Weeding the Web

A Good Weed: Digging Deep in the Garden Book II

"It's really pathetic," said a friend, "that a 5p charge should make the difference." He was lamenting the fact that, despite being a sailor, despite spending his time on the ocean, despite knowing the terrible pollution caused by plastic bags etc, it was only when the paltry tax came in that he began to remember to take a bag to the supermarket. I was reminded of this while reading the recently published second book of John Walker's Digging Deep series.

For those of you who missed my review of Digging Deep Book One when it came out before Christmas time last year, these volumes bring together John's thought-provoking articles which were originally published in Organic Gardening magazine.

An intriguing "what if?" approach runs through this second volume, a view firmly fixed on what might happen if we started to think about working together. In the fourteen chapters, I find myself in sympathy with many of John's ideas. A couple of years ago, I was struck by the difference that fenceless gardens might make and, in Waste of Space, John imagines the eco-benefits that pulling down fences might have, while making green spaces properly useful.  Or how might garden centres react  to our rejection of the packaging that often accompanies plants? How about a dedicated Freegardening extension to Freecycle? What about combating the power of supermarkets with Earth Centres, hubs of local horticultural knowledge that also pooled skills and grew community?

There's no doubt that we're a long way from implementing many of the ideas - you might not consider all of them desirable. But taking as he does a sideways look at our current problems, and publishing these articles at a time when political norms seem to be withering like a Round-Up treated weed, John encourages a clear-eyed examination of the status quo that you could find yourself applying to your own gardening activities.

Any moment now, Digging Deep Books III and IV, the final two of the series, will be published. Each in this series is a slim volume attractively presented with lovely suede-feel covers featuring photographs taken by John. All feature the wryly humorous style that made the first volume so easy to read. They'd make great stocking fillers for Christmas, or why not treat yourself to all four and catch up with some radical, earth-friendly ideas over the New Year?  Order from Earth-friendly Gardener.

 

A Christmas present for a gardener with berry high ambitions

How much does your personality interfere with your enjoyment of life? This is a question I ask myself occasionally, mostly after I've roundly condemned as cheating something that other people welcome as a step to enjoyment. Such as buying a trained fruit bush. 

Redcurrant Rubera Lisette from Lubera. Large berries on compact strings.

I've long had a yen for a standard berry or a cordon - redcurrant or gooseberry.  Yet I refuse to buy it because I have the strong feeling that I should be training it myself. So, what happens? Each year I don't start training one.

Admittedly, it's the cost that partly puts me off buying one ready-made, as they're more expensive than normal bare-root stock, but also I feel it's cheating. Surely, if I really want to call myself a proper gardener, I should be creating my own?  I'd like to know that the superb specimen in the garden was a result of all my own efforts of growing, supporting, shaping. And each year I don't start, I put myself one year further away from enjoying any success I might have.

Rovera Redcurrant grown as a cordon from Pomona Fruits. This is tempting too.

It's finally penetrated the old brain cell that one way to subvert my own stubborn nature is to get someone else give me a trained fruit bush as a Christmas present. The tiniest hint - something along the lines of, say, "Here's what I'd like for Christmas" with the page turned down in the catalogue - and I can dig the planting hole with the clearest conscience.

After all, it wouldn't be my fault if someone took me at my word, when I was just musing on "what ifs", would it? 

Am I the only one who's got a slightly shame-faced wish for a Christmas present this year?

Veg plant review: Egg and Chips from Thompson and Morgan

Some plants are just made to raise a sceptical eyebrow, and this year it was Egg and Chips from Thompson and Morgan that furrowed the brow. An aubergine grafted onto a potato? What's promised is an average of 4 aubergines per plant and up to 2kg of potatoes. Egg and Chips is also supposed to be so easy to grow that you barely need instructions. "More than just a novelty," say T&M.

