Grief

I feel compelled to write this, a strange feeling that occassionally comes and I assume no one will be interested in. And then I hope that is wrong because what I am about to say comes from kindness and the want for people not to suffer.
I apologise that there is very little gardening involved but I promise to get back to that and soon.
David Bowie is dead.
Today for the first time ever I sobbed for someone I never knew, had been in the same room as physically other than 3 times in stonkingly large arenas) or who had any idea I was alive.
And then I questioned, through those tears what right have I to cry about a death that doesn't really affect me. My life is effectively the same. Nothing has changed.
Yet it feels like everything has changed.
So I stayed at home and watched social media throughout the day as I got on with normal things but still with this weird sense that everything had changed and wondering why. Listening to tracks that made me cry again. Tracks I had forgotten. I went into town and listened to the radio, singing along at the top of my voice to Kooks, always one of many favourites. I went to a favourite cafe that was playing Ziggy Stadust on repeat, and sniffled into my tea, whilst watching others of my generation and dare I say type, behaving similarly. All in pain with an air of confusion.
And then I remembered. I remembered the 8th December 1980. I remembered driving home with my brothers and mum in the car, listening to Radio 1 to keep us quiet, and sitting outside the house as the 5.45 news came on. The news of the death of John Lennon being shot and dying. And I remember mum screaming at us to be quiet whilst she listened to the news looking lost and confused and finally sobbing. And then apologising because she was sobbing over someone she had never met and saying how silly she felt.
Then I didn't understand that. Suddenly today I do. I remember thinking how silly she was being, in my wise 11 year old brain. How could you be so upset about someone you don't know? I'm sad to say I took no notice and went upstairs and probably spent the evening complaining that the radio was constantly playing Beetles tracks. But today I understand. And feel the need to apologise.
What we are mourning is our youth. Those heady days when we believed everyone was immortal, and that our heroes would always be there.
Perhaps today we are also mourning not only the loss of a great man, but also the loss of the man who made us all realise it was ok to be different. That we didn't have to "fit in". That we could reinvent ourselves as often as we liked.  That suddenly made it ok to be "creative" and made arty ok again, even in the middle of the economically driven 80's. In a school that was, really, very staid and expected a line to be walked, Bowie made it ok to not conform and so while some listened to slightly iffy 80's synth pop, some of us listened to Bowie, concentrated on the arts and read. Some of us even gardened knowing that however weird some people thought we were, it didn't matter as it was what we needed and wanted to do.
It occured to me today that the reason I first read "Seven Years in Tibet" was Bowie, that book that changed my life in that it made me interested and passionate about social justice and equality was introduced to me by him in some interview or another. And so I realised that actually, in the absence of anyone thinking laterally and suggesting horticulture as a career, I ended up at art school, painting pictures and taking photographs of the environment.
We're mourning the loss of a great man, but also a great influence. A cultural icon of the type it's actually hard to see as human. We are mourning our youth.
And then I realised I couldn't apologise to mum, because she too is gone. And even now, nearly 14 years later, that knocks everything out of my soul and leaves me struggling for breath. All the feelings that life can't possibly go on and the confusion of the space left both physically and mentally come flooding back and it feels like it's yesterday that that life changing moment happened. It's a moment from which you never recover, but have to rebuild a life from, holding tightly to loved ones and friends. A moment from which forever you are seemingly moving away from that lost person, leaving them in that moment as you try to move forwards.
Yet it focuses the mind and makes you realise what's important. It also makes you realise that whilst you focus on the physical loss of that person, their soul is embedded deeply within you, influencing your every move. And whereas we may not, most of us, have that loss of the physical today, that influence is what we are mourning because it has gone.
So being me and having worked all this out in my mind, and laughed and cried and listened and thought, I wondered what we do now. When mum died I did the oddest things, revisiting places I knew she loved and going to places, or really mainly gardens, that I know she had wanted to visit but had never managed to get to. Great Dixter, Sissinghurst, Nymans, the Dales, Hampton Court all saw me plodding around, taking them in, deep in thought and remembrance. Hard as it was I slowly began to see the beauty in things, the way things worked and were designed and why. And so the rebuilding began.
And so it makes sense for us to grieve whilst revisiting albums, listening and understanding both new and long lost lyrics with a new found appreciation. But also let's celebrate the different and rather than avoid what we don't understand, let's embrace it whatever or whoever it is. Let's focus on kindness and understanding rather than persecuting what we don't know or understand. After all isn't that the best legacy anyone could have?

