Veg Plotting

Last week Dan Pearson came to speak at the University of Bath Gardening Club. I first heard him last year when I won a ticket to the Hay Festival (see above picture). There he previewed his latest book Spirit (you can get a flavour of what he said from this YouTube video taken at Chicago last year), but this time we were promised a talk on the Millennium Forest. We actually got three for the price of one as Dan chose to talk about some of the key projects he's been working on over the past few years. I was very happy as they're all projects in the public planting arena: Broughton Hall, Maggie's Centre and the aforementioned Millennium Forest. If you take the above link to Dan Pearson's website, select Projects and then the Commercial option, you'll find that all three projects are featured on there and it'll give you a good idea of some of the slides we saw last Tuesday evening. Apologies for the slightly convoluted way of getting there, but unfortun...

Sunday Supplement is an occasional round up of the virtual and real here at VP Gardens. I'd like it to be a weekly event just like the best bits and reviews you get in the Sunday papers, but I'm not promising ;) Web Watch More stunning photography this week: Earth as art , courtesy of the Landsat satellite and The Telegraph . Trending Topic Lots of talk about the anniversary of last year's floods in Cumbria, plus the ones which happened in Cornwall this week almost to the day. All this rather overshadowed the reports about the Environment Agency's proposed river restoration scheme in Cumbria which is designed to reduce the impact of flooding amongst other benefits and was also timed to coincide with the anniversary coverage. The link is to an article in The Guardian which tells you more about it and also has a good debate going on in the comments. I first came across this approach in the late 1990's where it was piloted on the River Skerne in County Durham. Link ...

Start up your local computer business in a small rural town Think about ways in which you can show off your expertise Install a webcam at the side of your shop Wait for a blogger with a camera to realise it doesn't quite show off the town at its best Et voila! I'm not really being fair as the company is located right behind where I took this photo, so they've had to work with what they have. I'm sure they'd have had all kinds of problems in getting permission to show off the Yelde Hall or the Buttercross in the marketplace at the other end of town. Besides, Brunel's railway viaduct is a grade I listed building too. NAH thinks it's an extremely useful webcam as it allows Westinghouse employees to see if they'll be held up in traffic on the way home. I on the other hand am used to looking at webcam views such as this one in Sydney . Chippenham's webcam updates every 10 seconds showing what's going on at the traffic lights at the b...

If you're looking for a comprehensive guide to growing fruit and vegetables, plus lots of recipes to deal with all of your produce, then you need look no further than Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion : I was lucky to be sent a review copy recently :) Stephanie hails from Australia, where she is a very popular cookery writer. In addition she's pioneered getting children involved in both growing and eating food, resulting in her founding the Kitchen Garden Foundation, which has projects throughout Australia. It means the book is slanted towards getting children involved, though it's useful to all irrespective of age. It's also a hefty tome, with over 700 pages featuring over 50 fruit and vegetables. The first part of the book is geared towards making sure the reader is adequately equipped for both garden and kitchen; plus there's a general introduction to getting started in the garden and gardening with kids. The bulk of the book deals with ea...

Threadspider and I took a trip to our local garden centre recently and saw the 'cataloguespeak' I discovered earlier this year has now found its way into the descriptions on display there. Here's a fun quick guide to the meanings behind what the signs say... Vigorous - will swamp all your other plants nearby Best eaten fresh - doesn't keep or cook well Crops heavily - you'll have much more than you'll know what to do with Unique flavour - tastes so bad you'll need to mix it with something to disguise the flavour such as chilli or ginger, or sweeten it with a whole bag of sugar Bright light in winter - you'll need to leave the light on all day, especially as we've also advised you to keep it on a north or east facing windowsill Fast growing - will engulf your house in just one season Ideal for cooking - it has no taste or is sour when eaten fresh. May also have a unique flavour Challenging - impossible to grow, so don't bother Uncommonly...

I picked a crate full of windfall apples at the allotment yesterday - do help yourself!

What are the options for our new build homes when you're given 2 minimal, postage stamp sized lawns either side of your front pathway? Here's one solution...

Today has dawned foggy of the freezing kind, so it's only just brightened up enough for me to venture into the garden to see which flowers are hanging on for dear life this month. It's been a matter of finding tiny little vignettes dotted around, most of which I fear won't last the day once the sun's rays begin their feeble work. The night's frost was sufficient to preserve my remaining flowers in an aspic-like way, but this very act of preservation may serve to turn them into mush later on. The Sedum 'Autumn Joy' pictured above is highlighted with tiny little frosted pin pricks. This flower will probably survive better than most as it'll still look attractive when the decaying flower heads turn brown later on. Elsewhere, I found frozen flowers of Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve', rosemary and Phlox paniculata 'Snow White' (see the last picture, below). Perhaps the most surprising of all was a solitary perennial cornflower ( Centaurea montana,...

Sunday Supplement is an occasional round up of the virtual and real here at VP Gardens. I'd like it to be a weekly event just like the best bits and reviews you get in the Sunday papers, but I'm not promising ;) Web Watch I'm unashamedly going to plug Britain From the Air again and the BBC slideshow presenting some of the 100 images comprising the exhibition. Our landscape is so diverse and these pictures show that even man-made features can look beautiful when seen from a different perspective. Trending Topic The campaign to prevent the government's sell-off of Forestry Commission land continues apace (see Sunday Supplement #3 ). A complementary campaign I spotted this week is the Woodland Trust's More Trees More Good which is promoting the increase of trees found in our everyday lives. Their My View tool allows any street scene or landscape picture to be taken and enhanced to show how much better the view looks when trees are added. I can see thi...

A rather surprising item we found on the menu at the local Indian takeaway whilst visiting NAH's aunt in Poole earlier this year. Although I'm a trained freshwater biologist and so I usually take finding strange river beasties in my stride, even I didn't like the thought of eating this dish!