Natural Dyeing With Concrete

A Natural Dye Project Using Materials From Derelict Land

The online Environmental Humanities MOOC I have been doing has sadly finished. I still can't define exactly what Environmental Humanities is. It might have something to do with thinking about what could be done to improve the environment. It definitely didn't tackle the practical side to the problem. Maybe the one thing I did gain was an appreciation of how entangled Nature and Humanity are. There is no longer any 'out there', and probably never was.

Part of the course was to do an art project about an environmental concern we have. Actually we were supposed to make a Creative Intervention. That sounded too assertively ambitious for me, so I decided to stick to what I know: some natural dyeing.

A Surprisingly Exuberant Information Board

Here is my local park, Fog Lane, on a balmy December morning.

You can see the wildflower beds mentioned in October in the middle ground. Alas they have succumbed to time and are now stickbeds. It will be interesting to see what happens in spring.

In the foreground is an information board. This sometimes has a map of the park highlighting the location of specimen trees, or a list of the birds you could find in the park. If you wanted to explore the park, or had to entertain a child, I imagine this information might be useful, and it is a good sign to see evidence of someone in some council department engaged with the park beyond trimming its budget.

Generally, though, these displays are simple lists of species of plant or animal you may see. I was surprised then to see the new winter board describe in really quite poetic language the experience of being outside in nature in winter time:

I wonder who wrote this.

 

'the first frosts deter all but the hardiest of dog walkers'

 

'occasional snow can transform the park into a cold, hazy, beautiful place'

 

What chutzpah to suggest getting up early!

 

 

They add a list of things you could do.  Look at the word 'chuck'.  Surely not an official council-speak word?

'Leave a trail of footprints on frosty mornings'.  You mean it's OK to be frivolous in Fog Lane Park?


And when the writer returns to the old practice of listing species they manage to give an impression of a lively place containing forgetful birds, busy squirrels, and spontaneous fruiting bodies.

An impressive and reassuring information board. The park has someone working on its behalf who appears to have a genuine enjoyment of nature.

Hyperbolic Crochet

Manchester Museum will soon open a major exhibition, 'Coral: Something Rich and Strange'

It looks like someone has had a good thinking session and come up with a long list of objects associated with coral, then put a call out to other Manchester institutions to see if they have them.

There will be 'natural coral specimens, fossils and glass models of sea anemones with ethnographic objects, cultural artefacts, decorative art objects and artworks from different cultures around the globe. The cross-disciplinary display relies on objects from most of the Museum’s own departments – Zoology, Archaeology, Egyptology, Numismatics and Anthropology – but also draws on major loans from the Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Art Gallery. For example, Marion 'unearthed' a large collection of Victorian coral jewellery at the Gallery of Costume at Platt Hall, parts of which will be on display alongside Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Pre-Raphaelite painting Joli Cœur, among other works.'

Wow, with all that stuff on display you're bound to learn something.

And the sainted Michael Wood will be giving a speech on the opening night.

I'm guessing the impulse to mount such an extensive exhibition is the plight of living coral reefs today.  The combination of climate warming, ocean acidification, sedimentation and physical damage mean reefs are an endangered phenomenon. 

Sad.         Again.

But on the bright side the museum has a public engagement remit which means I get to do something fun and educational at the same time.

Now, this is going to be difficult to explain so please bear with me ...

one day a super clever mathematician was idly crocheting when she suddenly realised crochet would be the perfect medium to demonstrate hyperbolic space to her students. 

I know! What's hyperbolic space?  I watched this TED talk and I'm still not sure:

Luckily, you don't have to grasp the significance of the maths to have a go at hyperbolic crochet. You can just pick up the hook and do rows and rows of stitches. The curling shapes are the result of increasing every few stitches ie. every 3rd or 4th stitch. Or as the mathematicians put it, every n=3.    This regular increasing gradually produces an exaggeratedly curved shape.

So what has this got to do with coral? Well, as you see coral like forms emerge from all those straight lines of hooking.

And if you ask the public to let their imaginations run riot with this magical result and then collect the weird and wonderful shapes in a natural history exhibition room you end up with a challengingly colourful artificial coral reef.

These then are a perfect way of educating the public about coral and mathematics. All in one go.

Of course, I'm not sure if this is really the case. We are not going to become mathematicians or defenders of the reefs by  creating or seeing a mound of incredibly ugly textile art, but then again there may be a more subtle benefit.

