Landing Ideas, Tips & Guides

August has been a strange month and although in parts of the UK has been particularly wet, here in the no-mans land between the East and West Midlands we have had rain throughout the month, but not in any great quantity, and it has been warm rather than hot Looking back, I am guessing this the reason behind the almost overwhelming growth in the garden, growth of annuals, perennials, shrubs  – and WEEDS!

My name is Judy. I have been gardening for many years but with no formal training. I have learned a lot by trial and error. My husband and I moved to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia (Zone 7B) four years ago, to an existing house surrounded by woods but a yard bare of any trees or flowers. The soil is clay, poor and full of moles, and the local deer population is hungry, so I have had challenges to overcome. I am continually improving soil and editing plants that surprised me in the way they developed. Each year I have focused on expanding my garden into new areas. This year’s project was my hellstrip of sorts, the narrow strip of land between my driveway and the woods.

My promo copies of the ‘Growing Vegetables is Fun’ bookazine arrived on Tuesday, and I’ve been having so much fun dispatching them to their new homes that I’ve only just now got round to blogging about it!

The English obsession with grass came into being in the 17th century, when the close cut lawn was a status symbol of the rich. Only they could afford to take land out of production for purely aesthetic purposes, and maintaining a lawn before the invention of the mower was a highly skilled and labour-intensive process. The middle classes started growing lawns from the 1860s onwards, and the Victorian popularity for outdoor sports led to their proliferation. Grass species from the Old World were taken to America during this period, and the lawn took there over in the early 20th century. In 2005, NASA published research suggesting that lawns (including residential and commercial lawns and golf courses) were the single largest irrigated ‘crop’ in America, covering about 128,000 square kilometres. In 2013 there were upwards of 15 millions lawns in Britain, costing us £54 million in fertilisers and £127 million on lawn mowers.

Fresh from wondering where my writing career is going, I thought it might be fun to revisit some of the places it has been. In 2007 I was just starting out as a freelance writer, having been made redundant from my job as a techie. I’d been blogging for several years, and was slowly getting published (and paid!) online and off.

Last month, writing on the topic of blackberries for Lubera, I made the observation that the British don’t have a tradition of foraging. It made me wonder again when and why we lost it (which I started wondering when I was writing about Sea buckthorn on FB for Lubera). So far I haven’t found a definitive answer – ethnobotanists spend a lot of time exploring the reasons for loss of traditional/indigenous knowledge about plant use, but generally focus on societies where it is being lost now, and where there is hope of conserving it.

On Friday evening we headed to London (an unusual event in itself) to the Natural History Museum for one of their special After Hours events. The museum stays open late into the evening for guests who have booked tickets to visit the special exhibitions while it’s quieter (although the main bulk of the museum closes as normal). We weren’t booked in for an exhibition – we ended up in the restaurant for a special tasting session of edible insects.

A few weeks ago I received a press release from Waitrose about their new Alan Titchmarsh gardening range. It’s a fairly routine set of offerings, all nicely packaged up. The one that caught my eye was their ‘Broadfen’ horseradish thong, which they said is a “heritage variety first grown by the Egyptians (1500 BC).”

What happened to my allotment is a reminder that it’s not just animal and insect pests we have to worry about in our gardens – humans can be a problem as well. Bob Flowerdew refers to such anti-social individuals as ‘two-legged rats’.

Allotments are going to be all the rage this year. The National Trust recently announced that they’re making available enough spare land for up to 1000 allotments, via the Landshare scheme. British Waterways and British Rail are in on the act, too, looking for land along canals and railway lines that could be used to grow vegetables.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Home Front, the enlistment of every man, woman and child in the British Isles in an effort to beat Hitler through food rationing, making do and mending, salvage, growing your own and basically making the most of scarce resources with elbow grease and endless ingenuity. I’ve just read Eggs or Anarchy by William Sitwell, a biography of Lord Woolton who was the Minister of Food for much of the Second World War. He was in charge of ensuring everyone got fed, and improving nutritional standards was one of his aims. It’s unusual to get the ‘behind-the-scenes’ view, and the political situation wasn’t as united as may appear from our rose-tinted histories.

