The bees are buzzing ...

I have to write a blog on this subject as it has got me into awful trouble for being inconsistent!

I'm very close to a project to introduce bee hives into a public open space (how obscure can that be!). The scientific and environmental arguments for encouraging bees in parks etc couldn't be stronger when you consider the global demise of bees and that the Sechuan province of China is now completely devoid of them - despite being the main producer of pears for the Chinese. Agricultural chemicals are the guilty party there, I gather.

Anyway: having secured limited political backing for the scheme we were warned that others of that class would be aghast at the prospect and so - no word ahead of honey in a jar!

The press team obviously wanted to run a story - particularly as Kew Gardens are getting hugely positive coverage for their two hives - but I poured cold water on it for the reasons above. Devious, devious, people that they are, though, they found a tweat from me on my corporate site and smacked my fingers!

Oh well! To hell with that ... since then we've collected one "trek" swarm from a Magnolia tree and provided it with a home alongside our hives and this morning added a Black English Queen to improve the health of it. Our original swarms are now producing honey and loving the Lime trees which are currently in flower.

Yesterday another swarm was rescued on Fulham Road from a cyclists bicycle ... picture his face when he arrived to find them happily settled! Sadly we couldn't accomodate it so it has had to be relocated outside of London.

There are many very good sites on bees and the campaign to improve their lot - so no doubt much more on this subject in the future.

Twitter and tweating

I've taken delivery of a Blackberry so that I can not only do my email out and about but also Twitter ... suddenly the world has become a much smaller place as I swap tweats and follow tweats all around the world!

The world is a much smaller place than once it was and I never cease to wonder - particularly when visiting the United States and Australia - how lonely and vast it must have appeared to the early pioneers from Europe who set out to explore those two vast landscapes. Today of course we just jump back in the car, pull out a mobile telephone or twitter on a Blackberry and the world wraps its self around us.

When I was doing my national service as a signalman in the army I was always fascinated by radio communication across the world and would spend many hours in the solitude of the operations room before dawn listening to radio hams chatting to each other - usually on the other side of the world - and wishing that I could take part in their exchanges. Not even in my wildest dreams did I think that something like the World Wide Web, Chat Rooms or Twitter would be not just a reality but the norm within my lifetime. We all have access and this is being spread across the four corners of the world!

This speed of communication is a phenomenally powerful tool that could be bringing people and ideas together but sadly it brings also increased conflict. Religion, political and economic power or influence ... the list goes on. What will it take, I wonder, for us to use such power constructively to save our peoples, our resources and our world?

The Schools' Inspector

This morning I attended a most informative conference on children's play and one of the early speakers shared the following story with us:

A Schools' Inspector carrying out his inspection of a class noticed a piece of paper on which a child had written what appeared to be a poem.

After quickly scanning it he exclaimed, "Why, that's a marvellous piece of poetry! May I read it out to the class?" he asked the teacher.

"Certainly," she replied and sat back to listen.

Yesterday Yesterday Yesterday
Sad Sad Sad
Today Today Today
Happy Happy Happy
Tomorrow Tomorrow Tomorrow
Hope Hope Hope

"Oh, no!" piped up a little boy from the back of the room, "That's not a poem - that's my spelling ...."

Grow your own ... on your window ledge

Hardly a week goes by without my attention being drawn to yet another request for an allotment from a well-meaning inner London resident hoping to make the most of the good weather and grow his or her own vegetables. The tragedy is though that while inner London is obviously deprived of the space to provide these, outer London probably has enough ... and yet many are fallow. What seemed a good idea last Spring ... led to back ache and then blisters and as the weeks dragged by the eventual acceptance that it had been a bad idea ... for now anyway.

So you're short of space? Well, don't have any space really - what to do? Easy: pop down to your local garden centre or nursery and ask to see their range of miniature fruit and vegetables. There are a wide range of these available and all are suitable for growing in pots, in hanging baskets or troughs for the window ledge.

One of my favourites is to grow spuds in a barrel ... as you top up the soil those growing at the bottom fatten up to be useful as Jacket Potatoes while those at the top are lovely "juliennes" or baby potatoes. Smother with a dob of Cornish butter ... how much more home grown could you get?