Personally, by watching organic shapes emerge from my fingers as I mechanically counted stitches, I came to appreciate the structure and organisation underlying the seeming randomness of nature. Food for thought.

And the woman who first had the idea of crocheted reefs, Margaret Wertheim, has come to another understanding:

Wertheim says it would be hubristic to claim that her project alone could make people care about endangered reefs. Yet the last three years have brightened her outlook.

"A reef is made up of billions of coral polyps," she says. "Each one of these is completely insignificant individually, but collectively, they make up something as magnificent as the Great Barrier Reef. We humans, when we work together, can do amazing things."

My Second Tatton Flower Show

Yesterday I went with some friends  to the Tatton Flower show.
(For the sake of privacy I haven't included photos of my friends. All the people in these images are 'the general public'.)

Last year I came away with a rug, this year it was a hat.

This was a purely expedient purchase of course because it was very hot and sunny and I'd forgotten my sunglasses.

As you can see Tatton was a sea of white: white marquees, white cotton, white flesh, white hair.

The middle-aged, middle-classes were out in force for a day of ice-cream eating and the buying of stuff.

I don't think Tatton should market itself as a flower show. The more accurate title would be the 'RHS Eating and Buying Show at Tatton'.

Nothing wrong with that I suppose. I am one of the tribe after all, fully taking advantage of the opportunities to eat and buy, flowing from tent to tent in the river of day trippers, with my plastic bags rustling, and my fingers sticky from melted ice-cream. And I did admittedly have a good day with my friends. That is all you can wish for isn't it? Good times with friends.

But ... but ... would it be outrageous and immensely naive to wonder if a 'flower show' could be enjoyed without the almighty consumption of stuff? Do you remember taking the children to museums during the summer holidays and feeling aggrieved that the highlight of the trip for them was the shop at the end? The sight of a dinosaur skeleton wasn't enough. The print of the dinosaur on an eraser or pencil sharpener (and eating an ice-cream) was apparently the more enjoyable element of the visit. Sound familiar?

On a (slightly) lighter note, here is this year's 'Alpha male posing in a show garden':

As compared to last year's specimen of 'cool dude' this one left his brown shoes at home and chose to wear his pointy shoes instead. It was too hot for navy blazers so he and his friend decided the blue stripy shirt and skinny jeans combo would convey the right 'relaxed but authoritative' air.

I do wonder who was the object of their peacock display. How many commissions to design a similar garden do you think they made during the show? I don't think my fellow flustered matrons even considered it. Though we do appreciate the effort   ;-)

Chiff Chaff On A Stick

Source of Image

Yesterday I went to a talk at Manchester Museum about Garden Birds. The purpose of this outing was not only to provide food for a new blog post but to find answers to genuine questions that buzz around my head about the birds in Garden 65. For instance, where do they go after their chicks have fledged? And why, if they have to eat their weight in food to keep alive, don’t they flock around the peanut-filled feeders hanging from my tree?

As usual though, it was the other members of the audience who caught my attention. This group was quite large for this kind of thing. There were 21 people which included a high proportion of men – 6. If you remember, my previous Manchester Museum talk was populated by silver-haired women, but this one was a mixed bag of both sexes, ages, and fashion sense. Over the course of my career as a bored housewife I’ve attended a lot of talks and workshops, usually history or art related (this foray into gardening/nature is a new fascination), and can usually rely on the assumption I would be the youngest and the only one wearing something from TopShop, but yesterday was a bit of a blow to that old picture. Can you believe it, there were women in their twenties? And there were some high end tailored coats hanging from the backs of chairs, with some skilled scarf tying techniques on view.

Which is interesting. Either my self-concept is slipping or (and I hope this is the reason) birds attract an attractive crowd. I thought bird watching was all about men with pendulous binoculars. Seems that’s not the case. I sat next to a lady of a certain vintage wearing full maquillage (is that the word?) who casually mentioned she had a partner who lived in Dunham Massey (posh rural area). I wanted to interrupt her story of blue tits in her yard and say ‘oh, well done, you’.

Perhaps I should pursue birding and see where it takes me.

Back to the talk itself: Henry, in his ‘dress down Saturday’ jumper, had a collection of bird ‘skins’. Apparently one of the methods used to seriously study birds is to lay them out straight, stuff them with cotton wool (sticking little ones like chiff chaffs on a handy stick) and tie labels to their skinny little legs. A lot of the specimens were Victorian but still looked quite fresh. One of them was stuffed in 1870. Henry kept putting out appeals for more dead birds. If we were to find one we were to put them in the freezer, email him to let him know it was being sent to him, then put it in a jiffy bag and post it via Royal Mail.

