Holiday Reading

Thanks to Garden Monkey’s recent Big Bash Books, posing the question, “What’s your favourite garden book and why?” three books arrived on my doorstep this morning:

· Karel Čapek’s The Gardener’s Year
· Beth Chatto’s Garden Notebook
· James Alexander-Sinclair’s 101 Bold and Beautiful Flowers

The first two emerged as favourites in the survey and therefore begged to be read. And 101 Bold and Beautiful Flowers has only just been published (which likely explains the lack of mentions in the Big Bash Books survey) and has been plugged on numerous blogs so joined the order list.

All three are timely arrivals as I have a lengthy journey to Cape Town later in the week, where I will be spending a few days.

I’m hoping to get the time to make it to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens but if anyone has any recommendations for other gardens worth visiting in that neck of the woods, then feel free to suggest them here!

City Planting

It’s a welcome change to read about a borough council with a seemingly forward-looking approach to cultivation in urban spaces. As The Guardian reports, Middlesborough borough council made land available for fruit and veg growing and is set to repeat the project this year following overwhelming participation from the community.

I hope sincerely that Glasgow and Portsmouth city councils aren’t the only councils who will contact Middlesborough to find out more about the scheme.

However, at a time when allotments throughout the UK are being threatened by councils and property developers wishing to make a quick buck (despite increasing demand!) , I’m unfortunately rather cynical that Middlesborough’s approach will be adopted elsewhere.

I hope that I’m proved wrong.

And I hope that more Councils start to address the growing demand for allotments and even consider going so far as to actively promote their use!

Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)

It's official. Visitors to the nations' gardens are down on last year...visitors, that is, of the feathered variety. The RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch results were out earlier this week revealing that overall, the average number of birds seen in our gardens has declined by a fifth since 2004.

Whilst all our garden favourites were still in the top 10, nearly all of these species’ numbers have fallen dramatically over the past three decades.

Now I will happily admit to being something of a twitcher in my youth and can remember staring out of the window for hours at the crowded birdtable in the winter that was covered with most of the top 10 entrants plus Nuthatches (I can’t remember the last time I saw one of these), Jays and the odd Wren when the coast had cleared.

The thought that these birds are declining so quickly is a depressing one; one that joins that long list of other depressing environmental concerns that we all face. And like most of the items on this list, we gardeners can play our part. I am a firm believer that the way individuals behave in their own backyard can make a difference to our environment; we just need to get enough individuals engaged and behaving in the right way.

So I have registered with the RSPB’s Homes For Wildlife initiative and received from them a long list of ideas to support wildlife of all types in the garden. And I will keep you posted on the progress I make.

New Beginnings

Welcome to the first instalment in what I hope will be a stimulating, engaging, and maybe even amusing, romp through all things horticultural.

Of course, the real judges of this will be you. So I encourage you to post your comments, thoughts, views and reactions on anything that seems vaguely related.

In the spirit of spontaneity I don't have any firm subjects that I promise to cover. Instead, I'm going to kick this thing out into the ether and see what happens.

What I will say is that the following things interest me and so are likely to end up appearing here: plants, gardening, garden design, garden history, garden wildlife and horticultural books (new and old!). This isn’t an exhaustive list, but I think it’s quite enough to be getting on with.

As this is the first blog entry of a new blog, I don’t imagine many people are going to come across it, if at all. But if you have stumbled across it, do pop back when there’s some more content up here.

I look forward to blogging with you all…