And if that sounds like a green revolution at the expense of colour - you're wrong! Consider the idea of "companion planting" - where two seemingly incongruous plants are grown side by side for often mutual benefit. This removes the need for spraying with pesticides and often adds colour to an otherwise monoecious crop. Grove garlic amongst your roses and you'll discourage aphids, or chives and you'll not only increase the perfume of the roses but also reduce the amount of blackspot. Tomatoes love to be surrounded by dward French marigolds which repel both green fly and blackfly (rub the leaves and smell your fingers ...) or add nasturtiums to your broccoli crop to increase colour, repel aphids and provide yet another source of salad.

Looking for colourful plants to put into window ledge vegetable garden? Consider the following: for BASKETS - Nasturtiums (need feeding); Strawberries; miniature Tomatoes; Borage; Carrots and creeping Thyme. For your TUBS AND TROUGHS - any herbs such as Mint, Thyme, Rosemary or the like; miniature Tomatoes; Lettuces; Kale; Borage; Carrots .. in fact pretty much anything will do!

Another novel idea if you have a little more space to plant up is to use a "tonnie" bag - the sort that builders' merchants use to deliver sand and gravel in. Filled with good drainage material at the base and then a rich free draining loam mix - these can be used to grow a wide variety of food plants in close proximity to one another and take out the back ache from bending too much or digging.

So this year - there's no excuse for not growing your own!

Religion

It's Easter in the Middle East and Orthodox churches today ... yet it was Easter last weekend for the rest - can't Christianity get it right? Probably not!

At this time of year I find myself torn between the rational that my partner Jeff represents (you don't seriously believe in that Jesus rose again stuff do you? etc etc) and the comforting but probably completely irrational spiritual side that I feel I have always possessed.

I can excuse Jeff - he's a scientist dealing in facts and figures and arguably when most in need of proof that a loving, caring God existed, he was sadly let down. Daily we read of similarly tragic stories and have to wonder ... if my God loves me why does he subject me to so much pain? You probably need to be a theologian to answer that: I certainly can't.

My kind of God, though, is one in whom I confide rather than charge with winning me the lottery ... though I probably do hope He'll be there for me if I need. Through that confidence I believe I do get some sort of positive direction and comfort.

So where does that place me within the Church? Well, I'm an Anglican - so I can rebel as much as I like and yet still claim to be of that broader church! In my early childhood I was influenced a great deal by the teachings and story of St. Francis - something that still intrigues me to this day. Patron saint of animals, he was also something of a rebel and probably deeply disturbing person to be physically close to - but his tenacity and intense confidence with his God must have been inspirational. He was a great innovator and is responsible for not only the Stations of the Cross found in Catholic churches but also our Christmas cribs.

St. Francis travelled to the Middle East to engage with Muslim scholars and I feel that he probably would share my personal view that there is as much in Islam for the Christian Church today to learn from as we perceive with our Western values that there is in the Christian tradition for the Islamic world to learn. And yet in the meantime we choose (as was happening in his day) to fight one another for our view of what our God wants us to do, the creed and customs or traditions that He might want us to practice and so on. We call upon our "loving" God to protect us and then despatch soldiers or mercenaries or others to kill and maim in His name.

When I look around the modern "secular" Britain I find it satisfying that we no longer are subjected to irresponsible and irrationale interpretations of Christian morality to dictate how we should behave or conduct ourselves (no gay person could!) but I also feel saddened that in moving away from that clarity of the "ideal" world we have thrown out all sense of public decency, kindness to others and tolerance of other people.

In My Father's house there are many rooms and I go ahead to prepare one for you - that's my God: loving, considerate, tolerant, omnipotent.

Happy Easter!

The Police - foul we cry!

I never cease to be surprised by the expressions of outrage and hurt that follow public demonstrations that have turned violent. While I would never condone violence, the recent spate of complaints following the conduct of demonstrators in the City of London almost beggars belief.

