Weeding the Web

Christmas presents for gardeners: 20% off Punch cartoons until end of November

OK, last call to remind you of the 20% discount on Punch cartoons, available until the end of this month (that's next Monday). Also, my last excuse to let us all enjoy a bit more cartoon humour. (just in case you think I must be benefiting from an affiliate link, with all these mentions, I'll assure you I'm not. I just can't resist the opportunity to share a private passion.)

What I like about the wartime cartoon below is that you don't actually know who is saying it to whom (though it's easy to jump to conclusions). Douglas Mays' cartoons often featured children or, like below, society women who were modelled on his wife and four daughters. The picture below must have been borne of some sort of experience (we're talking about the veg now). A pacifist, Mays spent the war years farming.

"So you see, dear, one can be decorative and useful." By Douglas Mays. Published May 1940. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk

All the images are available as archival quality prints on good quality, thick textured paper and are giclée printed. You could even go the whole hog and go for ready-to-hang canvases or acrylic prints.

The discount is available on all print products, even if you find a cartoon you'd like with a different subject matter. (Click on the picture above, to go straight to that one.)

Just enter the code NOVEMBER when asked for a coupon code in your shopping cart. The offer continues until November 30th (Monday).

Click here and here to see other Punch cartoons on offer.

Presents for Gardeners: a round-up of ideas for Christmas

Over the past few years (since 2009. Heavens! Really?) I've given suggestions for quite a few unusual presents for gardeners. Some of you will already know that I tend to look for appropriate gifts that aren't equipment, seeds and the like, but that acknowledge the receiver's love of gardening.

A round-up has been long overdue. So I've gone back, checked for broken links (that was a long-overdue task too!), and here's a list of some of the present ideas that I still regard fondly and that, I'm glad to say, are still available. 

Click on the picture to get through to the original post.

 

Great fun. I fell for this when I heard Jo Stephenson's ballad to Alan Titchmarsh. You can hear a number of the tracks on their website.

 

 

 

 

This is a favourite jigsaw of mine from Gibson Games. Plenty of interest to keep you finding the pieces. 

The pictures from high-quality jigsaw producers, Wentworth, are also great fun. Those in my previous post have dropped off their lists, but follow their link to find a January King cabbage, which must surely be a challenge.

 

Chocolate's always welcome. I found plenty, but the main attraction has to be the extraordinarily lifelike tools from Schokolat (you can just see the secateurs leaning against the watering can).

For those in a different mood, they also do chocolate handcuffs...

 

 

 Partners in Pewter do a lovely range of keyrings, pendants etc. This trowel with cheerful worm wrapped round it is very cute. I see these every year at the Christmas Fair at Wisley. Solidly made and a nice small present.

 

 

 

 

B Skincare creams are hand made in Cornwall. They produce moisturisers, cleansers, hand and foot creams, as well as some for aches and pains, which rub in really nicely, and a Gardener's Gift Set.

You'll also find a link to Pure Scents, another cream that I really liked.

 

 

 

Completely different from the usual garden magazine offerings, this A5 quarterly comes with lovely illustrations and heart-warming stories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's probably enough for the time being. If you've found anything that you think makes a really thoughtful gardener's present, then let me know and I'll mention it in another post.  To see what else I've found over the years, try Presents for Gardeners.

Autumn planting combinations: fuchsia and Dahlia 'Ambition'

Some gardeners have it, and some don't. I recently showed a lovely sedum and fuchsia planting combination. I found it in a garden run by talented friends who never fail to wow me with their planting, and here's another:

Dahlias are a particular favourite and Jim always buys new corms each year. "When you get to my age," he said, "you realise you don't have that many summers left and you want to make sure everything comes up."

That's a sentiment that I think we can all relate to, however old we are, because counted in flower seasons, life seems exceptionally brief. All the more reason to enjoy every success. Here Dahlia 'Ambition' bolsters the dark pink and purple of the fuchsia, and contrast with the shape of the stone urn. 

