18 Wednesday Mar 2020
Posted in news
Tags
biological controls, coir, gardening without plastic, innovations, nematodes, new products, peat-free compost, tomatoes
Just from time to time, I put down the hand fork, brush the mud off my jeans, look up and take notice of what everyone else in the gardening world is up to. Here’s my look at this year’s new developments and innovations for veg gardeners everywhere: https://www.learningwithexperts.com/gardening/blog/so-what-s-new
03 Friday Mar 2017
Posted in exotic edibles, new plants, news, shows
A quick whizz round the Garden Press Event up in London the other week – and I do mean quick, as I didn’t arrive till lunchtime having flown in from Bordeaux in France that morning, fingernails still muddy from clearing the garden in the little house my family has bought there.
It’s tempting at this point to get diverted into a little rhapsody about the delights of sitting outside eating a lunch of ham-stuffed baguettes baked that morning, sun shining and temperature a balmy 19 degrees (in February!), back aching pleasantly from raking leaves, loading bonfires, dismantling rotten-roofed sheds and climbing a lot of old trees to pull out ivy.
But I will resist the temptation (until later, anyway) and instead talk about the many little things I came across at the show which caught my eye. The Press Event has become one of those must-attend punctuations to the gardening year: it sort of kicks things off as everyone lines up to show you what the horticultural talking points are likely to be this year.
There’s quite a lot of toot there too, of course, but I tend to avert my eyes tactfully from the stuff that I can’t see the point of or of which I frankly disapprove (one year I listened open-mouthed as an earnest lawn company representative described how their new product would efficiently murder every earthworm in your garden. Not that she put it in quite those words, but I politely refused the free sample she offered: quickest way I know to kill a lawn stone dead).
So here is a little distillation of the good stuff: the half-dozen bits of kit, new plants and innovations which I hope will find their way onto my plot too before too many seasons have passed by.
Grow lights you can use: Oh I know I’ve been banging on about my Vitopod lately but it does have quite a major role in my life just at the moment. So it’s not that surprising that these natty grow lights caught my attention. The only grow lights I’ve come across have been offered me from slightly dodgy sources and are enormous industrial-scale things with questionable electrics. These on the other hand are dainty little things that just clip over your Vitopod lid and extend the day length to up to 12 hours. Daylight being just as important as warmth when starting early seedlings, this could be the missing piece of my jigsaw puzzle.
Tiger nuts: So excited by these. They look a bit like chickpeas, but they’re actually the tubers of an unremarkable sedge, Cyperus esculentus, a close relation to papyrus (the kind you grow in your pond) only not quite as pretty. It’s quite prolific – an average clump yields about 1lb of dried tubers: the texture and taste is similar to coconut, with a little hint of almond, and they’re packed with nutrients. You can dry them for storing over winter, then rehydrate them overnight to eat raw or in cakes and bakes. On coming home to do a bit more research, though, they do seem to be a bit on the tender side. I’m making them this year’s experiment, anyway, to see how they do.
Ornaments that double up as bird feeders: I did think this was pretty, and useful too. I found it on the Crocus stand: you fill the central bowl with seeds, or cheese, or whatever you happen to be feeding the birds at the moment, and they can perch on the ledge to feast. Much prettier than your average wire-and-plastic peanut job.
Charles Dowding’s new book: Charles was there with his partner Steph – also a very talented kitchen gardener and writer – and a lot of copies of his latest publication, Charles Dowding’s Vegetable Garden Diary. a wire-bound allotment notebook-cum-diary interwoven with pages of Charles’s no nonsense advice based on sound practical experience. I have long admired Charles’s quiet ability to plough his own furrow: he draws his own conclusions, he only ever follows what other people say if he’s already proved it to himself, and as a result he is a true pioneer. And Steph gave me some parched peas, too (thanks Steph!)
Dwarf mulberries: Alongside the tiger nuts on the Suttons stand was this little cutie: the first proper mulberry bush. By which I mean one bred to grow just 1.5m tall – or the size of a large-ish shrub, unlike the conventional mulberry bush which is actually a small tree (does anyone know why mulberry trees are called mulberry bushes in the song? The best I can find is this blog post which says it was originally a song about blackberry bushes, or possibly juniper bushes, though it all seems rather vague.) It goes by the pretty name of ‘Charlotte Russe’ and it’s got proper mulberries and everything (and within a year rather than the usual eight or so).
