A Nice Green Leaf: The horror, the horror

About four weeks ago I foolishly signed up to run the Trees For Cities Tree-athlon. It's not even a real Triathlon: you just have to do a 5k run and then possibly a bit of treeplanting. However it's that "just" having to do a 5k run I'm currently in trouble with.

Pretty much anyone who went to school with me will tell you I am a bit of a reluctant runner. Happy to do hurdles, back crawl, long jump, netball even; running, though, and I'd develop a severe case of hay fever that meant I had to stay safely in the athletics pavilion. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've never run further than a mile. Ever. And five kilometres is just over three.

So yesterday I got an email reminding I had just six weeks to go till the big, over three-mile, day. Six weeks! And I hadn't actually done any actual, well, training. And where exactly are my trainers, now I come to think about it? So this morning I dug them out, with something of the same sense of reluctance that once sent me fleeing for the athletics pavilion, and decided to try and run for seven minutes without stopping.

Well, I did it, running round the block at a slug's pace (literally, I was lapped by one of those yellow ones with the orange edges) and crossing the road to avoid any eye contact with Polish loft conversion specialists. All I can say is, I am now extremely pink.

But then I drove round the block in my car to measure the distance and it was a totally depressing mere 0.6 miles. Oh my god, what have I let myself in for? I am going to be overtaken by grandmas. Possibly even my own grandmas. 

I feel that the trees of London may have a long wait on their hands before my fitness actually has anything to offer them. But on the other hand, signing up for this race got me to go for a run, which has to be a good thing, right? For a start I've breathed out loads of extra carbon dioxide for them to metabolize. Oh, that's probably actually not necessary, is it? Possibly the most useful part of the experience is the chance to nose into lots and lots of people's windowboxes and front garden planting. If and when I make any significant improvement on that shocking 12-minute-mile time, I'll let you know.

A Nice Green Leaf: The horror, the horror

About four weeks ago I foolishly signed up to run the Trees For Cities Tree-athlon. It's not even a real Triathlon: you just have to do a 5k run and then possibly a bit of treeplanting. However it's that "just" having to do a 5k run I'm currently in trouble with.

Pretty much anyone who went to school with me will tell you I am a bit of a reluctant runner. Happy to do hurdles, back crawl, long jump, netball even; running, though, and I'd develop a severe case of hay fever that meant I had to stay safely in the athletics pavilion. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've never run further than a mile. Ever. And five kilometres is just over three.

So yesterday I got an email reminding I had just six weeks to go till the big, over three-mile, day. Six weeks! And I hadn't actually done any actual, well, training. And where exactly are my trainers, now I come to think about it? So this morning I dug them out, with something of the same sense of reluctance that once sent me fleeing for the athletics pavilion, and decided to try and run for seven minutes without stopping.

Well, I did it, running round the block at a slug's pace (literally, I was lapped by one of those yellow ones with the orange edges) and crossing the road to avoid any eye contact with Polish loft conversion specialists. All I can say is, I am now extremely pink.

But then I drove round the block in my car to measure the distance and it was a totally depressing mere 0.6 miles. Oh my god, what have I let myself in for? I am going to be overtaken by grandmas. Possibly even my own grandmas. 

I feel that the trees of London may have a long wait on their hands before my fitness actually has anything to offer them. But on the other hand, signing up for this race got me to go for a run, which has to be a good thing, right? For a start I've breathed out loads of extra carbon dioxide for them to metabolize. Oh, that's probably actually not necessary, is it? Possibly the most useful part of the experience is the chance to nose into lots and lots of people's windowboxes and front garden planting. If and when I make any significant improvement on that shocking 12-minute-mile time, I'll let you know.

A Nice Green Leaf: A carrot above the rest

Garden blogfriend Veg Plotting contacted me a while ago to say she was going to open her garden this summer for charity. No surprise there, because garden opening is a popular summer activity; our paper's own Victoria Summerley will be opening her subtropical plot in deepest Wandsworth for NGS this coming Sunday. 

But then VP explained what she meant: a virtual garden opening, with all you'd expect from the real thing - recipes, plant histories, the occasional crazy visitor - but without having to leave the comfort of your own home.

