A Nice Green Leaf: Blue Valentines

By Emma Townshend

I have been wondering lately in the supermarket about the tempting fresh Kenyan peas and broccoli, and thinking whether, just for once, I should buy some. It's the first time I've ever thought about buying air-freighted produce in a positive way - rather than just avoiding it and feeling guilty if I occasionally swerve from the path -  but I have no other gesture of solidarity with which to register my (yes I know, insignificant) sympathy with what's happening to people there.

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As Reuters has
reported today Kenyan horticulturalists are really in trouble. The
biggest town in Kenya for flower and vegetable growing is Naivasha,
which sits in an idyllic position by a lake in the Rift Valley. However
the town has been hit by ethnic violence, and this morning only thirty
per cent of workers there turned up for work - the rest stayed at home
for fear of encountering trouble.

In cooperation with the Red Cross, the flower industry plans to set up
camps to allow workers to stay safely near the farms without
encountering danger on the way to and from work.
The problem for Kenya's flower industry is that it is reliant on the
European market for flowers, and with Valentine's Day and Mother's Day
both up and coming in the next six weeks, they need to get workers back
into the fields, dangerous or not. In fact, all of Kenya needs the
flower harvests to take place smoothly, as exporting flowers and other
produce is one of the economy's biggest earners. Whilst I could hardly
claim to be a great fan of Kenya's flower industry, I do end up feeling that this is one time where it would be better to buy Kenyan, than not.

A Nice Green Leaf: The Overwhelming Gardens of Marc Quinn

By Emma Townshend

Marc Quinn's show of new work opened last night in White Cube's beautiful new Mason's Yard gallery, comprising a startling collection of stone foetus sculptures which have hit the headlines this morning. (Even the Daily Mail described them as "amazing". Surely that's a first for Britart.)

But the upstairs gallery houses a treat for those of us who are of a
more flowery inclination. Quinn has always had a botanical bent, as his
"Garden" and "DNA Garden" of 2001 showed - a kind of miniature Eden. He has since gone a step further with "The Overwhelming World of Desire", a 12 metre high sculpture of orchid "Winston Churchill".

Now in London you've got the chance to experience Quinn's weird and
colourful world for yourself. So, whatever the Daily Mail says, don't
confine your visit to the giant babies. Make sure you see the giant
flowers too.

(Photo: Marc Quinn Studio/Jay Jopliong/White Cube)

A Nice Green Leaf: Reading Books Can Save Trees. Sometimes.

I don't feel as guilty about the amount of paper used in books as I do in the newspapers I read, despite reports at the weekend about the amount of energy used in manufacturing paper. For a start, books are much easier to give to a charity shop so that they get re-used. But still, in Britain we use an awful lot of trees in our apparently insatiable urge for print media. You'd think, therefore, that with all this worrying about people not reading as much as they used to, that tree fans would be feeling a certain relief.

Not so. In fact one of my favourite internet sites is Green Metropolis, which is a slightly eccentric online  bookshop which gives a share of its profits to the Woodland Trust.
Just like a real-life charity shop, the contents of its virtual shelves
are pretty random, comprising A Level set texts, quality chick lit by
Marion Keyes, and the obligatory half-read copy of White Teeth.

Best of all, just like a real charity shop, you'll occasionally
find a real treasure. And every book is £3.75 including postage. Which
seems expensive, when you think that most charity shop books are more
like £1.99. But look closer, and you'll find that Green Metropolis also
conceals a sophisticated book-swapping system - because you can sell
your second-hand books through them and receive £3 for everything you
sell. So each new title you buy from the site will actually only cost
75p, as long as you sell something else too.

Finally, if you're not convinced by that, look at this way - buying
online, you won't end up accidentally also buying any of those really
amusing charity shop ornaments that your boyfriend totally hates.

A Nice Green Leaf: Titanic Tim (and Lara)

Before Christmas I wrote about the Titan arum (smelliest flower in the entire world etc...) blooming at both Kew and Eden. This happy coincidence of timing enabled the Eden plant to be fertilised with pollen taken from Kew. Though the Titan pollen had to be driven to Cornwall at some speed by the heroic Lara Jewitt, Kew Gardener, in order for all the mechanics of fertilisation to work.

All that effort has been worth it. The Eden plant is now coming into fruit,
closely guarded by Lara's Cornish counterpart, Tim Grigg (pictured
here). For those of us frustrated by the small window of opportunity
the flower offers to visitors (it lives for only about three days),
this is promising news. The weird Lords and Ladies-type fruit will be
ripening for the next six to nine months, according to Eden. And will provide millions of hilarious photo opportunities for anyone with a wide-angle lens, it looks like.

A Nice Green Leaf: Palm Tree So Big It's Visible From Space (And On Ceefax)

It reads like the beginning of an article in The Onion, but I am actually reporting on new scientific research, published this week in the journal of the Linnean Society. It's not often major botanical discoveries are reported on Ceefax, but there it was:  "Giant Self-Destructing Palm is Discovered", see Ceefax page 124 for more details.

The palm is almost 20 metres tall, and was discovered by Xavier
Metz, the manager of a nearby cashew plantation. Anyway, here's my
favourite bit: "The palm is so massive that it can even be seen in
Google Earth." Area man says wow.

But why haven't the Linnean Society posted Google Earth coordinates then? So unfair.

Actually, it's probably because we'd all be out
trying to dig up one of less than 100 known trees to sell
to unscrupulous collectors. Sigh. 

A Nice Green Leaf: Drunken Women, Lazy Blondes

By Emma Townshend

Disappointingly, despite the misleading headline, it's some more potato news. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall may go on and on about how we are missing out on amazing tastes by neglecting traditional varieties of fruit and veg, but what about those evocative names? (The Drunken Woman and the Lazy Blonde are both kinds of lettuce, by the way, according to London Seed Exchange organiser Lindsay Wright.)

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You can check out alternatives to the standard supermarket options at this year's London Potato Fair and Seed Exchange,
at Harris Girls' School in East Dulwich, on Sunday 27 January. The
cutest thing about it is probably the verging-on-1950s £1.50 entrance
charge. But it remains a real opportunity to recycle some of those
seeds you haven't got round to growing, trading them in for other, more
promising varieties. And all the money raised goes to charity.

If you fancy adding to the list of deliciously-named potatoes,
but don't have time to breed your own, consider entering the
now-almost-legendary celebrity potato competition at Dulwich College on the fourth Sunday in February. (Honestly, don't ask, just click the link.)

A Nice Green Leaf: It's a home-wrecker

Wisteria pruning is beginning again in earnest this week. The first prune was done back in July/August, when you trim back all those whippy strands which grew so particularly fast in 2007's wet weather. The usual rule is that you make them about an arm's length.

But in January, once all the leaves have died away, you do another once-over of the whole plant. This second prune shortens all the growing stems back to about a hand's length of the main trunk and branches.

The objective of the second hard prune is to get the world's prettiest shape, even when there are no leaves on it, and also to force the wisteria into flowering profusely.

I took this springtime photo in France two years ago and it shows the absolute ideal as far as I'm concerned: a beautiful twisty trunk and branches, about to burst into thousands of racemes of flower (you can click on the picture to see it in more detail).

It's no wonder that the wisterias come from China and Japan where the beauty of a gnarled trunk like this is much appreciated. But I am determined to master the art of the wisteria this year, involving me and my secateurs in many shaky ladder moments. But by pruning hard and often like this, not only do you get a better shape and flowers; you also keep the wisteria out of the roof tiles, gutters and chimney pots, where it can really do some damage. Even this classy and well-controlled French example is showing the unquenchable wisteria desire to wreck some exterior fittings.