Actually it was very useful to be able to look closely at the bird’s markings and to see how small most of them are. The yellow belly of a grey wagtail is a vibrant sulphurous colour, and owls have tiny barbs on their wing edges to help keep them silent.

Overall it was an enjoyable couple of hours and I’m glad I went, but I didn’t get satisfactory, or any, answers to my questions. The format was to listen to Henry and then squeeze in some questions before he left. I would like to have been able to talk to him one to one.

Wouldn’t it be good to talk personally to an expert about anything you wanted to know about, be it the Libor rate or how can 2 in 1 conditioning shampoos work? That could be a new business: rent an expert for an hour. You could meet in a cafe, pay them a tenner, buy them a coffee with a free choice of pastries, and then ask them lots and lots of questions. I’d love that.  What kind of expert would you want to interrogate?

Muck Raking With Sally

So, Eric delivered.

Unfortunately I missed him, but that's OK because Sally said he wasn't a lithe Pole. And although he wasn't wearing a flat-cap, he did sport a fine set of dentures.

But seriously ... the compost comes from a social enterprise company, Fairfield, that is situated on New Smithfield market site in East Manchester. They use the waste fruit and veg from their neighbours and woodier waste from the council or landscapers to produce an affordable compost with a low carbon foot print.

Here is a neat view of the composting process.

The stuff that Eric brought was quite woody, and he advised us not to plant directly into it, so it is certainly not suitable for planting up pots, but the soil on Allotment90 has a high clay content and will benefit from the increased texture and carbon from bits of chopped up stick.

We spent an hour and half spreading half of the compost on the ground we have so far managed to weed, and the rest we put in a storage area.

It is good to see the allotment looking neat and tidy and vibrant.

And here is proof that when the occasion demands I can wield a shovel like a pro:


Naturally, after our heroic effort we retired to the nearest cafe and scoffed down a Danish (pastry).

Allotment 90

I'm pleased to announce Garden65 has expanded into Allotment 90.

Thanks to the determination and charm of Sally we now have our own patch of land in Bradley Folds Allotments.

Officially, if anyone asks, we are helping the plot's owners keep it ticking over while they deal with a busy period in their lives. We are on the proper waiting list so we still may get a firm foothold, but meanwhile this tenuous tenure will do just fine. The owners are neighbours of Sally’s. It was their purple beans we picked in August.

Our good fortune hasn’t quite sunk in yet. I have free access to land – land without any fences round it. I’m still dazed.

The icing on the cake (and I’m talking icing made with butter not margarine) is that this plot is the one with THE shed: the gypsy caravan shed. We’ve already had tea and Danish pastries in the shed with our friend Justina. Such moments are dreams made of. Well, suburban dreams, but still, I never thought I’d be allowed to drink tea with friends on a bit of my own land. Fantastic.

Thank you Sally

Unfortunately we’ve taken possession just as November has turned very wintry. The plot needs digging over before any thought of planting can be entertained. We have made a start, but the soil has a lot of clay in it and is sticky. Pull up a weed and a clump of mud comes with it that stays stuck to shovel, glove, boot, bucket, path, shed, mug, pastry, car .... My efforts remind me of when Margo helped Tom and Barbara in the Good Life. Do you remember that episode?

This is the plot (with obliging son in it):

And in context:

Dank, eh? But joyously dank. Because whatever vegetable or flower we manage to grow in the future it is the being outside in all weathers, either alone or with friends and family, that this new chapter is about.

It did my old mum's heart good to be able to mess about in the mud - my mud - with my boy. Heaven.

Not sure I'm going to be able to do the same with the "I want to be a wedding planner" daughter. Perhaps in the summer, when it's Pimms season.

Who Is A Public Park For?

A few days ago a local ‘community interest company’ planted hedgerow saplings obtained from The Woodland Trust, in my local park, Fog Lane.

I’m not going to name the group because I am going to launch into a rant in this post, and it’s not the people themselves I have reservations about but the principle of their actions.

The reason I am feeling twitchy about this is that although planting shrubs and trees is generally a good thing (let’s hope they haven’t been imported) I’m not sure a small interest group should be allowed to plant anything in a public park.