Gifts for gardeners: 20% discount on Punch cartoons

Just a reminder that there's still time to get 20% discount on cartoons from Punch. There's quite a choice of gardening subjects. 

The Gardener and the Businessman, by William Sillince, published in "Punch" August 1960. Reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd., www.punch.co.uk

Sillince was a cartoonist and talented watercolourist who injected gentle humour into his social observation. OK, few of us have a full-time gardener now, but the story remains constant. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have changed career with a picture like this in mind.

If you click through on the link below and search for "gardening", you'll find plenty of images to choose from (click on the picture above to go straight to that).  All the images are available as archival quality prints on good quality, thick textured paper and are giclée printed. You could even go for ready-to-hang canvases or acrylic prints.

The discount is available on all print products. Just enter the code NOVEMBER when asked for a coupon code in your shopping cart. The offer continues until November 30th.

See my earlier post for Thelwell on the allotment.

Gardening in art: Abraham Cruzvillegas' Empty Lot at Tate Modern

The role of art in the garden is a recognised debate, but Tate Modern has turned this on its head by putting gardening into art. Abraham Cruzvillegas's Empty Lot, the latest installation in the Turbine Hall, creates a receding triangular vista of triangular raised beds.

Hyundai Commission 2015. Abraham Cruzvillegas: Empty Lot.
© Abraham Cruzvillegas. Photo credit: Andrew Dunkley © Tate 2015

The Tate's press release was not written by a gardener: "Flowers, mushrooms, and other greenery may grow depending on what seeds or bulbs have found their way into the soil."

The platforms hold a geometric grid of 240 wooden planters filled with compost and over 23 tonnes of soil collected from parks around London, including from Peckham, Haringey and Buckingham Palace; they'll be kept lit and watered during the six months of the installation, during which time visitors will get to see what grows.

Now, occasionally a piece of conceptual art raises me to enthusiasm. Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project is a Turbine Hall installation that still resonates. He put a giant sun bathed in mist at the far end of the Turbine Hall to explore "ideas about experience, mediation and representation".  It also created a mysterious atmospheric beauty that made people linger to enjoy the peace.

But what has Empty Lot to offer? Perhaps gardeners are disadvantaged here. There's nothing that Cruzvillegas has done that doesn't happen every year in our own gardens in that weedy corner that we keep meaning to do something about. The only difference is that we'll get to see a lot of weedy corners corralled into the same space. There might be a moderate interest in comparing the seed content of Buckingham Palace with that of Peckham, but, assuming they didn't dig up a daffodil bed, I personally am not expecting an enormous difference*.

I'm not the only one:

Indoors, outdoors #emptylot by Abraham #cruzvillegas @autoconstruido @tate modern, and @CTCaravanserai last month pic.twitter.com/45rzfKrd1m

— JOHN JEFFERS (@ee92jlj) November 1, 2015

The Tate says:

The unpredictable nature of the work, which may grow and change from one week to the next, provokes questions about the city and nature, as well as wider ideas of chance, change, and hope.*

While conceptual art is often immense fun to visit, I generally have a problem with it.

First, you are left with the paucity of your own thoughts, which is why you should always visit any installation with at least one other person, who, with luck, will have different thoughts.

Secondly,  anyone can pretty much read anything into any object in any position.  So, basically, a conceptual artist can think up any installation and submit it, and it'll mean something to someone.

Empty Lot includes artistic references. The triangular shape points east-west (not sure what the relevance is of that. Obviously, we all know that raised beds are best ranged north-south to catch the passing sun) and, says the Tate, recalls the strong diagonals of Russian avant-garde artists such as El Lissitzky and the geodesic domes of visionary architect Buckminster Fuller. Lissitzky was part of the Soviet Constructivist movement, which believed that art should have a social and political impact, although he was most pioneering in typography and book design, rather than 3D objects.  Geodesic domes are often used to grow things in - so it's a nicely oblique reference.