Walking away.......

It's been a while. Not sure why other than the usual, difficult period when the light begins to fade and I really find doing anything that I don't absolutely have to really difficult.
Last year was hard. Leading on the one hand on a high profile Bristol European Green Capital project with Incredible Edible Bristol that was set to increase the visibility of food growing in the city whilst watching the environmental devastation of the allotment land I had taken on and loved was very tricky to reconcile in my own mind, and was something I struggled with on a daily basis. Seeing the diggers and bulldozers on that precious Grade 1 BMV (Best and Most Versatile) soil broke my heart as did the scenes of destruction when the land began to be torn apart. Watching the bulldozers taking out the wildflower meadow at Feed Bristol was heartwrenching and seeing the hedges behind the plot taken out in peak nesting time knowing that they were home to not just birds, but invertebrates and mammals whose populations will take decades to recover if they ever do, was like watching a horror movie.
And then, just as we thought it was all over, the work on the hillside opposite began. Trees obliterated, grassland removed, huge swathes of beautiful soil prepared for concreting. I saw this on a cold, grey day in December and sat in the greenhouse and sobbed. Sobbed great big tears of sorrow and loathing for a world in which, on one hand we are celebrating the outcomes of the COP in Paris and yet allowing this raping of our lands to continue in the name of progress and profit.
Ecocide. Look it up. It's a thing and it's happening worldwide.
Whilst here in Bristol we see huge tracts of land including the BMV soils of the Blue Finger, common land, ancient woodlands and more disposed of for the sake of a bus route that is already being called a white elephant by many, in Sheffield they are removing street trees for health and safety reasons. Perfectly fine specimens being razed to the ground rather than being looked after for their pollution controlling properties, not to mention the amount of wildlife they will support. Even if they are replaced it will take decades for new specimens to recover the biodiversity lost by the culling of these trees.
So on a personal level I have had to make difficult decisions. Moving helped those decisions but in all honesty even if I had moved far away in normal circumstances I would never even have considered giving up that piece of rich and fertile land. But the heartbreak and the broken community of allotment holders that was creating became too much. The black dog was literally sitting on my chest taking up all my time and being at the land became a hideous dark time when I knew I ought to be there but could't get away fast enough. There was constant bad feeling between allotment holders who couldn't see past the occupation of the land, tools and plants were disappearing and then, as a final blow a whole raft of plants disappeared from my plot. And not just plants. My fuchsia that was given to me by Christopher Lloyd

, hellebores from my dear mums garden and a monkey puzzle that I bought from a dear friend nearly 10 years ago.
All gone. Disappeared. Taken by someone who I assume was so greedy that they couldn't see what they were doing was wrong.
And so the final decision was made by that final blow. The allotment that I loved, lost sleep over, cried huge, sobbing tears over, has been handed back to the allotment team who have worked so hard to be the mediators in this dreadful battle.
Where I expected to be heartbroken, I am only relieved. A weight has been lifted and I can now begin to fight for the Blue Finger in a far more intelligent and thought led way, rather than emotionally and constantly on the verge of either tears or anger. My determination to continue to help and support that fight is no weaker, but my ability to do so is strengthened by making some distance.
And as one door closes another opens as those great folks at the allotment office are helping me find a new and closer site with a plot that I can call my own, which won't happen over night, but will happen in the nearish future.
In the meantime I am looking forward to starting growing in the garden of our new home, and carrying on creating growing spaces across this city on those pieces of land that are lost and unloved, inspiring people to begin growing their own food and connect with the earth. The journey continues........

The Sadness of Broken Promises

Here we are suddenly in autumn it seems. Mornings have become misty and cool and the light has changed and is that bit lower making everything brighter and the colours deeper. Normally at this time of year allotments are a hive of activity;last tomatoes are being picked, pumpkins harvested, beans left to dry for haricots over winter, apples falling and being collected.........