On its website the group states its aim as providing “practical solutions to help people reduce their food carbon footprints.” Putting aside my other reservation (I have so many reservations) on the use of carbon as a way to explain climate change to the general public (i.e. do you know what a ‘food carbon footprint’ is?) I have doubts that community orchards and vegetable gardens are a realistic way to reduce food waste and decrease the reliance on large supermarkets, particularly in a city as densely populated as Manchester. They have educational benefits but are not the solution.

I am a Guardian reading, Green Party voting, Archaeology graduate and thus can’t help being concerned with global warming, globalisation, and capitalist greed. Yet, it seems to me this new interest in encouraging people to plant vegetables and apple trees is simply a fashion. To be involved with such projects must create virtuous feelings derived from helping other people and being close to nature. Sticking two fingers up to corporate Tesco in any small way is to be encouraged, and it is good to see young people thinking about self-sufficiency and the place of the individual in an increasingly homogenous and business-led world.

BUT the majority of people have no inclination, time or money to pick aphids off tomato plants or apples off trees. So at this moment in time planting hazelnut bushes remains a minority issue.

This is where I get back to my point – should minority interest groups, however well meaning, be allowed to change the contents of a public park?

If this was to be openly accepted then why couldn’t groups concerned with the mental health of the public be allowed to plant areas suitable for meditation? The design of these is generally based on oriental style gardens and involves meandering paths, bamboo, water features and herbs. Already we can see a difference in planting style from those who put their faith in a more naturalistic scheme of tree and native shrubs, and yet the motivation for each is equally worthy.

Fog Lane Park serves a fairly diverse community. On one side is affluent Didsbury and on the other the less well off Burnage. Guess where our ‘community interest company’ is based? During the day it is filled with dog walkers. At the weekends it gets busier with children in the play area and football players on the fields. By night it is haunted by drunk youths escaping their drunk parents. You could say it is a normal urban park. How many of those users have a burning desire to pick hazelnuts to roast or sloe berries to enhance their gin? This is what the group who planted the shrubs said we would be able to do in a few years time. I doubt there are many residents who would recognise a sloe even if it hit them in the eye.

If you genuinely, and powerfully, wanted to reduce the community’s ‘food carbon footprint’ wouldn’t the most practical action be to persuade the council to dig up the playing fields and plant potatoes? What do most people eat? Apple and blackberry crumble? No, chips. And bread ... would a field of wheat be viable in Manchester?

The role of the council in this is also interesting. Why did they allow their land to be planted with someone else’s shrubs? The first answer is, of course, because they were free and they didn’t have to pay anyone to plant them. A win win situation.

A local paper reporting on the event had a quote by a councillor, “the new trees will not only look great but increase the bio-diversity of the park.” Biodiversity – the new buzz word for governments. There is a directive on local councils from the government, the EU and the UN to increase the biodiversity in their areas. Manchester has lots of plans and does seem to be dealing with this. In fact I’m the happy recipient of some of its initiatives.

BUT when laws and directives and committee meetings get involved the likelihood of ‘tick boxing’ exercises increases. This is perhaps why our small youthful interest group were allowed to plant those hazelnuts. It facilitates the ticking of a number of boxes such as biodiversity and community engagement. Job done.

BUT isn’t this the type of working that allows the opening of chain shops where they are not wanted. If a large company says it can provide jobs and tax revenue a local planning office has few reasons to prevent the company from opening. Boxes have been ticked but there are no boxes for ‘maintaining local uniqueness’. I think it’s a matter of management. A small town or individual community doesn’t have someone with overall responsibility for its management. Planning applications are dealt with by remote departments with directives to meet. Likewise Fog Lane Park doesn’t have a manager (warden) with the power to say ‘is this of benefit to the local people?’

One other point – if anything needs to be improved in this park it is the facilities for the poor ducks. Their pond is a disgrace. But of course its occupants are mallards and Canada geese. These are not on anyone’s ‘must save’ list so money has not been put aside to clean the water or provide bins for discarded bread wrappers. And yet, I suggest a greater number of local people derive pleasure from feeding the ducks than they do from foraging blackberries.

Who and what should a local park serve?

The De-o-ha-ko In Debdale

 
The gradual absorption into the gardening fraternity continues: I have begun an organic vegetable gardening course.

Hurrah.

I’ll tell you more about it later, but for now here's something I came across last week.