A rude veg competition: Ah yes: rude veg. We all love a bit of double-entendre when harvesting the carrots. Anyway: Van Meuwen enjoyed its Vulgar Veg competition so much last year that it’s doing the same again. There’s £500 of vouchers on offer: the winner last year was a positively pornographic carrot from Weston-super-Mare. What with wonky veg in the news (when you can find any veg at all in the shops, that is) there’s no better time to expose your oddities to a wider audience (double entendre entirely intended): just go to http://www.vanmeuwen.com/competitions and enjoy.
13 Friday Jan 2017
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show: never less than spectacular
The revealing of this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show gardens is always an exciting moment, and just the boost you need at this time of year. It reminds you that there is life beyond the snow and the ice: that one day the flowers will bloom and look breathtaking and you will feel inspired by the sheer scope of what’s possible in a smallish garden space.
This year looks like a cracker yet again: 24 show gardens, and the return of gardening heroes like Nigel Dunnett, Sarah Eberle, Jo Thompson, James Basson and Chris Beardshaw. Everyone is clearly in escapist mood as there are gardens to take you to Spain, Malta, China, Japan, and Canada.
You can expect more of the trend towards naturalistic, landscape-evocative planting that’s crept up on the show in recent years: I’m not sure anyone will quite outdo Dan Pearson’s Chatsworth garden of 2015 but they’re having a good stab at it. Nigel Dunnett is something of a pioneer in the field, of course, and this year takes on the RHS’s Greening Grey Britain installation; James Basson is another master and I’m looking forward to his recreation of a Maltese quarry. If it’s anything like the one he did last year it’ll be breathtaking.
Here are my picks for the gardens to look out for this year:
The M&G Garden: James Basson
The M&G Garden: James Basson
James has been for some time now the stalking horse for the Chelsea crown: every year his gardens get better and better, his trademark understated flair producing sublime set pieces which transport you effortlessly into another environment altogether. They’re sophisticated gardens, yet deceptively simple, so you have to pay attention to appreciate the sheer brilliance of his thoughtful, intelligent design style. I’ve loved his work ever since I first saw it in Japan a few years ago: last year he won his third Chelsea gold and I think this could be his year.
The Morgan Stanley Garden: Chris Beardshaw
You always sit up and take notice when Chris’s name is on the card: this looks to be a masterpiece of subtle plant design as usual. The USP is its connection to music: the National Youth Orchestra has been exploring their emotional responses to the garden and its plants through music and have composed a piece of music inspired by the design. Expect lots of contrasts in mood and texture.
Musen Landscape SEEK Garden: Jin Yang
We’ve seen a lot of Japanese designs at Chelsea: but it is rare that a Chinese design breaks through, even though gardens were essentially invented in China many, many years before the Japanese thought of raking a pattern in a bit of gravel. So this garden by first-timer Jin Yang should be fascinating: from the picture it looks like an exquisite piece of Chinese artistry picked out in mosaics and rare rhododendrons.
The Chengdu Silk Road Garden: Laurie Chetwood & Patrick Collins
The Chengdu Silk Road Garden: Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins
Just when you think it’s about time you saw a Chinese garden, two come along at once. Actually, this is about China rather than being a ‘Chinese’ garden as such; but it does take East-West trade links along the Silk Road as its theme, and specifically Sichuan province – one of the most florally diverse in the world – and the town of Chengdu which it turns out is famous for embroidery. That is the perfect excuse for a quite spectacular-looking piece of sculpture, a ‘Silk Road bridge’ spun above and round the garden as though swept up in a whirlwind. Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins have form with ambitious, architectural designs: this one should be a real head-turner.