Given the kind of weather we've been having I imagine that online garden visiting has been one of the more successful ventures of the summer - VP has certainly managed to raise a colossal sum of money already for her chosen charity, WaterAid, though more is always welcome. And every donor is automatically entered for a draw to win prizes! Properly good, horticulturally special prizes like signed books by Jekka McVicar and Matthew Wilson and membership of the Cottage Garden Society (Awww!). 

Trying to think how I could support her efforts, I kept returning to the village shows that my sister and I adored when we were kids. The idea caught in my mind of an online village show, with visitors and entries from all round the world. We'd even include people from the Southern Hemisphere, even if they do stubbornly insist on holding winter about now. 

So the Emsworth Village Show was born. We started with the normal categories you get at a fete - and then we added some others, like Best Paparazzi Shot of Garden Celebrity, Fattest Pig, and Men Only Victoria Sandwich. If you are anything like me, perusing other people's veg, chickens, pigs and misshapen carrots is a delicious task that will while away many happy hours.

Please do come and have a wander round the show. We're still accepting entries, too, so if you have a fairly hippyish non-competitive sense of wanting to show off your absolutely enormous onions, here's the place. And don't miss checking out VP's garden, - and make sure you're in with a chance for one of those excellent prizes.

A Nice Green Leaf: A carrot above the rest

Garden blogfriend Veg Plotting contacted me a while ago to say she was going to open her garden this summer for charity. No surprise there, because garden opening is a popular summer activity; our paper's own Victoria Summerley will be opening her subtropical plot in deepest Wandsworth for NGS this coming Sunday. 

But then VP explained what she meant: a virtual garden opening, with all you'd expect from the real thing - recipes, plant histories, the occasional crazy visitor - but without having to leave the comfort of your own home.

Given the kind of weather we've been having I imagine that online garden visiting has been one of the more successful ventures of the summer - VP has certainly managed to raise a colossal sum of money already for her chosen charity, WaterAid, though more is always welcome. And every donor is automatically entered for a draw to win prizes! Properly good, horticulturally special prizes like signed books by Jekka McVicar and Matthew Wilson and membership of the Cottage Garden Society (Awww!). 

Trying to think how I could support her efforts, I kept returning to the village shows that my sister and I adored when we were kids. The idea caught in my mind of an online village show, with visitors and entries from all round the world. We'd even include people from the Southern Hemisphere, even if they do stubbornly insist on holding winter about now. 

So the Emsworth Village Show was born. We started with the normal categories you get at a fete - and then we added some others, like Best Paparazzi Shot of Garden Celebrity, Fattest Pig, and Men Only Victoria Sandwich. If you are anything like me, perusing other people's veg, chickens, pigs and misshapen carrots is a delicious task that will while away many happy hours.

Please do come and have a wander round the show. We're still accepting entries, too, so if you have a fairly hippyish non-competitive sense of wanting to show off your absolutely enormous onions, here's the place. And don't miss checking out VP's garden, - and make sure you're in with a chance for one of those excellent prizes.

A Nice Green Leaf: Britain In Bloom

If you've ever wondered how there can be quite so many murders in Midsomer, look no further than Britain in Bloom. It tells you all you need to know about how seriously people can take things when it comes to the very local.

And DCI Barnaby had better be on the lookout, because for the next two weeks the Royal Horticultural Society's Britain in Bloom judges are taking their highly prestigious clipboards around the entire British Isles to check out the finalists for this furiously
contested title.

If you're not familiar with Britain in Bloom, it's considerably more intriguing than simple floral showing-off.

As in the FA Cup, some of the most satisfying stuff goes on at the very lowest levels of the competition, as even the smallest scheme gets help to find funding and recognition for improvement made. (For example check out this scheme to improve a churchyard in Torbay which was a coat-hanger dumping ground for the town's regular shoplifters before the team got to work.)

But if you want one of those coveted signs for the whole town recognising its "Britain in Bloom" status, you will have to be in it for the long haul. The judging taking place this August is on towns that qualified last year, to ensure a certain consistency of achievement (no last minute running out to Homebase here, then).

And the judges are scary. Well, I think so anyway. Check out the rules on litter and graffiti. Eek. I'm going outside with a bin-bag right now. 