At our allotment site it doesn't feel like this. The work at the front and to the sides to create new parking facilities and the new plots is almost done and the allotment holders who are moving from their old plots to the new ones are half way through their move.
A move that has been at best disappointing and at worst heart breaking.
A move that continues to divide an allotment site.
A move that makes no sense on this stunningly fertile, Grade 1, Best and Most Versatile soil.

At this point it's worth saying that the allotments team at Bristol City Council have done absolutely everything they could to make this transition less painful for those moving. There have been meetings with people moving, help sought from the contractors and deep kindness from the allotment officer who has had the unenviable task of being the go between with the allotment holders and Metrobus. And for that we thank them.

However, allotment holders were promised things that have just not appeared, such as new sheds(I was at the meeting in Lockleaze where that was promised along with several others) and real help with moving, when the reality has been that inspite of those promises these things have not materialised. New huts have been provided but allotment holders have been charged for them, a flatbed lorry was brought in for a day but with little thought as to when people might be available and that has been it. There are still no toilets or a building as promised for the association to use and we hear that the work is almost done and the contractors will soon be leaving site so I wonder if these things will materialise? The programme of works states that no work is to be begun on the road until the allotments are reconfigured so deep down I doubt anything else will be done with any sense of urgency and we could be growing in a construuction site for at least the next 18 months.........

And of course with this comes confusion and hurt. Plots lost that have been worked by the same families for generations. The chap on the new site opposite the end of our plot, where we used to have wildlife corridor and then Feed Bristol's amazing wild flower meadow, can often be seen sitting on a plastic chair looking bewildered at the task ahead and he is, at least, on the land and starting. Where the soil was brought in and stored for many months, the weeds have begun to take over and the new plots are head height in fat hen and other annual weeds.
At least they are annual I hear you say but they have started to flower and seed and will have an effect not only on the new plots now, but on all that are near by.
The new soil, although ok in terms of fertility, is not Grade 1 as it simply cannot be. It is clay, dense and full of stones, rather than of a decent tilth. It is, as we always knew it would be, disappointing for those who had spent generations maintaining the fertility of the soils on their plots.

And who is to blame? Funnily at this point we know it's far from being the city council, because thereare many, many organisations and corporations in the mix. In the first instance Metrobus should never have made promises that they knew they would not keep, and should have set up liason with the allotment holders which they said they would do but never did. They should have listened with open hearts and minds rather than thinking about purse strings and speed of delivery. They should have listened to the community who said and continue to say "we do not want this", "this is wrong" and "this will not work".
But in usual top down fashion those people think they know best. They think they are in power and that they are going to consult that community by saying this is what we are going to do and we expect protest but we are doing it anyway, making small alterations along the way that might mean something but in reality doesn't change the devastation people feel.

But these people are not elected officials.
They are officers.
They are corporations.
They are only as important as we allow them to be. Surely?
In a truly co-productive society this would never happen because everyone would be around the table not just the people who were for the event.
We would all have an equal say. So all communities would be listened to.
Imagine that........

And whilst you imagine that, we will listen out for the sound of the concrete lorries that will soon be pouring their load all over a significant part of people's lives as well as Bristol's best and most versatile Grade 1 soil on our precious Blue Finger.

New plots-weeds, stones, and not even layed out!!

The beginnings of the stones removed from one plot....

Grow Your Own Wedding Flowers........Georgie Newbery's latest flower farming book is here!!

Being sent a copy of Georgie Newbery's new book, which, by the way will be published in early November, was a complete treat and made my day on Saturday when it arrived. It is a thing of beauty. A coffee table tome. The kind of book you would be proud to display when you wanted to show off a bit perhaps. It's cover is a beautiful bouquet that could only have come from Common Farm Flowers, full of exquisitely conditioned roses and sweet peas, fennel and poppy seed heads. It is a quintessentially English bouquet that any bride would be thrilled to have as part of her special day.