The RHS Greening Grey Britain Garden: Nigel Dunnett
I’m not a big fan of the ‘installation’ gardens at Chelsea as a rule: they seem to lack an identity, more PR exercise than actual garden. But when Nigel Dunnett is behind the planting it’s never boring. This is the man who pioneered ‘meadow’ style annual flower plantings for inner city Sheffield and the London Olympics, and brought us rain gardens, too. Here he’s tackling gardening in high-rise apartments with very restricted outdoor space: his ability to think laterally could bring us the solutions we badly need.
Pavilion highlights:
Sarah Eberle is designing the Hillier stand again – she scooped gold for them (yet again – their 72nd I believe) last year with her spectacular waterfalls. Burncoose is looking at plants pollinated by moths, flies and beetles: expect Calycanthus, pollinated by beetles, and magnolias, which evolved before there were any bees so are pollinated mainly by flies.
The Hardy Plant Society celebrates its 60th birthday with 60 plants; Raymond Evison has created an entire seashore to show off his clematis; and Birmingham City Council is recreating one of eccentric inventor Rowland Emett’s whimsical kinetic sculptures in flowers. Finally, it’s always nice to see a new face, and first-timers Calamazag Nursery, from Looe in Cornwall, are going to be popular: their penchant is hardy pinks, among my favourite plants.
The Seedlip Garden: Dr Catherine MacDonald
Small gardens:
The Fresh Gardens look a bit earnest, on paper at least, this year: though I do like the sound of the ‘clementine, coral and cappuccino’ colour scheme to ‘Inland Homes: Beneath a Mexican Sky’ by Manoj Malde. Pray for sunny days at Chelsea to do it justice, though.
The Artisan Gardens are much more promising. Sarah Eberle is back with Viking Cruises and promises date palms, citrus and succulents and inspiration from Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi, who was very into Lord of the Rings style pinnacles. We have a 17th century apothecary in The Seedlip Garden from Dr Catherine MacDonald – right up my street as it’s all about distilling (non-alcoholic) drinks from herbs. Also love the sound of The IBTC Lowestoft Broadland Boatbuilder’s Garden – a bit of a mouthful perhaps but it does feature a replica of an 800-year-old wooden boat plus lots of lovely edibles including chives, peas, garlic and kale.
14 Thursday Jan 2016
Posted in design, garden design, news, shows
The RHS launched the 2016 Chelsea Flower Show in style yesterday: we had Alan Titchmarsh interviewing Mary Berry and canapés with caviar. I felt positively spoilt.
As always the launch press event is all about the details you want to know but can’t (always) get off the press releases. So here’s the lowdown on what not to miss at Chelsea this year – and I’m not, on the whole, talking gardens:
The Queen’s 90th birthday party: Yes, HRH is a nonagenarian. It didn’t surprise me to learn that she’s now clocked up 51 visits to Chelsea: getting kicked out at 3pm on press day so she can view the gardens without the hoi polloi bothering her is one of the traditions of Chelsea I look forward to every year, mainly because it means an early shout on a Monday.
Not bad for nearly 90, eh? Queen Elizabeth II in the Great Pavilion at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2015 (c) RHS/Bethany Clarke
Anyway: the RHS is laying on an exhibition taken from their back catalogue of photos, plus a floral arch inspired by made for Queen Victoria in Reigate, of all places.
Poppies will be much in evidence and no doubt much discussed: an installation of 300,000 crocheted poppies (yes, you did read that right) will cover 2000 square metres either side of the walkway leading up to the recently denuded front facade of the Royal Hospital in a sea of red. It is – as one journo pointed out – reminiscent of the Tower of London poppy installation a couple of years ago: but cosier.
Boy, that’s a lot of poppies…
Poor old Alan got a lot of stick for his part in wiping away centuries of ancient tree and replacing them with a new design by George Carter: but as he said, ‘a Grade I listed building by Christopher Wren deserved better than an overgrown Victorian shrubbery’. Quite.
Ann-Marie Powell is designing the ‘RHS GGBG HHH’ (as we will henceforth refer to it)
Ann-Marie Powell is designing the RHS garden (better to just say that than its full title, The RHS Greening Grey Britain Garden for Health, Happiness and Horticulture – snappy, eh?). I love Ann-Marie’s gardens: they burst with a kind of irrepressible energy, all enthusiasm and verve. There will be much gorgeousness including a perennial meadow, kitchen garden and demonstration beds. And you can walk through it. Divine.
