The television camera is the eye of Sauron. Key hole surgery down the perianth of plants, peering behind cordoned-off places and practically staring up the nostrils of the horti-stablishment. So why bother to go there to the Chelsea Flower Show in person?
planting on RBC Blue Water Roof Garden
Is the lure the blitzkrieg of celebrity? The heavy odour in the air of the saltpetre of Mammon? Is it to look at the conservatories, ride on mowers and recycled metal warthogs from Kenya? The desire to be jostled in a crowd, wishing you were at least half a metre taller? Or the oxygen of the company of the too-loud look-at-me-people? An emphatic NO to all of these.
Continue reading Why you should visit the #Chelsea Flower Show
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installation by Marc Quinn
Goodness me, how calm this flower show seemed today. Restraint was the theme around the grounds. In the Grand Marquee, down the spine of Main avenue, out into Royal Hospital Way and beyond to the outreach section in Serpentine walk, it was shooooooosh and hush in looks.
Continue reading Chelsea 2013: A few first thoughts
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at the gardens of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, outside Rome. This water-powered organ broke down in 1561. At last it has been mended and doors open to a tune blasted out at 10.30 precisely. The crowds gather to stare in amazement at a show that, for the 3D generation, underwhelms. Once the doors have swung apart, a pause and then a piping noise is squeezed out. Leaden and without water gush or dance.
Continue reading Ignore this organ
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Master Composter is a scheme which exists to put out the word for making compost. This means wearing a badge, going to public events or places and and enthusing people to make their own. Gardening begins and ends with the state of your soil and this is determined by what is put in to improve it – that is to say, good organic matter known as compost.
Continue reading A day in the life of the Master Composter
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Going round these gardens is a breathless gallop. We were slotted into a strict timetable and managed so that we did not dawdle, get lost in the bushes or come up with silly questions. Renee, our guide, had thought of all things we might want to ask and, most impressive, she had pretty well covered it all.
Of course you can’t wander about or take photographs. Security has to make it like that but somehow the conveyor belt impression lingers in my mind, as I write, two weeks on from a visit that timed itself before a single spring bud had opened. That had its own advantages as concentrating on the structure and form is a winter gift. So no getting carried away by columbines or the like. I digress and offer 3 reproductions of Rothko works to add a visual element.
Continue reading Visiting Highgrove: a few thoughts
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6 weeks worth of the wrong sort of rubbish removed from green waste bins.
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Sizewell B across the weather and the coarse grass.
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Are you finding it difficult getting a grip on a garden that is new to you and reverting to nature? One of the hardest things, I think, is to cut back savagely in to the froth of overgrown plants. A garden goes feral slowly – in the same way that a friend that you see everyday never gets any older. Leave it a decade and the shock of change will temper an encounter.
And so it starts like this: The couch grass weasels in, brambles parachute down, in and under cover of other shrubs, begin their covert invasion. The paras of the weed world have arrived and brought their mates with them. Ash and sycamore are crafty at getting a toehold and adding quick muscle to their trunks.
Continue reading What to do with the overgrown garden
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painted ceiling, monastry on island of Lake Tana, Ethiopia
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so befuddled by this that I am a day late. Out of kilter and nuclear wasted.
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