Now to actually review a book by a friend is hard, and so, frankly, I'm not even going to pretend that is what this is. However, I do have one issue and that is the name of the book, Grow Your Own Wedding Flowers, ought to be Find A Wedding To Grow Flowers For, because this book is not just how to grow flowers for your wedding. It goes far beyond that. From cutting and conditioning, to quantities of stems needed and advice on how best to manage the floristry as well as tips on scheduling and how to manage the flowers and floristry at the same time as everything else, what this book gives the reader is an insight into how Common Farm Flowers grow, manage and cut for weddings every season of every year. But you could change the word wedding and add any event that flowers might be appropriate at and this book is for you. In fact you could decide you wanted to grow a great bouquet for yourself, a friend or relative and this book is for you. And even if you decide not to grow your own flowers, this book is full of inspiration to help you decide what you want from your event flowers.

What I found really wonderful are the four chapters that help the reader to decide what it is they are going to grow for the appropriate season that their special day falls in. It doesn't just concentrate on what you can grow, although it covers that comprehensively with sections on annuals, perennials, bulbs and shrubs, but it also looks at how wild flowers, the plants already growing in the garden, including plants for foliage, can be added into the palette of plants being produced, as well as separate sections on how to cut and condition these. Alongside these are sections about the symbolism and meaning of individual flowers; daisies for loyal love, sunflowers for loyalty and longevity and on each page are the most startlingly beautiful photographs of weddings that Common Farm Flowers have created both flowers and floristry for.

What is particularly special about this book though, more than the words and the photos, is the insight into the work that Georgie and her amazing team put into not only each and every wedding they create such wonderful floristry for, but in fact the work and effort behind running such a hugely successful business as Common Farm Flowers is. She speaks lovingly of slow flowers, allying the way she and Fabrizio work the land with the Slow Food movement, one at which love and care for the land and the other species that inhabit it is constantly at the centre of everything they do. She speaks of organic practises, compost teas and the gentle ways in which they steward the land from which these magnificent flowers are cut and with this knowledge it is no wonder that the quality of both the flowers and the floristry sing through.

At Common Farm Flowers a successful business has been made growing flowers for cutting and creating floristry with those flowers in a way that is kind to the earth, wildlife and people. This book proves that you can have an ecologically sound and principled business, producing a really extraordinary product that is also sustainable and principled. Take this book and apply the principles to your garden and you won't go far wrong, in both growing and ecological practises. And you will have some magnificent flowers that you could, if you wanted to, use for a wedding.

I forgot to mention that Sarah Raven wrote the foreword. I also forgot to mention that if you can get through the acknowledgements without a tear, then you are a less sentimental soul than I!

As a little addendum I have to mention the Common Farm Meadows. Teaming with butterflies, pollinators and full of orchids and native wild flowers, they are a complete marvel and speak of Fabrizio's understanding and love of the land for which he cares. Whilst Georgie is the force behind the floristry and the commercial business, Fabrizio manages the land, always with an eye on the natural turning of the seasons and the vast amount of other species who inhabit the land alongside the family and the team. Once upon a time I commented that these meadows are on a par with those at Great Dixter, and those who know me also know I would never say such a thing unless I truly meant it. This summer they were stunning and could only have been brought into being by a man who knows the land. I doff my cap to Fabrizio, steward of the extraordinary land at Common Farm.

What do you look for in a garden?