There’s a new award: the poor folk who work their socks off constructing every painstaking detail of the show gardens yet barely getting a mention in the footnotes by comparison with the glitzy designers (a bit like the drummer in a glam rock band) will – at long last – get their very own award, the Best Construction Award. All gardens which score ‘excellent’ for construction on the judging sheets will go forward automatically for the gong.
There are seven female designers on Main Avenue this year: not, the RHS was at pains to assure us, because of any particular positive discrimination during the selection process but rather because of all the chat last year about the fact that there were only two prompted some of our best female designers to think about putting themselves forward. It’s still not 50:50 (there are 17 show gardens) but it’s a good start.
Sarah Eberle’s design for Hillier
Sarah Eberle is designing the Hillier Garden in the Pavilion (as well as her beautiful watery Artisan Garden). Seasoned team member Ricky Dorlay – 50 Chelseas and counting – is there though of course the designer of the last several dozen gold medal winning exhibits previous to this, Andy McIndoe, and ever-smiley plantswoman Pip Bensley have moved on to pastures new. We’re promised a more designerly garden with a central water feature and plant groupings which will work not only with each other, but also in your garden. It’ll be right alongside their old plot around the monument, now taken by Bowden Hostas and the Orient Express’s sister train: the urge to compare-and-contrast will be hard to resist.
Nurseries are going conceptual: several are working with designer Kate Gould to bring a ‘more conceptual bent’ to exhibits in the Pavilion. The Mayan inspired temple pyramid at T3 Plants should be good…
You can wear a bobble suit with some kind of sensor system that lights up and tells you when you’re gardening badly. Have a go at digging on the stand and the team from the University of Coventry will tell you why your back always aches afterwards.
There are two new RHS Ambassadors: Young Hort Jamie Butterworth (is it me or are gardeners getting younger, like policemen and teachers?) and the redoubtable Jekka McVicar have both been recruited to the RHS cause. Both already do such a lot for the RHS we’ll be hard put to spot the difference, but it’s great that their huge efforts and achievements are being recognised.
Chelsea here we come!
29 Sunday Nov 2015
Tags
Kandinsky: Murnau the Garden II (1910) – at the Royal Academy’s exhibition (love love love this)
Gardens and art walk hand in hand. Gardens inspire art; art inspires gardens. No wonder, really, for both draw their reason for being from instincts for beauty, form and the ability to change the way the person who looks at them views everything that follows.
I’m a bit biased, of course, and I know I’ll scandalise ‘proper’ arty folk, but I’ve always secretly thought gardens the superior art form. Gardens are, after all, four dimensional, to painting’s two and sculpture’s three. Gardens are not only there to be looked at: they are there to be smelled, and touched, and felt. And they exist in fourth dimension, too: that of time. It takes some artist to create a vision that transports the visual and every other sense too, and then keeps it beautiful while it constantly changes with the turning of the seasons.
But anyway, before I start getting too pretentious, the reason I’m going on about this is that anyone who’s a gardener and also likes art (so that’s all of us, then) is positively spoilt at the moment.
‘Flower Garden’, Emil Nolde, 1922, also at the Royal Academy (love this one too)
I was blown away earlier this year by the Painting Paradise exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, at the side of Buckingham Palace: breathtaking art, garden history and heaven for plant-lovers all in one deliriously happy visit.
And now it’s the turn of more recent paintings to feature gardens: the Royal Academy of Arts is exploring the way gardens led artists from the literal to the impressionistic in ‘Painting the Modern Garden’. Not ‘just’ Monet and Manet, but also Klimt, Matisse, Kandinsky, Van Gogh and – a personal favourite of mine – Mary Cassatt. It opens on 30 January and I will be first in the queue.
Edward Chell’s cyanotypes at the Horniman Museum
And there’s more: Bloom at the Horniman Museum is an exhibition of exquisite and other-worldly plant silhouettes created by Edward Chell, inspired by cyanotypes – the same photographic process which produces blueprints – made by 19th century naturalist Anna Atkins (this one closes on 6 December, so get there quick).