I'm deeply saddened by the death of the newspaper salesman - in my mind he was clearly the victim of being in the "wrong place at the wrong time" as much as a probable unprovoked assault by an over-hyped police officer responding perhaps instinctively to the scenes of anarchy around him. I am however bemused by the hurt shown last night on television by the woman "beaten back" by a police officer: not because I applaud his actions in anyway - but by how she thought she was not opening herself to harm by taking part in a violent controntation with the Police.

London sees many marches and demonstrations every year - they pass off peacefully enough and as one who takes part in the Gay Pride march I am grateful for the presence of the Police - particularly when passing those yelling abuse.

I recognise too, though that those marches held by extremists tend to bring out the very worst in both those demonstrators and police officers intent upon "having a go". The Thin Blue Line is there to protect our democratic right to legitimate peaceful protest as much as it is there to protect lives and property. Officers of all ranks who attend these events with their faces covered or identification numbers obscured should be dismissed: not given the opportunity to retire (on a very good pension) or resign (with their honour in tact). They bring their colleagues and service into disrepute and are as much a threat to our democracy as the extremists who hijack legitimate debate or public peaceful demonstration.

September 2008

It is of course entirely appropriate on historical grounds that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea represent the capital in Britain In Bloom. The Royal Borough is rich in horticultural association: on the Embankment we can still see the remains of Sir Thomas More’s Orchard – now known as Roper’s Garden while nearby there is the Chelsea Physic Garden, laid out for the Apothecaries in 1673, and which includes what is believed to be the earliest example of a rock garden (1773). In 1681 Looker, Cook, Field and London opened their commercial nursery over the several hundred acres on which the V&A and Natural History Museum now sit. From here Longleat in Wiltshire was first landscaped and later on George London teamed up with Henry Wise to design and supply all the plants for most of the other major gardens in the England from this nursery. Who thought that celebrity gardeners was a thing only of the late 20th Century?

Popularising gardening still further, another important local resident and figure in the history of gardening was JC Loudon who roped in his wife to assist with the production in 1826 of what they entitled: “An Encyclopaedia of Gardening: comprising the theory and practice of horticulture, floriculture, arboriculture and landscape planning including all the latest improvements; a general history of gardening in all countries; and a statistical view of its present state, with suggestions for its future progress, in the British Isles.” It’s a great read! Their now built-over garden in Bayswater contained 2,000 different species. He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.

In 1840, Benjamin Baud’s West of London and Westminster, now Brompton, Cemetery was opened and further south in about 1881, the Royal Exotic Nursery at Chelsea owned by James Veitch & Sons assisted with the redevelopment of the nearby St.Lukes’ Churchyard. The Veitch family were famous plant hunters and nurserymen and were responsible for introducing many new plants for our gardens. Perhaps ironically, work started this summer on restoring St.Lukes’ Gardens and many of the original species of plants are set to be re-introduced.

And of course today, despite the media controversy and speculation, the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea plays host each year to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Flower Show which features many new plants and displays from around the world.

Introducing new plants and varieties is currently promulgated as one of the best ways to deal with climate change – however a word of caution! Readers of the May edition of the Royal Horticultural Society magazine will see a spectacular photograph of a log cabin and surrounding trees that have been completely covered by a voracious vine, Kudzu Vine, which was introduced into the United States from Japan in 1876. Not everything exotic is necessarily advantageous!

The same magazine also has some wonderful ideas for summer tubs and window boxes and if you haven’t already thought about your own contribution to this year’s In Bloom campaign, I would urge you to consider their advice to mimic in miniature a famous public garden or space. Examples include Sissinghurst’s White Garden, Westonbirt’s glorious autumnal display, Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage (which would suit a drier prospect) or even my favourite, Roberto Burle Marx’s sumptuous Brazilian landscapes (without the tropical rain showers!). A few pots, a few plants and a little imagination can go an awfully long way!

September marks the climax of the In Bloom process – I wonder how well the Royal Borough will have fared in each of the competitions?

August 2008

In the August edition of the “Leader’s Blog” by the Leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, attention is drawn to the very negative response that some people have to trees. Where to you or I they provide shade, sustain the atmosphere or help prevent our precious soil from disappearing into the Thames, to others they are nothing more than a useful plaything on which to toughen their pet dog’s jaws.