The course is in Debdale Ecocentre. The leader, my new gardening crush, Marva, began by showing us round the raised beds and poly tunnels of the centre. She explained normally the crops would have been harvested by now but she had been keeeping them back to show us what the centre grew. So in the poly tunnels were rich displays of tomatoes (still green), vibrant salad leaves, an overwintering wormery (got to get myself one of those), and neat beds demonstrating companion planting. Outside the ground was barer but there were still little leeks, beetroots, turnips, and a bed with the Three Sisters growing in it.

The Three Sisters? These are corn, beans and squash all grown close together. The beans twine themselves up the corn and the squash covers the ground. This system of three plants is an amazingly efficient example of companion planting. The corn supports the bean plants, which in turn fix nitrogen in the ground for the benefit of the corn, and the wide leaves of the squash act as a mulch to suppress weeds and keep in moisture. Not only that but eaten together they make up a complete protein meal.

The name ‘The Three Sisters’ was given to this scheme by Native Americans. We generally think of them as bison hunting warriors but forget they existed for many thousands of years by growing crops. The Navajo and Cherokee farmed at the same time as they were chasing John Wayne. The staple crops of corn, beans and squash were so important to them they wove them into their creation myth.

“The term “Three Sisters” emerged from the Iroquois creation myth. It was said that the earth began when “Sky Woman” who lived in the upper world peered through a hole in the sky and fell through to an endless sea. The animals saw her coming, so they took the soil from the bottom of the sea and spread it onto the back of a giant turtle to provide a safe place for her to land. This “Turtle Island” is now what we call North America.

Sky woman had become pregnant before she fell. When she landed, she gave birth to a daughter. When the daughter grew into a young woman, she also became pregnant (by the West wind). She died while giving birth to twin boys. Sky Woman buried her daughter in the “new earth.” From her grave grew three sacred plants—corn, beans, and squash. These plants provided food for her sons, and later, for all of humanity. These special gifts ensured the survival of the Iroquois people.”

The sisters were seen as protective spirits and called De-o-ha-ko, (pronounced Jo- hay- ko) "our supporters."

Now this is the kind of information that motivates me to grow veg. Forget utopian sustainability nonsense. A pinch of science, ancient history, and a story that involves a turtle. That'll keep me in the fraternity - or should that be sisterhood?

Source of story

Fruit Grows in Garden65

What has happened to the old laissez-faire approach to gardening we expect from Garden65? Not only has an apple tree been purchased, from a local organic garden centre no less, but it's been carefully planted after intensive 'how to plant an apple tree' research.

The redeeming aspect of the whole episode, however, is that it was an impulse buy when the initial purpose of the nursery visit was to purchase one garlic bulb. We don't do any planning here. Let's call it an intuitive, spur of the moment, 'ooo that looks nice' approach to gardening.

TBH as autumn progresses I have been feeling the pressure to get a tree to make some sort of screen between me and the looming face of the house at the back, but I just couldn't decide what type to get. Until the visit to the nursery it was going to be a silver birch. There are already two in the garden, so if another one turned up it might look like some degree of planning had taken place. But then again we have to think of the bees, don't we? And sustainability, and peak oil and all that eco-panic stuff. A fruit tree would then be the 'right thing to do', and Garden65 could win it's save the planet badge.

I'm an avid stalker of the Twittersphere. Last week the tweets of a nearby nursery appeared on my timeline. Having fashioned a notion to grow garlic, with the assumption (as yet untested) that it would be both easy and practical to grow, it seemed a timely opportunity to support a local business. Amusingly located opposite a B&Q the garden centre is on a small triangular bit of land on a residential road (not sure what the neighbours think about the increase in traffic). It’s crammed with pots of healthy looking plants, stands of bulbs and bedding plants, and a tiny fateful area of apple trees. When I turned up the owner was tidying away fallen leaves, a good sign if you consider the lacklustre attention B&Q plants receive. She was immediately engaging and attentive and I found myself saying I wanted a tree-shaped tree. Which, to be fair, was the exact picture of my requirements but perhaps not a horticulturally useful description. It’s not a cool thing to blurt out to a plantswoman. We regrouped, then looked at a tree with bark like a red silver birch (can’t remember its name), but the apple trees were calling. To my eyes they were tree shaped; I could imagine them being able to blot out the neighbour’s house; and they did have the advantage of being good for the bees, sustainable, and not likely to invoke distain from eco-friendly friends.

Readers, I bought one.

Garden65 takes a new turn in its history.