‘Strawberry Thief’, William Morris, 1883
At the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (it’s not all London, you know) Rosa Nguyen – last seen making ceramic trees in a London park during the 2013 Chelsea Fringe – is one of the artists featured in The Arts and Crafts House: Then and Now.
Leading light of the Arts and Crafts movement, William Morris, was of course largely responsible for bringing the house into the garden and the garden into the house: his influence spread far beyond wallpaper, and I suspect we owe him much more than we’ll ever realise.
Rosa Nguyen creating her installation ‘Gardening With Morris’ at the Laing Gallery
Then there are the exquisitely detailed paintings of fruits by Shirley Sherwood at Kew Gardens; intricate watercolours of orchids by naturalists The Bauer Brothers at the Natural History Museum; and if your tastes are more hard-core modernist and allegorical there’s always Ai Weiwei’s sunflower seeds (at the Royal Academy again). What a feast.
31 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in climate change, news
Just when you thought there was nothing new under the sun, they go and invent a sunflower that’s actually a table lamp.
Well actually it’s not that new, as it’s the same technology as you used at school when you plugged a couple of electrodes into a potato and made a little lightbulb glow. In every piece of vegetative matter there is a chemical energy created by photosynthesis which can be converted into a small current: which is why you can make an electric circuit out of a potato, or a tomato, or a sunflower.
Anything green can be persuaded to generate electricity: even grass clippings. In 2012 some scientists in America created a solar cell from a few fragments of vegetation. The technical term is biophotovoltaics.
I can’t pretend to know much about the science, but I do know this is pretty cool: the electricity you generate from plugging into a sunflower is enough to charge a mobile phone battery, or a computer (after a while, I’d have thought). Imagine what a field of sunflowers could do. Looks a whole lot nicer than a power station, too.
I may be acquiring one of these from those nice people at Thompson & Morgan later in the summer, so I’ll let you know what happens. Should be electrifying (sorry, couldn’t resist).
**STOP PRESS**: Have just heard that T&M are so taken with this particular technology breakthrough they’re going to start a new energy company to harness all that sunflower power. Word has it the new company will be known as Avril Fuel. Now that’s one to watch out for.
17 Sunday Feb 2013
Posted in news
Last week a lot of garden journalists emerged blinking into the open for the first major press event of the year: the Garden Press Event at the Barbican in London.
It was all a bit of a shock to the system: previously this has been held in the genteel surroundings of the RHS’s Horticultural Halls in Westminster, where they have such things as marble staircases and mezzanines.
No such luck at the altar to 70s brutalism that is The Barbican: I emerged from the tube station to plunge headlong into the demi-world of concrete and steel and unforgiving lighting that is this most urban of cityscapes. A curious choice for a show that embraces the wildlife-friendly, the environmentally considerate and the beautiful, perhaps.
But once you’re inside, you forget all that and immerse yourself in a gardeners’ sweetshop of delights, offered this year by a record-breaking 90 exhibitors. This show is getting bigger and better all the time: it’s already become unmissable for anyone involved in the garden media.
New ideas were everywhere: so here’s my pick of the ones that caught my eye.
Mini beehives: not for honeybees (they’re much too small) but for bumblebees. As we all know they’re in a bit of a pickle at the moment, and there’s lots gardeners can do to help them out. Which is fine if you have a local population of bumblebees: if not, these ones come with fuzzy bees already installed.