But it's pretty bleak on its own account, at the moment. There's a certain satisfaction in the sharp lines taking you off into the depth of the hall, and later, when it's bushier and grassier the paths may disappear into a green-massed distance. But, just in case you're looking forward to wandering into it, here's what the press release says: 

Visitors will be able to explore underneath the platforms by wandering through the supporting scaffolding and view them from above on the Turbine Hall bridge.

So, we can see its bottom but can't walk through it. So much for comparing the plants. So much for getting a feel for difference and detail. I predict it's going to look pretty homogeneous, looked at from the bridge. And I really can't summon up the enthusiasm for scaffolding expressed on Philippa Ellis's Arts Aloud blog. Anyway, I seem to remember another installation that created a similar effect, though the details escape me.

Moving on to analogies, "in the middle of a busy commercial area of London, the ‘empty lot’ is a space where nothing is produced but where change might happen." I wonder if that's even the case in his native Mexico?  Here an empty lot disappears into a whirl of corporate construction as fast as you can say 'knife'.

Still, what questions about nature might it be asking about the city and nature? 

• How far does the rigid structure of a city puts limits on the life within it?
• How much does the artificial life of the city create unnatural reactions? (After all, they are trying to make things grow through winter.)

Or what about the "wider ideas of chance, change, and hope"?

• The struggle for self-expression is found in the most awkward and desolate places.
• Put care into what seems unpromising and the results will (might) surprise you.

Challenge me further and I might come up with a fully fledged platitude. Which is part of my problem with it: nothing I've suggested is very new. My lack of imagination, perhaps. One tweet describes it as "a sculpture made out of hope".  Well, I'm hoping that you might come up with other ideas of what Empty Lot might be saying.

One point which hasn't been mentioned in connection with Empty Lot is the teeming nature of the soil. Emphasis is concentrated on the emptiness. As one tweet asks: "From nothing, what may grow?" It would be wonderful to think that in this, the International Year of the Soil, at a time when world soils are maltreated and becoming dangerously impoverished, Cruzvillegas is actually trying to redefine the concept of soil itself, underlining its liveliness and how different treatment, environment and care decide whether it produces feast of famine. I don't get the impression, though, that his intention is anywhere near as enlightened.

Quite obviously a visit is in order, though I can't see much point in rushing there until most plants are well above the sides. There's plenty of time. The installation runs until 3rd April, 2016, and you can follow its progress at #emptylot. Requests for plant identification have already started, which is definitely something for gardeners to get their teeth into.

In the meantime, do comment below on what you think Cruzvillegas might teach us.

*According to Philippa Ellis, there are rumours that people are "seed-bombing" the beds. So, what emerges may not be so "accidental" as originally intended.

 

Taking the measure of Gerainbow climbing geraniums from Vernon Nursery

One idea I fell for earlier this year, when offered samples by Vernon Nursery, was a pot of climbing geraniums. Arriving promptly in April, five small pelargoniums found themselves in my slightly dubious embrace. Would they really climb?

The variety - Gerainbow - come in white, neon, deep red, orange and pink. (The pink is missing above, as Husband nabbed it for his father's garden.) And, of course, they're not true climbers. They grow long main stems which you tie in to the support. The lower stems, as you can see above, will trail up to around two feet.

Of course, mine didn't make it anywhere near the six feet they're said to be capable of, but I do wonder if they'd have managed a bit higher if I'd stopped fiddling with them.

The plants came with a tip:

Whilst the plant is putting all its effort into growing I suggest you remove all flower buds as they appear to encourage faster growth - this is so hard to do as you want to enjoy the flowers too, but it will be worth it in the long run! Once the plant is at its desired height, stand back and let it bloom.

I was a little tardy in beginning this and [hangs head in sorrow] let them all flower - they just about all arrived with buds on.  Then, I pulled myself together, planted them in a tub filled with a mix of garden soil and Incredigrow compost, with Incredibloom slow release fertiliser incorporated, and started to pull off the flower buds. I became quite ruthless.

I pulled them off for weeks. They grew, a bit. Eventually, fearing I would run out of summer before they ran out of tower to climb, and knowing I was going to be away for ten days anyway, I gave them their head in late August.