So here are the shortlisted towns in full: 

Champion of Champions - Nottingham (large city), Heysham (small village), Alness
(small town), St. Ives & Carbis Bay (town), Darly (village)

Large City - London Borough of Croydon, Belfast, Sheffield

City – Solihull, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, Tameside, Aberdeen

Small City – Stevenage, Mansfield, Gateshead, Taunton, Banbury

Large Town – Kendal, Buxton, Douglas, St. Hellier, Coleraine, Whickham, Perth, Bicester, Caerphilly

Town – Bridgnorth, Nantwich, Enniskillen, Morpeth, Forres, Rustington

Small Town - Frinton-on-Sea, Cricklade, Wareham, Dunnington

Large village - Kirkby Stephen, Market Bosworth, Upton upon Severn, Woolton, Falkland, Limpsfield Cayton

Village – Filby, Scarva, Earsdon, East Budleigh, Raglan

Small village – Scotlandwell, Ravenfield

Urban Regeneration - Chapelfield (Norwich), Leicester, Seedley and Langworthy

Urban Community – Moseley, Dyce, Clifton Village (Bristol), Wolverton and Greenleys, Starbeck

Small Coastal Resort – Herm, St. Brelade, Whitehead, North Berwick, Cemaes Bay

Large Coastal Resort – Felixstowe, Southport, South Shields, Exmouth, South Sea, Scarborough

(Picture from Douglas Borough Council, Isle of Man website)

A Nice Green Leaf: Amateur Gardener. And proud of it

I am going to come right out and admit that I like Amateur Gardening. I don't mean I enjoy bumbling around in the garden not really knowing what I'm doing (though I am partial to a bit of that). I mean I really like the magazine. Despite it's being apparently targeted at the over-90s and being "downmarket trash". 

There are many reasons I love Amateur Gardening. Firstly, you almost always get a free packet of seed. In fact, you only don't get a free packet of seed when some thieving over-90 has got to Co-op before you, and swiped it. Not rubbish seed, either. Mr Fothergills, no less.

Secondly, I could spend hours going on about how fascinated I am with Lucy and Emilie. (Not as fascinated as I was when they used to have Lucinda, but nonetheless.) Lucy and Emilie work for the mag and have to pose for all the practical demonstrations, doing their best to look like nice girls while gazing at clumps of aquilegia/dead euphorbias/automatic watering systems. Plus in winter they have the best assortment of colourful jumpers you will ever see in print.
Honestly, the £1.80 cover price is worth it just for them.

But finally, despite the magazine's downmarket, gnome-owning credentials, for me it is the best source for having up-to-date, fairly gossipy gardening news. Before there were gardening blogs, this kind of thing was essential. But even now, I think their news editor Marc Rosenberg does a really good job of rounding up intriguing stories, ranging from reporting the hoax Alan Titchmarsh skunk-growing video to giving the facts on cardboard eco-coffins.

Apart from these star features, there is also sound cultural advice in the form of Anne Swithinbank's kitchen garden column, which I find really handy, and Bob Flowerdew who as far as I'm concerned is top class great. Which prepares me nicely to try and chuckle at Peter Seabrook's signing-off column, which he appears to regard as unfinished unless he's having a little dig at the solar-panel-installing, mediterranean-plant-growing ninnies amongst us. Well, you can't please everybody.   

A Nice Green Leaf: Holiday mysteries

Currently on a week's secondment to Oxford where I'm teaching a course on the eighteenth century landscape garden (students all particularly raving about Tim Richardson's wonderful Arcadian Friends, just out in paperback). We had a hot trip to Stowe and an amazing time at Rousham, and we even managed to take a turn around Addison's Walk (of which more in a later post).

The biggest problem of the week is managing to retain any kind of semblance of an air of horticultural authority in the face of all the weird stuff the class have managed to spot growing in flowerbeds. And of course I have no reference books.

The first problem was the pink flower in the first image. "Its name is on the tip of my tongue," I told the class, confidently, yet it never actually arrived. I looked like an idiot. Nevertheless, I scored some points recognising Salvia "Hot Lips" in a Magdalen college border, seen first at Hampton Court. But then I lost them again on this mysterious daisy. (Daisy-ish? Oh god, fine, make me beg. JUST PLEASE TELL ME THE NAME.)

And what in god's name is this fella (left)? I think I have some credit in the ID bank after I put a name to Garden Monkey's oddity -
so somebody, please help me get my reputation back with the Oxford
crowd. Don't lose all respect for me - can't you just think it's sort
of sweet that I don't know what they are? Missing you, xxx