic skill, but on possessing a full set of the appropriate tools - such as Solomon's Seal leaf veiners, Holly Petal Dust,
or a Zimbabwean eight-petalled Jasmine cutter. In fact there's an individual cutter for almost every flower in the book. I feel a bit cheated.

Anyway if you know anyone who has a lot more time than sense, this is definitely the new hobby for them. After the end of about 160 hours of labour, the best compliment they can hope for is "wow, they look almost like real flowers from about five feet away."



Personally I am going to
stick to the Kathy Brown route of putting fresh rose petals and pansy heads on cakes, thanks.

Thursday 17 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: Bloom Day

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I've just discovered Bloom Day. Not to be confused with Dublin's Bloomsday, Bloom Day is a once-a-month event organised by garden bloggers: every 15th of the month, they stick up photos of what's doing the best in their gardens, all across the internet, taking in at last count Texas, Poland, Milan and Brabant (it's in the Netherlands, guys). 

At Scatty Mare, Zoe is showing off homegrown gentians; at jocodeane, there's a considerably artier approach - eat your heart out, Nick Knight.

It makes the world feel a curiously cosy size when you discover that Italian balcony gardeners favour bright yellow sedums, or that Carol in Indiana has tulips which have been chewed by rabbits. 

It's Carol who's responsible for organising the event, though, so if you scroll down to the 111 comments on her Bloom Day post, you'll discover links to all the other participating websites. Personally, I think the Texans have it. 

As for me, I had to really scrape around to find anything flowering this week. There was one pear blossom in the back garden, but in the end the windowbox hellebores won out. (In case you're wondering about the festival fencing in the background, I've been testing some out as
I'm planning to put on a early spring rock concert. Um, not really. We're just having some of those Victorian water mains replaced, and apparently we mustn't fall down the holes.)

Wednesday 16 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: Clashy-Coloured Plants of the Week

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Whoa! Them tulips is gorgeous! Spotted in South Kensington on Monday - bright huh? Now I'm wondering whether Kensington and Chelsea happened upon this outrageous three-way colour combination out of, a) big-time expenditure, b) utter stylishness, or just c) luck. 

Getting two colours of tulip to combine is tricky enough, but it can be done. Any tulip will work with white. A red and a yellow, as long as they're bright enough. Yet difficulties abound - flowering times out of sync, heights too different or not different enough.... My god it's a minefield. 

But to get three colours to work together at the same time is genius. In K&C's border, red and yellow lily-flowered tulips are backed up by a smaller magenta lily-flowered, and then a load of white ones too. Amazing. It ought to look like a total jumble sale, but in fact it looks great. (Especially when you consider there's also masses of daffodils and some slightly random polyanthus busting the bed's spectrum possibilities too.)

Anyway, I soon got to the bottom of this outbreak of stylish gardening. The bed is directly opposite the Institut Francais, on the leyline between it and the local Fromagerie. At that rate, I wouldn't be surprised if the gardener concerned had directly channelled La Bruni.

Tuesday 15 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: Time Out for Gardens

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Time Out's annual spring gardening issue this week contains absolutely loads of interesting horticultural bits and bobs, even if you don't live anywhere near London. Being Time Out, there's some care taken to highlight the best council estate gardeners in London. Several of these require looking up immediately - check out Christine Blower and her rabbit for a start. 

The recommendations of gardens to visit highlights the China Landscape being created at the British Museum forecourt in cooperation with Kew Gardens, which willl run from 3 May until the end of October. Kew has traditionally strong links with China, which is one of the best places for plant-hunting in the entire world. 

There's also a piece about how to get good results from a really small plot, although the answers won't surprise many - mirrors at the end of the garden to give the illusion of space.

I don't know about you, but I also definitely don't want my urban rooftop paradise to be planted with conifers and heathers, no matter how resilient they are to extremes of hot, cold and wind.

Alys Fowler's windowbox tomato recommendations were of more interest to me: Odessa, Green Zebra and Brandywine - what great names. (Try the Real Seed Company, Chileseeds, or possibly just Lidl for  the best Eastern European varieties.)

Finally, for those Hoxton types keen to stay bang on-message, there's a section on coming gardening trends. Time Out's top five:



  1. Antique seed-swapping


  2. All-green gardens (colour-wise, that is)


  3. Lunar Planting


  4. Living Roofs


  5. Vertical Gardening



I'm not entirely sure that four and five aren't exactly the same thing, just done in different directions, but there we go. Give yourself 10 marks for each one you're already doing in 2008 and then go and have a snooze in the nice spring sunshine.

Friday 11 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: Tulips Timelapse, Paris-style

By Emma Townshend



Here at A Nice Green Leaf we are all big fans of time-lapse, obviously. So imagine my excitement when I found this video on a slightly obscure French site.









But could it get any more French? The art of English time-lapse is to take some majestic force of nature, and make it look a bit Benny Hill. Our Carla-Bruni-pimping neighbours through the tunnel, on the other hand, have put the gentle opening and closing of tulips in the sun to a David Lynch-ish soundtrack and have produced something infinitely more stylish.



Still, given that they are French, what did I expect?

Tuesday 8 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: Plant of the Week

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I don't even have a crap old pun for this posting: I just have Camellia japonica, top performer. This one was flowering at Kew, with that strange combination of separate white and pink flowers you sometimes get on single plants of this species. Down a side path, it was glossily perfect, showing off in that wonderfully understated way. 


Camellias have an odd way of growing on the bush, sprouting off at odd angles - which means that sometimes you don't necessarily get to see the flowers at their best. You can't appreciate the blooms on mass - you just have to find a good one and then gawp at it, delighted.