They exploded into flower and have continued nonstop. They're still looking pretty good now, in November. I also swear they reached higher than when I was being beastly to them. They've not exactly rocketed, having stalled at exactly two feet high, but they've produced a superb show.

The bright colours won't be to everyone's taste, but their lovely splash draws the eye and I love them. The only criticism I'd make of the colours is that the orange and red aren't noticeably different, especially from a distance, so if you needed to split them up I'd certainly keep those apart.

Rainbow Red on left, Orange on right.

I rather like Vernon Nursery, who make a point of selling plants suitable for British gardens. Everything I received this year was glowing with health and plants are accompanied by very thorough (and sympathetic, as you can read above) instructions - particularly strong on geraniums - which even include how to take your own cuttings.

Anyway, these geraniums will most definitely be kept for next year, when I'll try them in a different compost, give them a more direct feed to encourage early growth, and trust they'll have got a better hang of rising to the occasion. Especially if I don't confuse them with on/off flowers.

 

Prize draw: Digging Deep in the Garden by John Walker

Is gardening inherently eco-friendly? Could it do better?  These questions seldom make it into the limelight in garden writing. If you do see an article that asks them, though, there's a good chance it's been written by John Walker, three times winner of the Garden Media Guild's Environmental Award.

Now I'm offering you the chance to win a copy of John's Digging Deep in the Garden, a newly published collection of fourteen articles from "Digging Deep", the series that he originally wrote for Organic Gardening magazine.

In putting the book together, a paradox struck him:

Almost a decade since ‘Digging Deep’ took root, many of the issues I explored are still getting worse – think climate chaos, pesticide pollution, profligate energy use. And yet gritty garden writing exploring such topics is still almost non-existent; we plod on under the illusion – ably propped up by an out-of-touch media – that gardening and the wild, natural world are somehow opposites, rather than being intimately interwoven.

I was lucky enough to read John's articles first time round, when Organic Gardening magazine still existed and I too contributed (in a considerably less challenging manner) to its pages. John's article was always the first I turned to on opening the mag, to see what particular gauntlet was being thrown to the ground that month.

The wide range of issues covered are still very much with us and all together they pack quite a punch.  Climate change, compost, choice in garden centres, misleading magazine articles for novice gardeners, ethical supply, and the downgrading of organic gardening are merely a handful of the subjects looked at. He looks at current attitudes (still very much current), asks awkward questions, calls people to account.

It's all serious stuff, but mitigating this is the engaging writing style, wryly humorous in places, and the rallying cries to action. Yes, we can make a difference on an individual basis, and our choices do matter. It's heartening to find someone who thinks we have clout. And it's only by individuals changing their behaviour that general consensus is shifted to a new standing.

Compared with much of the output of the gardening press, Digging Deep shows what zest can be added to our gardening reading. When the garden industry campaigns to sell as much as possible to as many consumers as possible, it's arresting to question whether you, too, could manage to ditch the wheelie-bin (yes, the black one too), or whether you really need that heated propagator.

The arguments carry all the more weight because what shines from the book is that John, not only feels deeply about the matters discussed, but, as an long-time organic gardener, has the experience to speak authoritatively. 

Enter the Prize Draw

To celebrate the publication, there are two paperback copies up for grabs. To be in with a chance of winning Digging Deep in the Garden email [email protected] with "Prize Draw" in the subject line, by the end of Saturday 14th November.

The winner will be drawn at random from all the entries.

If you can't wait for the results of the draw, Digging Deep in the Garden is available in paperback at £4.99 and as an ebook at £1.99, via John's website, Earth-friendly Gardener, where you can also catch up with the latest reviews.

Terms and Conditions:

1. This giveaway is only available to people with a UK delivery address.

2. Entry closes at the end of Saturday 14th November.

3. The lucky winners will be notified by 18th November, via email. If John has not heard from him or her by midnight on 30th November, a new winner will be drawn.

4. There are two prizes of Digging Deep in the Garden, paperback version. No cash alternative.