Here they are: that black blob in the middle. See? Just under that clear plastic lumpy bit? OK, so photographing bumblebees in a plastic box turns out to be something of a challenge, but anyway: this is the insert inside each of those little boxes above. They only stay in the box a year as they don’t return to the same nest twice: but in that time they’ll multiply to 200+ bumblebees in a good year, and you’ll have done your bit for the environment. Oh yes, and you can get refills. (www.dragonfli.co.uk) 
Clematis root shaders: Those nice people at Crocus have impeccable good taste and their stand was once again a mouthwatering selection of things I could have snapped up and squirrelled off home with right away (sadly, they weren’t looking the other way, and my bag wasn’t big enough. Shame). Among the handsomest and most innovative, I thought, were these half-pot terracotta root shaders: as we all know, clematis like their roots in the shade and their heads in the sun, so these were just the thing. (www.crocus.co.uk) 
Stylish ways with apple crates: Not really, strictly speaking, a product on display this one: just a very, very chic idea from the stylist who put together the Homebase stand. All you do is get one of those big wooden apple crates, paint it a distressed off white, then nail it on a wall. Hey presto: instant shelf for your garden lantern, perhaps some potted auriculas, a well-chosen sculpture… (www.homebase.co.uk)
Online veg planning for schools: There’s now quite a choice of online planning tools for veg growers out there (I’m a dedicated fan of www.growveg.com) but this one caught my eye as one of the better ones if you’re just starting out. Growmatic has been helping Irish veg gardeners for the last four years: its first venture in the UK looks very promising. You can use it whatever sort of veg gardener you are, but what I really liked was that it gives school gardeners the chance to programme in the school term – so you can plan to grow crops that do their stuff while the kids are there to enjoy it. Could become a must-have tool for school gardening clubs everywhere. (www.quickcrop.co.uk)
Automatic growbag waterer: Perhaps not the prettiest of exhibits on display – but definitely one of the more practical. This odd-looking contraption takes the idea of the reservoir-based automatic watering container and adapts it to use with growbags: simple, but possibly a lifesaver when you’re trying to sustain thirsty tomatoes in not-quite-enough compost. You plonk the grow bag on those yellow plastic thingies, which pierce the bag and go up into the compost. Then just fill the reservoir and the water is wicked up via the green capillary matting into the growbag where it’s needed. It holds a hefty 15 litres, enough to keep things ticking over nicely for up to 14 days if it’s not too sunny (about a week if it is). You could always hide it behind a bit of woven wicker hurdle or something. (www.hozelock.com).
04 Friday Jan 2013
Posted in news
…as long as you’re a slug.
Last year is now officially the second-wettest on record (though I have to say I have absolutely no memories at all of 2000 – the wettest-ever – being particularly damp. Maybe my mind has mercifully wiped the horror from my internal hard drive).
But The National Trust‘s annual lowdown on the year just ended makes intriguing reading – partly at least because it hasn’t been a bad year for everyone.
We’ve all heard quite enough about how terrible all the rain has been for apple trees (half-drowned), squashes (what squashes?) sweetcorn (grass-sized and no corn) – but how about the winners from 2012?
Slugs: as we all know they’ve been having a party. B&Q’s slug pellets went up by 75%, the fast-breeding Spanish slug may now outnumber natives slugs in many sites for the first time in its 20 years in this country, and – now here’s a scary thought – there is a native variety of slug, the Ashblack slug, which grows to 1ft in length – yes, you read that right: 30cm, one foot, nearly as long as your forearm. It’s rare (phew) but they’ve just found a new colony on the Isle of Wight. Be afraid. Be very afraid…
Wild orchids: bee orchids in Blakeney in Norfolk and Stackpole Warren in Pembrokeshire; fly orchids on Dunstable Downs. One of the best moments of my year last year was when I found a wonderful carpet of brilliant pink marsh orchids growing wild on a woodland walk in early summer: what a sight.
Wasp-phobics: did anyone else notice the lack of wasps last year? We have a big nest somewhere around the house every year: one year they found a hole in the roof by the chimney (we found the nest later: it was a good 80cm-1m across), then they built one in a bird box, and in 2011 they discovered the hole in the windowsill and built one in the cavity wall. But last year? Not so much as a buzz. I kind of missed them, actually.
Dragonflies: they recorded 22 different species at Scotney Castle in Kent: I didn’t know there even were 22 species of dragonfly.
Autumn colour: fabulous this year, and hanging on in there far longer than usual. My butter-yellow Ginkgo biloba was eyecatching for weeks on end.
Waxwings: they’ve had an uncommonly good year, apparently driven ever further westwards by the general lack of berries and other fruit to eat in the rest of Europe. Thousands of them went on a detour to Northern Ireland, too, where bemused shoppers on Enniskillen High Street got to watch them stripping the rowan trees.
Sally Nex 