I've been thinking a lot recently about gardens.....
No surprise there I hear you say, but what I have really been thinking about is what I find makes a garden successful and seeing if I could pinpoint the answer. Obviously stunning planting schemes help but often that isn't enough, and sometimes however beautiful the planting, I feel let down by places that I thought would be mind blowing.
Now there is no doubt that plants and the way they are used is a hugely important part of a successful design. For me, and this is purely a personal thing, I find too much hard landscaping often overwhelms me and that if the majority of the design isn't planting or plant related that I struggle. I'm not a fan of lots of stone, unless it's a drystone wall in which case I'm in heaven, and I think the decade of Titchmarsh blue we had in the 90's put me off coloured fencing for life!
And then the love for a drystone wall made me really think. It brought back memories of the North Yorkshire moors and the Dales that I spent my childhood exploring. It reminded me of my mum who became a bit of a drystone master and made many in her garden, often using them to differentiate between one space and the next. It made me think about the little cracks we found ferns on the moors and the mosses I was fascinated by. And it occured to me that this was interesting, not because I only loved a garden with a drystone wall, but because all the gardens I really admire and return to over and over, fit in the landscape they sit in. They feel like they should be there. They speak to and of the landscape that surrounds them, regardless of native plants or drystone walls. They feel like they have always been there.
And that feeling of belonging is a very clever and quite wondrous thing because not that many, or many that I have found, really have it. Large historic gardens, with their history and their traditions, often leave me asking why everyone raves about them, and I think this is why. Often they are a very beautiful space attached to their house, but often also they are not meant to be a part of any landscape that surrounds the gardens and hence ar just a well put together (or not), collection of plants.
So, I hear you ask, give us examples.......
Great Dixter is one such place with it's stunning topiary and mixed herbaceous borders that lead into meadows and in turn into the counrtyside beyond. There's the most incredible views from the area by the entrance gate and the way the meadows coccoon the main garden leads you gently out into the Sussex countryside beyond. At once you are held in the garden, in a safe and beautiful space that feels a little removed from the world, but always reminded of the countryside by the meandering meadows with their orchids and other native meadow plants that are rarely a part of the planting palette in a garden.
Veddw, the garden of Anne Wareham in Monmouthshire, does just the same and although I know Anne will hate me likening Veddw to Great Dixter, the way the gardens sit in the landscape talk directly of each other. At Veddw the history of the site that is spoken of in the garden, the woodland and the meadows again seat the garden firmly in the landscape and make it feel as if it has been there for a thousand years, overlooking the views; contemplative and at some points dark but always right and just.
The garden of the designer Tom Stuart-Smith is another space that sits comfortably, even though in the front garden is a reworked example of one of his RHS Chelsea gardens, with dark pools and Hakonechloa, as you walk through the space the boundary between the garden and the north Buckinghamshire landscape is blurred by meadow that leads into the farmland beyond. Whilst at once designed it is also seated to it's spot in the world, and speaks of the land around it.

This photo is of the meadows behind Great Dixter, leading up to the succulent steps, but it could as easily be a village green that the house sits next to or even fields leading up to the house. The meadows, while being part of the garden are a tool that seats the garden into the surrounding countryside, whilst still being very much a part of the garden. Considering the vibrancy of the planting, particularly in the tropical garden, it could also be seen as the meadows buffering the countryside from some of the garden!!

This picture of the Veddw shows a view from the garden across to the countryside beyond. The whole garden sits within the space as though it has been there for centuries which is not something that I find is either thought about often, let alone actually managed.
So thinking about all of these things I think for me a successful garden is far more than a design or a collection of stunning plants, but more about the space in which that design or collection lives and how it talks to and of it's surroundings.
With that in mind, off I toddle to see a botanic garden in a park I spent hours in as a child and which I had no idea was there-I wonder how that will fit into it's space........

Some Love for our Botanic Gardens

Botanic gardens, be they large or small, pull me towards them like a bee is drawn to nectar. These, often ancient, gardens with their collections of often rare, and always magical plants speak volumes not just about the British love of plants and gardens but also about the history of plants in the UK, the way they were collected and eventually planted out. Many a collector sent their finds back to Kew, or another of our world renowned botanic gardens, and those gardens would sow the seeds, nurture the plants and then offer out the propagation of these plants to nurserymen. The plants we take forgranted as being the backbone of our gardens began their life in the country being looked after by these incredible places.
Bristol has a wonderful botanic garden, that today sits just north of the Downs in the garden of one of the University of Bristol's Halls of Residence. It has moved here quite recently from another site and it is proof of the brilliance of the team who work there, both paid and voluntarily, that it looks as though it has been there forever. The garden has 4 core collections, Evolution, Mediterranean, Local Flora and Rare Natives and Useful Plants and these can be seen used over a selection of gardens that include a herb garden, a Chinese Medicine Garden, beautiful herbaceous borders that are set out to show which plants are pollinated by which insects, or indeed small mammals in some cases, as well as sections based on the evolutionary collection and the collection of plants native to Bristol and it's surrounding area.
It also has amazing glass houses with a National Collection of Lotus, which are beyond beautiful and offer an ethereal beauty to a glasshouse that also house the Victoria Amazonica waterlily and a huge collection of Nepenthes.
But, like every botanic garden in the UK and probably worldwide, it is being squeezed by budget cuts and constantly is having to fight to survive. It's well documented that Kew's budget is always under threat but so are the budgets of the majority of these gardens, as few universities actually use them as a resource hence their constant fight for survivial.
So what can you do to help? Well make sure you know where your local botanic garden is and use it!! So many people I speak to about the Bristol Botanic Garden are completely unaware of it's existence and I imagine the same is the case for many. Visit, become a member or a friend, go to their events or even volunteer to help in the garden or in some other way. An hour helping them once a week with marketing or admin releases someone else to raise precious funds or other do other vital roles that are less easy to find volunteers to cover.
Here are a few photos of Bristol Botanic Garden that I took at their recent Bee and Pollinators Festival.

