Weeding the Web

A Walk Round Chelsea Flower Show 2013

Chelsea's Hundredth - you couldn't miss it.

Press Day is also VIP Guest Day. Drawback? Your interview's interrupted by self-important Americans. But what is Chelsea without celebs? If I'd walked faster I might have treated you to Helen Mirren; everywhere I went I'd only just missed her. Still, I found Mary Berry, hiding behind a tree. 

Wonder what she thought of Sparsholt College's cupcakes? (Teavolution won silver-gilt.)

And Joanna Lumley was the trouper we've come to expect. She's quite keen on gardening too.

On Burncoose Nursery's stand (silver-gilt), they told me the lovely Jo had been there for hours, with only a break for coffee. But who was she supporting? There have been lots of pictures but not many details. How annoying is that for the stand-holder? (She was on the M&S stand; it won silver.)

Outside, Johnny Kingdom hammed it up on a vibrant driftwood sculpture by James Doran-Webb (pictured left). Johnny was behind at The Winning Post, two galloping horses for £28,000, already snapped up by one of the gardens' sponsors.

Whew! You end up walking a lot, but seats don't feature at Chelsea. Surely they can't want us to sit only where we have to buy food? Wellywoman, on her first visit, has been shocked at the prices, but I've been stung before - so I bought a sandwich from M&S before I arrived.

Where to eat it? (The Press Tent was no answer. It burst at the seams all day.) But here was a tempting resting place...

With plenty to read to pass the time:

It was Birmingham City Council's gold-winning Enlightenment. Alternative Eden shows more of the Great Pavilion but I was off to look for gnomes. (After all, they've gained worldwide coverage.)

Those pesky little creatures need putting in their place.

Charles Hawes feared for their lives at times but the jolly chap pictured below was safe in a four-year research project into grassless lawns. That sounded boring. "What's its name?" asked a reporter instead.

And let's not forget all the work that went into getting Chelsea ready. Opposite the gold-winning Trailfinders Australian garden that Vegplotting particularly liked, was a regiment of wheelbarrows - surely too clean!  

Don't forget, there's still time to bid for Mark Quinn's sculpture.  "“Hopefully, the flowers and the sculpture blend," he says in an interview. Will the sculpture be diminished without the planting?

And - did I mention? - Chelsea's 100.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

National Gardening Leave - a nef (or naff?) proposal

Have you thought that an extra day in the garden each week would be nice? Well, you're not alone. In fact the New Economics Foundation has suggested just that in its recently published paper, National Gardening Leave.

Here's their opening paragraph:

This pamphlet argues that Britain would be better off if we all spent less time at the office. It makes the case for a new, voluntary scheme to introduce a shorter working week. We call this National Gardening Leave. The proposal calls for adapting a wide range of available spaces for the rapid expansion of gardening, both productive and aesthetic in Britain’s towns and cities.

I want to like this. I really do.

But I can't. 

But what's not to like? It's a proposal that proffers an improved economy, a healthier and happier population, and an enhanced environment.

You've got to support your idea with more than "yes-but” statements: you know, the sort of woolly "facts" that might be thrown into general conversation over the dinner table.

“Settled farming…created time for other expressions of being beyond survival.”

So before then, cave paintings drew themselves? And did no one see Bruce Parry’s Tribe, which showed the remarkably relaxed lifestyle of the Kombai hunter-gatherers in Papua?

Small point, maybe, but the statement's been considered worthy of inclusion, setting the scene for the main arguments. 

nef

In case you didn’t know, nef (note those hey-we’re-breaking-boundaries lower-case letters) describes itself as an independent “think-and-do” tank that aims “to improve quality of life by promoting innovative solutions that challenge mainstream thinking on economic, environment and social issues."

Check! Theirs certainly isn't a mainstream proposal.

They are, they say, “unique in combining rigorous analysis and policy debate with practical solutions on the ground.”

Hmm. Here's how they present their rigorous analysis on National Gardening Leave.

Are we heading for a fruitless summer?

The RHS has reported that we could be facing a fruitless summer this year, as the winter chill, supposedly required for various fruits to crop, has been mostly absent. Bushes are also flowering early. While frost might be a real problem in killing off early blossom, the high winter temperatures aren't necessarily a cause for despair. It seems that we probably don't know as much about the temperature requirements, certainly of apple trees, as we think.

For an alternative view, do see my post from last November, A Chilling Time for Apples Ahead?  Or go straight to the Apples and Oranges blog for an eye-opener on parts of the world that grow apples where convention says it's impossible.

Which? Gardening annoy Soil Association with results of research

Ouch! The latest Which? Gardening magazine crashed through the letterbox yesterday, having blazed a trail in the day's newspapers.

In a two-year research project, Which? found home-grown organic produce to be no more nutritious or tasty than non-organic. In some cases it came off distinctly worse.

Here we go again.

Interested parties have leapt to defend organic. According to the Daily Mail, the Soil Association has branded the research "irresponsible". Actually, a quick look at the Soil Association's press release shows that it's not the research per se that it deems irresponsible, but the use of pesticides that have been implicated in the rapid decline of the bee population and the use of metaldehyde.

Much is made of the result that tasters preferred the non-organic tomatoes, but several thoughts come to mind. Taste is affected by the soil in which a plant is grown, and by the water and feed it receives...