Bud Garden Centre, Burnage, Manchester

It's A Gypsy Life For Me

The other morning Sally invited me back to the wonderful Bradley Fold Allotments to pick black beans from a friend's plot.

Can You Spot Sally Hogging The Limelight Again?

We wondered what we would do if we had a corner of the plot. Would we grow flowers or vegetables? Hollyhocks and Calendula are definitely on the list. Sally drew up plans for a pen her tortoises could use while she did some weeding - think tortoise creche.

Ideally we hoped we'd get the corner with the shed in it. Since a major part of the wish for an allotment space is the dream of just sitting outside with a book and a cup of tea (well, it is for me), this shed has the advantage of a little decking area. Can you imagine perching on there, with perhaps a glass of wine, and a woodburning stove at your feet? Sally is a vegetarian so I would probably have to bring my own sausages.

The inside of the shed would have to be cleaned up - as Sally put it 'Kath Kidsonised'. Our families would wonder why we kept taking cushions and curtains down to the allotment; surely wellies and trowels are more appropriate. Gradually the shed would turn into a place where we could escape from normal life. It occurred to us that it might get used so much a schedule would have to be drawn up, so that when we turned up in desperate need for solitude there wasn't the likelihood the other was already there, settled into her own personal refuge.

Over time we could surreptitiously bring four wheels and a couple of axles into the allotment. A wheel a fortnight wouldn’t raise any suspicions I don’t think. In the dead of night we’d do some heavy engineering. Lit by camping lamps, and with the help of a ‘Make A Wagon’ handbook, we would slide the wheels under the shed and turn it into a caravan. I haven’t worked out how we’d keep the horse a secret - though there would be plenty of food for it while we hid it - but the day would finally come when we’d hitch up the horse, sit on that decking area and go ‘giddy up’ and trot off out of the allotment, down Didsbury high street, and out into the far blue yonder.

Admittedly, being mums, we’d have to come back to make the tea and put in a new wash and find lost socks, but that moment of escape would be worth all the hassle of converting the shed to a caravan.

Or should we knock that idea on the head and grow potatoes instead?

The sound of two escaping women:


(This recording was made by Peter Wyeth who has an interesting blog)

Here are some decorative ideas:

Lots Of Compost Bins

I got a text from Sally this morning. She had been given the key to the magic kingdom and would I like to join her? Of course! So abandoning all domestic duties we snuck in - and what a wonderful place it was full of ruby red raspberries, crispy skinned onions, giant cardoons, sunny nasturtiums, and most excitingly of all: - compost bins!

In reality Sally had the key to our local allotments in Didsbury because friends of hers, who have a plot there, are away on holiday and have asked her to pick their raspberries. These allotments are behind a thick hedge and a padlocked gate, so I’ve never seen them. It’s like a whole new world in there where people committed to vegetables have created an ordered and beautiful space. The purpose of my visit was to see how proper gardeners create compost bins, but I have come away inspired to spend more time on the garden as a whole. I have to say that having been to open gardens and an RHS flower show this summer it is these allotments that have impressed me the most. Now there is a little voice in my head saying, ‘You want this too, don’t you? Admit it, go on’.

Worryingly not one of these piles has newspaper and cardboard in it.

But I'm glad to see pallets being used to construct the bins.

Some looked like World War 1 rampart walls.

Plastic darlek-like bins were also being used.

And some people had professional two bin systems.

With roofs.

Nearly all were covered. I'll have to find a bit of old carpet.

My First RHS Flower Show

At the weekend my friend Sally initiated me into the mysteries of an RHS Flower Show.

Over the years I’ve hesitated to go to the Tatton Show, which is not far from where I live, because I thought it would be like Chelsea, which judging by the BBC coverage seems a place crammed with people carrying tall plants in flimsy bags who would no doubt get in my way and I’m sure I’d get annoyed and hot and wouldn’t be able to get near the displays because there’d be packs of Sarah Ravens with their unbrushed hair in the way, and when I’d say ‘excuse me’ they’d look at me disdainfully because they’d know just by looking that I couldn’t name any of the plants ... I have indeed worked up some anxiety around attending a grand flower show.

In the end it wasn’t like that at all and Sally and I had a great time, lubricated by coffee and ice creams.