Gleaning is an ancient concept – it’s mentioned in the Bible. Local people would have the right (or the farmer would have the legal obligation to allow them) to enter a farmer’s fields after the harvest to collect any remaining food. It was a a useful source of food for many in need. In the intervening millennia it has gradually disappeared, with changing land use and laws and (I assume) farming practices.

Ahoy there, me hearties! ‘Tis the day of the year when land lubbers talk like ye scurvy dog pirate of old, shiverin’ their timbers, and the like.

Header image: Artist’s concept of astronauts and human habitats on Mars. NASA

by Yasmine Shamma, University of Reading

Hello and welcome to Meals on Mars, your weekly imaginarium devoted to the future of food on Earth and beyond!

A striking, gold inflatable house designed to “withstand life on Mars” has landed in Bristol. Its lightweight design can withstand the environmental challenges life on Mars would bring, and is powered by solar panels.

Papa Johns is launching the world’s first-space-inspired pizza – a giant leap for pizza lovers everywhere.

Header image: Noah Silliman/Unsplash

Rug shopping can be thrilling—between materials, patterns, and colors, you can fine-tune a rug’s design to the needs of your space. Take one look at the price tag, though, and you may question if you even need a rug.

Paint marks on trees are a form of communication used by landowners to designate instructions to loggers or the public, for example. It is more permanent than printed signs and can prevent timber theft. Learn more about this unusual system.

Soil provides nutrients for plants as well as millions of microorganisms. However, this only applies if the soil is healthy. Soil conservation is the movement to keep soil healthy, fertile and productive, as well as protecting it from erosion and deterioration. Learn about different methods of soil conservation here.

North Carolina State Extension wrote an excellent publication on terrestrial flatworms, with common species around yards and gardens in the Carolinas called land planarians or hammerhead worms: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/terrestrial-flatwormshammerhead-worms.

In their original environments, invasive plants are restrained by their natural adversaries, with whom they co-evolved. However, when they are introduced to a new environment without these natural enemies, some plants can flourish and spread uncontrollably, ultimately becoming invasive.

For generations, gardening has been a popular pastime in the UK. Regardless of whether it is an ornamental or vegetable garden, the act of sculpting the land around us to create our very own oasis of tranquillity provides a sense of comforting accomplishment, as well as a great way to express creativity and individuality.

It seems kind of magical, doesn’t it? As summer draws nearer and the days grow longer, it’s only natural to start daydreaming of summer barbecues, picnics and downtime. And the glow of a firefly is a requisite symbol of the lazy, hazy days and nights of summer. To be honest, I’d never really thought about it myself, but the answer is positively fascinating.

This is a popular variety of Fritllaria grown in wet meadows. It is often found in Oxfordshire.

I am miffed  that the Royal National Rose Society has gone into administration (May 2017). Originally formed in 1876 it owns land in St Albans but finds annual running costs onerous. As small compensation here are details about a couple of charitable red roses.

Previously I have stuck to traditional names for bits of my garden. Veg plot, rockery, orchard (when I feel posh), rose bed, border, hedge and similar names have delineate what and where I was trying to grow.

Chinese Taoists or Daoists sought to recreate the vision of immortals who they believe live in the Mystic Isles. This perfect land was envisaged as a route to eternal life. Taoism is a religion of nature where everything has its own spirit and deities reside in natural objects. So Taoists gardens reflect landscapes and gardens that are ‘works of nature’.

December was a time for reflection on past performance in my Yorkshire garden. I keep old note books and reprise the failures of earlier seasons and as I discover I also repeat many mistakes the following year. That’s gardening for you.

Our series of tree reviews covers exotics and UK trees with a few specials thrown in. Each separate post covers;

I will use Shangri-la as an all encompassing name for spiritually based gardens and areas of harmonious natural beauty stealing a name from James Hilton in his novel Lost Horizon.

Whether you're revamping a certain space within your home or are moving into a brand new house, you may be wondering how to best select a color palette for a given room.

It’s a glorious July Saturday. The sun is showering this corner of the world with warmth and optimism. The earth’s bounty and human toil, and some craic, surrounds us, and you can hear the stream nearby and the birds in the trees. There is abundance and productivity and nature and community and generosity.

We’re in Rotterdam, New York, visiting with Maxine Brisport today.