Thompson and Morgan's own productive plant

Not what eminent horticulturalist Graham Rice said about it in the Telegraph when Egg and Chips made the list for Plant of the Year at the Chelsea Flower Show this year. "A clear winner in the gimmick department" were his exact words, and he obviously felt more than slightly dubious, saying:

Most gardeners find it hard enough to grow good aubergines – red spider mite in the greenhouse, flea beetle outside and aphids everywhere… not to mention a need for far warmer conditions than the humble spud requires. This idea is the triumph of marketing over horticulture, its sheer novelty got it on the shortlist.

Growing Egg and Chips

My plant arrived at the beginning of May, about six inches high, with a graft between potato and aubergine that needed careful handling. I planted it with no expectations. I've had barely any luck with aubergines - to the extent that I gave up trying years ago, having come to the conclusion that the reason I got no viable fruit was that I couldn't give them a glassed-in spot with enough light. This time, the plant took its chance in the garden.

Into an inverted compost sack, black face out to soak up the sun's warmth more easily, a sheltered position, and off we went.

Much to my surprise, it grew a very good-looking aubergine, about the size of my hand, and another much smaller one about five inches long. Much to my annoyance, I seem to have accidentally deleted the photo I took, so I can't show you my triumph.  

There was no problem deciding when to pick the aubergine (they parted company with the plant sometime in September when something - snails, I'm guessing, began to regard them as tasty morsels). Judging the potatoes was harder. The plant showed absolutely no sign of dying down, so I finally broke in October and turned it out of the bag. Aubergine harvest slightly disappointing in comparison with mooted average harvest. Potato harvest...?

My complete potato harvest from Thompson and Morgan's Egg and Chips plant

Yup, that's it. One very small potato.

I have to say that it tasted very nice. Apparently, many different cultivars were trialed, for several years, to get the best combination of tasty and robust veg. That bit certainly worked. Thompson and Morgan haven't revealed which cultivars they chose, and it's a shame as I wouldn't mind giving the aubergine another go. I roasted it in the oven in slices with other veg to go with the Sunday joint and itwas one of the best I've tasted.

But harvest-wise? I think we can admit to a problem. I was much better at watering this year than I was with the compost comparison potatoes I grew last year, but those harvests were bounty in comparison.

The answer to aubergines?

Might it, however, be the answer to my aubergine-growing problems? The potato plant is meant to support the aubergine better, in our cooler soils and climate, than the aubergine's own roots. Certainly, while I got less than half of the promised harvest, the harvest I got was encouraging. I might be tempted (at a moderate cost) to grow this just for the aubergines, though with the prices quoted on the T&M website (confusingly £14.99 for one, or 15.99 for two), we can safely say that won't be any time soon.

However, it's a fun plant, moderately diverting. I'm sure other people will have been more successful (such as Sandra at Greenjottings). Or possibly not (Michelle's harvest on Vegplotting was nearer mine on the aubergine front).

If you've tried out Egg and Chips this year, do comment below. Leave a link if you've blogged about it and I'll add it to the end of this post.

 

 

 

Morgan Stanley's Garden moves into Great Ormond Street Hospital - Chris Beardshaw on DIY SOS Big Build

Given the complex nature of many of the conditions treated here, parents can often spend months on end at the hospital. And for some of our smallest patients, the hospital is the only home they’ve ever known.

Dr Vin Diwakar, Medical Director at Great Ormond Street Hospital

"Fallen Deodar" by Jilly Sutton, carved from a fallen Himalaya Cedar (Cedrus deodara). Known for carving large heads, Sutton sandblasts and limes them to create their textured finish. The sculpture has a quiet emotion that can be read several ways.

Put this way, you can see how great a gift a garden might be. In a children’s hospital like Great Ormond Street, which is so geared up to helping patients and families get on with normal life under abnormal conditions, the lack of somewhere to go to think quietly and escape from the bright lights and constant noise of a large hospital has been sorely felt.

Not any more. Joining the school where children can continue their education; a chapel; a Citizen’s Advice Bureau; parent accommodation and other services, is a green retreat right at the heart of the hospital. And we get to see all the complications of its installation this week on BBC’s DIY SOS Big Build.

The water reflects the tree canopy and sky.