Tatton is in a big field which leaves plenty of room for ambling maddeningly past crowd phobic people. It is interesting to contrast it with Latitude Music Festival, which was also a first for me this year. Both involve getting your entertainment from wandering round a field and popping into marquees with the hope you will be wowed by what you find. There were no teenagers at Tatton, and no drunkenness, although Sally told me a cautionary tale of her sister who at a similar flower show indulged too heavily in free samples of wine. Another major difference was in the level of ambient noise. Tatton was eerily quiet compared to the constant bass thud of Latitude. You may be wondering why compare a music festival to a sedate flower show? Well, it seems to me, as an inveterate people watcher, that here are two examples of the middle class at play. It’s just that the grandparents and mothers (hello) of the Latitude kids got to reinforce their tribal identity by tramping round flower shows, rather than getting rained on at a Bon Iver concert (my son is so middle class the Latitude performance he raved about most was the ‘paper theatre’).

This lady, photographed at Tatton, seems to have confused ‘flower show’ for ‘festival’.

These legs also intrigued me. Look at the brown leather shoes teamed with jeans.

This is the ‘smart casual’ uniform of the rich man, in this case probably the rich man of the Cheshire set (I can’t account for the women). These two, admittedly attractive, men and their silver fox companion were manning a stand called ‘I Want Trees’.

If a sudden urge for mature trees grips you all you have to do is call some cool dudes (don’t you just know they drive an open top Lexus?) and they will fulfil your whim, at a price of course. You’d think they’d soften this blatant pandering to avarice with a company name that suggested gardening expertise or at least a love of nature, but no, it seems in this case there is no need to hide the base line materialism. It indicates the type of people they are dealing with: ‘I want it now, I get it now.’ I’m still a little shocked.

Generally speaking Tatton came across as a festival of consumerism, if not at the level of the above example. As you entered (at an eye watering ticket price of £28) the first half of the site was taken up with stands selling garden related knick knacks. To which I confess I wasn’t immune. I came away with a rug. Yes, I went to a flower show and left with something for the kitchen. Maybe those nightmare Sarah Ravens were right to be disdainful of me.

In previous posts I’ve confessed my ambivalence towards garden designers. Tatton didn’t manage to change my mind. Both Sally and I felt the show gardens were not as imaginative or theatrical as we had hoped. It appears as though they were all created with the same formula. This year’s fashion is evidently naturalistic planting schemes, which means wispy grasses and achillea, which are then squeezed round a ‘feature’.

And even I would hang my head in shame if I juxtaposed a mauve flower against a yellow flower in a show garden. Surely that trick is ‘term one’ of a design course?

To be fair the sets were entertaining enough. You got the same thrill as when walking round Ikea and imaging yourself sitting in that tiny living room, or in this case that weedless garden, but I wonder if the designers were constrained by the need to demonstrate client friendly planting schemes instead of being free to experiment. Money rears its head again.

Eventually we came across the real show. At the back of the site a huge marquee contained displays by specialist nurseries. Entering into the dank darkness you came into an exotic world scented by extravagant lilies, and bejewelled with perfectly formed flowers.

Giant bonsai trees as solid as elephants spoke elegantly of the patience it had taken to shape them. Heucheras of all hues glowed seductively and little ladybird poppies made us go ‘Aww’.

It was good to see genuine horticultural skill. If there was any justice it would be the nursery men and women who got to pose in their shades and rich man shoes.

I'm very pleased I went. It wasn't as intimidating as I imagined, the plants were amazing, and the company was lovely.  Thank you Sally.


[My views on Tatton in 2013 where another version of the cool dude was spotted are posted on 27 July 2013]

5 Reasons To Visit A Park

Reasons to visit a specific place

In December last year Natural England published a report on how people use the greenspaces around them. The powers that be want to see where we go, how far we are prepared to travel and how much money we spend when we get there. For example, although 7% of visits (between 2009 and 2011) were to the coast this type of location accounted for 20% of expenditure. In other words, it costs a lot to go the seaside.

Perhaps not surprisingly given our predominantly urban population, parks were the most popular environment to experience nature. Woodlands and rivers also ranked highly, with mountains and allotments some of the least visited categories.

Analysis of the various reasons given for visiting specific greenspaces revealed dog walking as the main motivator for using them, though this wasn’t the case when going to mountainous areas and beaches. I wonder if that is because if you let your dog off the lead in an unfenced area he’ll just run and run. Overtones of Fenton here, maybe?