If you really want to study them, you might be better off cutting the flowers and putting a couple in a vase. Though not at Kew Gardens, please.

According to one website I found, red camellias symbolise inherent worth, whereas white ones
stand for loveliness. So I've gone for surface over substance, sadly. If I was going to buy one, I would google Burncoose, a nursery in Cornwall who always win prizes at the RHS and who have a great selection.

If you live anywhere West, North-West or Scots, you may be totally sick of Camellias by now, but for us in the East they are a grand treat.

A Nice Green Leaf: Plant of the Week

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I don't even have a crap old pun for this posting: I just have Camellia japonica, top performer. This one was flowering at Kew, with that strange combination of separate white and pink flowers you sometimes get on single plants of this species. Down a side path, it was glossily perfect, showing off in that wonderfully understated way. 


Camellias have an odd way of growing on the bush, sprouting off at odd angles - which means that sometimes you don't necessarily get to see the flowers at their best. You can't appreciate the blooms on mass - you just have to find a good one and then gawp at it, delighted.

If you really want to study them, you might be better off cutting the flowers and putting a couple in a vase. Though not at Kew Gardens, please.

According to one website I found, red camellias symbolise inherent worth, whereas white ones
stand for loveliness. So I've gone for surface over substance, sadly. If I was going to buy one, I would google Burncoose, a nursery in Cornwall who always win prizes at the RHS and who have a great selection.

If you live anywhere West, North-West or Scots, you may be totally sick of Camellias by now, but for us in the East they are a grand treat.

Saturday 5 April 2008

Gardening: A Nice Green Leaf - Never bud it so good

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To you, this probably looks like a bit of old stick. To me, it's a major horticultural achievement. Let me transcribe the conversation I just had OUT LOUD with the buds on my wisteria:

Me (disappointed): "Aw, you are just gonna to be leaves, aren't you?"

(Carries on hopefully looking for evidence to the contrary, as on all other days so far this April.)

Me (shrieking): "Wow!!!! You're not going to! You're going to be FLOWERS!"


bI brutally pruned my wisteria in August of last year, as it began an onslaught on my roofing tiles. I dutifully followed RHS instructions, pruning the arm-long August whips down to hand-long twigs in February, leaving exactly the specified amount of buds on each branch.

But as spring started to arrive I began to doubt my handiwork. At my sister's, the wisteria is covered in beautiful buds, clearly flowers about to open, already tinged with a little lilac colouring. Meanwhile mine were still brown and dormant.

I'd pretty much convinced myself that the hard "pruning" (well, saws did become involved) had meant the plant needed a year to recover. Only today did I finally spot the evidence that I had done the right thing after all. One bud has now opened up enough for me to see with my own
eyes that they are flowers. And others aren't far behind.

I think this must be what my friend was describing when she said "It's great for the doctor to hear the baby's heartbeat, but seeing it moving for yourself on the scan is unbeatable." All I can say is, another 10/10 score for the amazing RHS website.

Thursday 3 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: Zombie plant of the week

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Peonies are supposed to be amongst the prettiest of early summer flowers. But earlier on in the year when their buds are just starting to uncurl from the soil, they look more like zombie hands reaching up from out of a grave to try and grab you.

Or is it just me?

A Nice Green Leaf: Valley of the Tree-Planters




I've discovered a new gardening anthem! Well not really new. This is "I'll Plant My Own Tree", sung in a 1970s tv appearance by the legendary Lena Horne. It's a song that Dory Previn originally wrote in 1967 for the film of "Valley of the Dolls". The lyrics have a fairly warped Dory Previn sense of humour: "I'll plant my own tree, and I'll make it grow/ My tree will not be, just one in a row." I think it's all in the delivery...

And Horne certainly delivers it. Her performance is wonderful, in a set which looks like it may have itself seen a few Zombie Plants in its time. Sing it next time you're planting a tree! I'll come round and play bongoes!

Wednesday 2 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: The Pansy Project

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It's not often that I find my gardening news on Facebook, but in this case the story was too interesting to miss. In a queer political twist on the idea of guerilla gardening, Paul Harfleet's Pansy Project plants pansies at the site of homophobic attacks. 

Looking at the photos, I waver between wanting to laugh at the humour with which Harfleet demolishes all sense of the ranked lines of pansies in public parks planting (see his straight line bisecting the park at Homotopia, Liverpool) and feeling really sad about the abuse that the work is actually addressing.

As a result, I love the idea: it's simple, powerful and serious, but has this touch of plaintive lightness with those brightly-coloured blooms.



Harfleet acknowledges the fact that sometimes the pansies
don't survive. Oftentimes, though, they do, and go on to seed
themselves. They are such happy looking little flowers, with what
almost looks like a face. Sweetly smiling, despite being planted in hostile places, their brave, sturdy little way of growing adds loads to the strength of the idea.


(Photo from the Pansy Project)

Tuesday 1 April 2008

A Nice Green Leaf: Adam and Eve found 'safe and well'

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Always assumed to have died sometime around 3000 BC, our oldest ancestors Adam and Eve made a surprising reappearance today in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington. Two community police officers were called to the scene at around 2am this morning after a worried pensioner reported some "tree-huggers" were active in the area.

God was said to be "surprised, but in a nice way". A police insider told us "they just seem to have been very relieved there were no snakes in the area."

While now old enough to qualify for their Freedom Passes, Adam and Eve say they still want to "give something back to the trees", and are currently advertising Trees for Cities' annual Treeathlon, taking place this year on the 20th September.

For those energetic types who can train in three different sports at once whilst remaining popular enough to actually get sponsorship, registration opens a week today. Seriously.