A garden in a well

Given the brief, it’s not surprising that RHS Gold-winning garden designer Chris Beardshaw leapt at the chance to take on the challenge. Two-fold, it demanded, not only the creation of a garden in a difficult space, but one that Morgan Stanley would be proud to sponsor at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

“It’s the first one I’ve done which has been quite as specific,” Chris told me at the show in May. Fortuitously, the size of the finished garden is very close to the standard plot size at Chelsea. Sixty extra square metres, not in the Chelsea design, are taken up with an additional terrace and pathways.

“It’s two storeys up over an old Victorian roof,” Chris said, “in the well of a ten-storey building, so there’s very little light direct into the garden.” It’s also overlooked by Intensive Care and the arterial corridor in the hospital. He first visited the hospital to talk about the challenges of a garden within its confines a year earlier. “We wanted the most people to see it most easily. It is at the genuine heart of the hospital.”

Light coloured flowers bring light into the shadows.

It is very much a contemplative space. “The point is this is for parents,” he added. “It’s a green chapel, somewhere they can catch their thoughts.”

Clinicians appreciate the need. “Having a quiet space can be invaluable, providing a much-needed place to pause and think when needing to make difficult decisions,” said Dr Diwakar. London has plenty of green spaces, but for some they’ve never been an option. “Things can change for our young patients in a single moment, so even a five-minute walk away from the hospital feels just too far.”

Garden design reflects Great Ormond Street philosophy

It was talking with the clinicians, parents and patients that helped Chris create the philosophy of the garden. “The way in which the hospital works makes a unique relationship between parents, clinicians and children. In many hospitals you tend to hand yourself over. Here there’s a genuine dialogue.”

In the design, this element resolves itself into groups of threes—of pavilions, types of Cornus, circles. “Many parents feel as if their child is flawed. I also try to capture the fact that childhood is perfect. In geometric terms, the circle is the perfect form.” In the Taxus baccata topiary domes and pools of planting, and the main circle of planting that intersects with the canal, he represents this perfection.

'Joy' by John O'Connor, based on his daughter, Isla, shows a child aiming to reach the heights.

Planting-wise, there is no coherence or obvious order, to reflect how children flit and move unrestrained. “It represents the ephemeral nature of childhood,” said Chris. Childhood is also represented by the statue 'Joy' that stands at the end of the canal, based on the artist's daughter Isla, who has “a boundless sense of elation”. “You think you know them for a split second," says Chris, "then there’s a glint in their eye and they change. Here the play of light changes with the water, waterlilies open and close. It’s a different experience each time.”

An awkward spot for a garden

Less obvious in the design are the constraints presented by the site. The deep well of enclosed space could have made it claustrophobic, but it has a tree canopy that breaks up the impression of overbearing surrounding walls. Deep shade is dealt with using lush planting, including Brunnera macrophylla ‘Jack Frost’, Arum italicum ‘Marmoratum’ various hostas, geraniums, paeonies, primulas and Dryopteris, but neither of these challenges was the most important consideration.

"Each acer weighs 3.5 tonnes and they sit on the original columns that support the roof.” The roof structure also demanded planting beds of 700mm, filled only with a lightweight growing medium. “It all governed how we utilised space.”

Happily the constraints work to create a classical geometry that adds the desired serenity to the tapestry of trees, topiary, hedging and herbaceous plants. They also didn’t hinder Chris, sponsored by Morgan Stanley, from gaining a Gold at RHS Chelsea.

Nick Knowles with Chris Beardshaw and the rest of the DIY SOS team on site at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Don't miss it on DIY SOS Big Build

We’ll hear a lot more of the technical challenges when DIY SOS’s Nick Knowles and his team are shown transporting the garden across London and craning full-size trees over the buildings, not to mention his scepticism that such a small green space can help parents who are watching their child in pain.

It promises to be a fascinating and, yes, emotional programme. “This project is one of the most significant and poignant gardens of my career,” said Chris. I know I’ll be glued to BBC1 Thursday 10th November at 8pm.

NB In case you're wondering, as I did, what happened to the canal when the garden moved to Great Ormond Street Hospital, it was decided not to include water as it was not worth the risk of water-borne diseases in a hospital situation.