Glancing through this report made me think about my own visits to the great outdoors, and I have to admit I too seem to need a concrete reason to go. I don’t have a dog, but do have children, and have used them as a similar excuse. We did visit parks and local woodlands far more when they were younger. I think it’s also true that more ambitious trips to the Lake District and the coast were also done ‘for the children’. Now they are teenagers I can’t use them as cover, which means I don’t go out into the countryside as much. I now have to find my own reasons to don the wellies.

Luckily I have this blog and its insatiable appetite for new posts. As I’ve said before people seem to have to have a purpose to use a park. Somehow there is a feeling that if you go there simply because it’s nice you could be opening yourself up to accusations of indolence.

For fun I had a quick think of the real reasons I have for setting foot in my local park, Fog Lane.

My reasons for visiting my local park

• Top motivator is the blog, either in the hope something will catch my eye, or to investigate something specific. In the past the park has also been the subject of artwork. And I’m sure we’ve all gone holly robbing at Christmas. So top reason, I suggest, is ‘creative projects’.
• Not far behind is riding the bike on traffic free paths. When I’m feeling energetic I jump on the bike and do a loop of three local parks, going from one to the other via quiet backstreets. It probably doesn’t qualify as proper exercise – I hardly break sweat at all – but it does feel good to zip along without worrying about lorries and traffic lights. Second reason is then ‘exercise’.
• Sometimes the park is used more practically as a short cut. In the winter I’ve trudged through snow to get to a friend’s house, and in summer, after spending a day in the city, I’ve got off the bus a couple of stops early and cooled off by ambling home across a field. It’s like a little sip of nature. Third reason: to get from A to B.
• The last two motives are purely psychological. The park is somewhere to go on those occasions when I’ve run screaming from the house. And then there are times when Curiosity says ‘what’s going on over there?’.

Do you think the way you use greenspaces would be covered by a tickbox in a government survey?

Daisies Smile Defiantly At Tesco's

July seems to be the month of oxeye daisies (though I think it's normally June, but this year has gone all awry).

And Monday is Tesco day. My weekly shop has developed into such a routine event that much of it is accomplished without any conscious thought. Somehow I find myself back in the kitchen with a couple of bags of shopping. This Monday’s visit began in much the same way. Quickly scratch out a shopping list – dodge the rain to get in the car – Radio 4 – automatically turn into the car park ... but this time there was something different ... exclaim out loud ‘What’s that?’ (I’m sure you talk to yourself in the car too). On the other side of the road a big starry display of white flowers has miraculously appeared.

The road junction where my Tesco sits is complicated. If you stand in the middle of it you have the option of going to three towns, as well as in or out of Manchester city centre. At that precise point is a small triangular green space; too small to be called a park. It contains trees and grass and at certain times of day groups of slouchy children going to the nearby high school. But at the moment an extravagant sea of meadow flowers sits amongst the mad confusion of cars and buses.

I came back to it on my bike to have a closer look. Whoever planted it has done a good job. The daisies and poppies will go over soon, but there are thistles and other plants I don't recognise still developing their buds, and primroses are still flowering underneath. It’s the kind of planting that a brave council might try in the larger areas of grass in a big park, not a tiny noisy traffic island. I wonder if it's the result of some subversive guerrilla gardening. I hope so.









This traffic island was created in the 1930s, perhaps earlier. A bus depot was on the current Tesco site, on the very edge of Manchester, and the roads from the three towns (then villages) were wide and quiet. The current high school with its associated cinema complex were the kitchen gardens and orchards of a grand house.

1935 map  of Parrs Wood showing bus depot and open ground

1909 Looking through rail bridge to Parrs Wood

1935 Bus depot to left (and no cinema to right)

 As Manchester developed all the surrounding land was built on and another bigger road was driven through. The bus depot closed and as the wheel of time has turned we now have a large tram terminus being built nearby. During all these changes the triangle of greenery remained. To be honest it would help the traffic flow immensely if it was cut down and turned into a proper roundabout, which would make my Tesco run much smoother, and I’m sure I’m not the only one has thought that. I don’t know why it survives. Perhaps it was bequeathed to the council and can’t be altered, though more likely it’s a matter of lack of money.

This new fashion for councils to plant meadow flowers and leave grass to grow high is caused by having to meet national biodiversity standards, and shrinking budgets, but it has the effect of producing chaotic areas of nature in the normal urban landscape of concrete and conformity.

How strange that this small overlooked traffic island has become, by the simple addition of oxeye daisies, a gentle symbol of sedition against one of the greatest examples in our age of corporate banality.