At a recent commemorative tree planting in Holland Park, the former film director and now weekly critic / columnist in the Sunday Times (amongst others), Michael Winner, stated that trees “symbolise life”, and there can be no more poignant reminder of that when looking up through the now diseased branches of the chestnut tree that Ann Frank observed in Amsterdam from her hiding place “glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn’t speak…”. Despite the obvious dangers that that particular tree now presents on account of the extent of decay through it, the efforts to propagate new trees from it as a fall-back should the current efforts to save it are an inspiration.

I believe the oldest living species of tree is Metasequioia glyptostrodoides. A member of the Redwood tree family, its common name, Dawn Redwood, refers to the ‘dawn of time’ from whence it is thought to originate. For centuries, western scientists thought that it was extinct but in 1941 a small number of living specimens were discovered growing in the Sichuan province of China.

Rare or unusual trees are always a source of interest as much as the history behind them. In 2003 the London Naturalist published an extremely informative paper: Greater London as an arboretum – a guide to its trees. The authors are all authorities in their field and despite the evocative title of the paper (consider the whole of London as one big arboretum … ) it is particularly satisfying to see that they have included trees from the Royal borough. These include the olive tree growing in Chelsea Physic Garden that was featured in a more recent edition of the RHS Garden magazine (yes, we’ve all got an olive now thanks to these articles extolling the virtues of matching your plant choice to the changing climate!) but this doesn’t just bear fruit: it’s enormous! Another tree mentioned is the avocado Persea americana – also in Chelsea (and which I gather is fruit bearing so I won’t disclose its particular street-side location). And to complete the south of the borough, there are the Ginkgo in the Chelsea Physic Garden (dreadfully stinky when in fruit!) and Melia azedarach or what I was taught to know as a "Syringa" tree during my apprenticeship in central Africa rather than the Mediterranean from whence the species originate.

In the north of the Royal Borough, apart from an Australian Nettle Tree, Celtis australis, that excites the attention of colleagues who specialised in that flora, there’s also an extremely rare Ash – Fraxinus angustifolia ‘Veltheimii’ - in Little Wormwood Scrubs. This noble tree with its almost nonchalant wind-tossed branchlets is one of only a very few known to be planted in the United Kingdom and is of particular interest to myself on account of what appear to be saddle grafting scars. Saddle grafting is a now unusual technique where the already rooted host plant is “beheaded” and the resultant “stock” stem sharpened to a point. The “scion” (or plant being grafted onto it) is cut straight across and then has its base hollowed to take point of the stock - a bit like saddling a horse! A tight binding of grafting tape (and a great deal of luck in my experience) ensures a successful union and eventually strongly grafted plant. It is a great shame that this sort of nursery skill is both in short supply and rarely practiced as greater dependence is placed upon plants imported from around the world rather than grown at home. Is this the price of progress,

Holland Park probably has one of the most concentrated and diverse collections of trees of any corner of the borough. This worthy tradition is maintained – and protected - by the park management and Friends of Holland Park and is entirely in keeping with the original landowners’ various plantings of trees in what was once little more than open field. To be successfully appreciated such a treasure requires a reliable guide and this can be done either by accompanying the Friends on an organised tree walk (contact the Ecology Centre for further details) or by the purchasing of the recently launched guide produced by the Friends: Some Notable Trees of Holland Park – A Walk. Copies can be obtained from the Park Reception office which is open each day.

Later this year in Holland Park the Royal Borough's staff will be moving a number of Red Oak trees from their current positions beside the sports field to provide them and those remaining with more space in which to spread their branches. The equipment used for such an exercise is massive and operationally extremely technical, but this will ensure that future generations will be able to sit or lie on their backs underneath their shade and look up at blue sky breaking through the branches – just as Ann Frank did, and in whose memory a chestnut now stands on the opposite side of the sports field. It’s not just what trees symbolise … it’s that they are life that makes them so important.

The "flute" player here is one of the Japanese gardeners who visit the Kyoto Garden in Holland Park every few years to repair their handiwork.