 The Amazon waterlilies with the Lotus plants growing above them are quite beautiful in the tropical glasshouse.

 Always good to see a bee buzzing around at a Bee and Pollinator festival!!

 This is a custard apple and it was growing in the Native American Food Garden on which there will be a full post soon.

The wonderful bird of Paradise plants, which in their native countries are pollinated by sunbirds.

Hooray for SylvaGrow!!

Yesterday Melcourt's SylvaGrow 100% peat free compost was awarded the accolade of best newcomer in the chemical, fertilisers and composts category at the Glee, the UK's premier show for the horticultural industry.
This is excellent news on so many levels, because it's proof that peat free compost is now being taken seriously in an industry that often fails to consider its environmental impact, or makes excuses for not doing so.
Recently I visited a nursery who have created a new compost and were keen for the people visiting to trial the product. I asked various questions about the product including what the peat content might be, really hoping they were going to say peat free or at least a very low proportion. But, and here's the crux, when I asked what the peat content was, it turned out to be 80%. 80%!!!!! When I expressed shock they were very quick to say that any government guidelines for peat reduction are voluntary, they were not the only ones still using it, plants can't be grown as well in peat free composts and all the usual excuses and were genuinely shocked when I refused, point blank, to take any home with me.
Now we all understand that although peat does eventually replace itself it is an extremely long process of thousands of years and so when used as a fuel it is classified as a fossil fuel. Peat bogs are singularly the best and most efficient carbon sinks we have and although they are still used for energy around the world, the use of peat in horticulture has long been seen as an issue. In 2011 the UK government asked the industry to look at voluntarily reducing peat use so that by 2015 all publicly procured plants were peat free, all amateur composts and growing mediums would be peat free by 2020 and all commercial media to be peat free by 2030. At the time this created serious ripples within the industry and there were a lot of the smaller growing media companies working really hard on creating great peat free alternatives. However, the bigger companies carried on as usual and the one we were dealing with at the time actually just laughed when we brought it up with them and told me in a phone conversation that they would speak to my boss as I was obviously an hormonal woman not able to see reality yes, seriously said those words) and laughed.....
 As at the time we were using over 50 tonnes a month of their product, when the nursery made the jump to peat free, they were, to say the least, surprised and shocked and sent us a hugely patronising report on how peat free growing media would never take off as an industry standard. Sadly so far they have been proven correct.
I wonder where we are with this? Again and again I'm told by growers that it's impossible to grow without peat, but as a professional grower myself I have grown trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants in peat free compost (actually in Melcourt SylvaGrow) and although, without a doubt, it was a challenge to begin with because it is a new media and any new growing media take time to get used to, it took a reasonably limited amount of time to get it right and to start to produce plants that were at least as good in standard as anything that had been produced previously with peat. On a personal note, at home, at the allotment, and for the Physic Garden, I have always used peat free compost, including for seed germination, and again I have never seen this as an issue.
But here's my real concern. People see gardening as being green, environmentally friendly and good for the planet, which in the main it is, but it could be more so. Peat reduction would be one way of doing this, instead of every time it raises its ugly head stating that it's only a voluntary reduction in peat, and so not law and so not really taken seriously. I seriously hope that Melcourt winning this award might get people talking about this and realising that peat free growing media is now a real alternative.
Fingers crossed I guess.........

This Philadelpus was grown from a cutting in peat free compost and flowered for the first time this year. The compost in it's pot today is Melcourt's SylvaGrow and that is what it has been potted into at each stage of it's growth.