Post by Urban Warrior on Apr 25, 2006 9:51:15 GMT
Sunday April 16, 2006
The Observer
Just as owning a garden doesn't automatically make you green-fingered, it doesn't make you green either. I was reminded of this recently when I saw a piece on Viscount Linley's Chelsea flat, now up for sale. As he's a furniture designer, you might credit him with some aesthetic vision, and yet the photographs of the flat's garden revealed plastic grass.
Even garden makeover shows didn't resort to plastic grass. What they did propagate, however, as well as non-indigenous seeds, was fast-results gardening, mainly featuring lawns, concrete barbecue areas and acres of decking. Apparently, few people plant bulbs any more because they can't be bothered putting in the effort and having to wait that long for a result.
Graham Burnett (www.spiralseed.co.uk) is not one of those people. He is a proponent of slow gardening and a particular expert in permaculture, the system that gets maximum productivity out of a garden but is entirely sympathetic to nature (www.permaculture.co.uk).
There are no overnight success stories. Ideally, Burnett says gardens would benefit from a 'non-intervening observation period of 12 months', while you get to know their limitations and advantages. Even if you can't hold off that long, suburban flowerbeds have the capacity to become a source of food, medicine, seeds or even craft materials (www.windrushwillow.co.uk sells kits by artist Lois Walpole enabling gardeners to grow their own ready-shaped willow coathangers and wine racks).
None of which, of course, will happen without water - the hot horticultural topic of the summer, seeing how hosepipe bans have already been declared in some areas. Using bathwater to water your plants always strikes me as a vaguely useless eco recommendation when having a bath rather than a shower uses about 60 litres more water in the first place. What is a good idea is to reduce your dependency on mains water by investing in a rain-harvesting system (www.rainharvest.co.uk) to salvage some of the precious 100,000 litres of water that land on the average roof every year. This could range from a simple water butt through to a stormwater detention system that can supply your garden and washing machine, and even flush your loo.
In fact, reducing dependency is at the heart of the ethical garden, which is why every gardener should grow some food, even some leaves that will decrease your reliance on supermarket bagged salad, washed in chlorine and packed in a plastic bag full of modified atmospheric gas. Seed saving and swapping get permaculturists very animated (Back Garden Seed Saving by Sue Stickland will tell you all you need to know), but if you don't have any, the Real Seed Company has saved its GM-free vegetable seeds for you (both from http://www.vidaverde.co.uk).
In fact, the average suburban garden is a prime target to be 'retrofitted' into an ethical permaculture garden that produces food. After years of doing little, the soil is usually nicely fertile, ready to work hard by growing all manner of produce.
This is provided you have beds rather than lawns, known by horticulturalists as 'the spoiled brats of the plant kingdom'. Lawns do not like to be productive. They guzzle water, are routinely covered in herbicides and traditionally mowed by a polluting mower with all the energy efficiency of a knackered old motorbike. One study even found higher incidences of bladder cancer in dogs exposed to lawn fertilizers. Perhaps, the Viscount's plastic grass is a symbol of sustainability after all.
The Observer
Just as owning a garden doesn't automatically make you green-fingered, it doesn't make you green either. I was reminded of this recently when I saw a piece on Viscount Linley's Chelsea flat, now up for sale. As he's a furniture designer, you might credit him with some aesthetic vision, and yet the photographs of the flat's garden revealed plastic grass.
Even garden makeover shows didn't resort to plastic grass. What they did propagate, however, as well as non-indigenous seeds, was fast-results gardening, mainly featuring lawns, concrete barbecue areas and acres of decking. Apparently, few people plant bulbs any more because they can't be bothered putting in the effort and having to wait that long for a result.
Graham Burnett (www.spiralseed.co.uk) is not one of those people. He is a proponent of slow gardening and a particular expert in permaculture, the system that gets maximum productivity out of a garden but is entirely sympathetic to nature (www.permaculture.co.uk).
There are no overnight success stories. Ideally, Burnett says gardens would benefit from a 'non-intervening observation period of 12 months', while you get to know their limitations and advantages. Even if you can't hold off that long, suburban flowerbeds have the capacity to become a source of food, medicine, seeds or even craft materials (www.windrushwillow.co.uk sells kits by artist Lois Walpole enabling gardeners to grow their own ready-shaped willow coathangers and wine racks).
None of which, of course, will happen without water - the hot horticultural topic of the summer, seeing how hosepipe bans have already been declared in some areas. Using bathwater to water your plants always strikes me as a vaguely useless eco recommendation when having a bath rather than a shower uses about 60 litres more water in the first place. What is a good idea is to reduce your dependency on mains water by investing in a rain-harvesting system (www.rainharvest.co.uk) to salvage some of the precious 100,000 litres of water that land on the average roof every year. This could range from a simple water butt through to a stormwater detention system that can supply your garden and washing machine, and even flush your loo.
In fact, reducing dependency is at the heart of the ethical garden, which is why every gardener should grow some food, even some leaves that will decrease your reliance on supermarket bagged salad, washed in chlorine and packed in a plastic bag full of modified atmospheric gas. Seed saving and swapping get permaculturists very animated (Back Garden Seed Saving by Sue Stickland will tell you all you need to know), but if you don't have any, the Real Seed Company has saved its GM-free vegetable seeds for you (both from http://www.vidaverde.co.uk).
In fact, the average suburban garden is a prime target to be 'retrofitted' into an ethical permaculture garden that produces food. After years of doing little, the soil is usually nicely fertile, ready to work hard by growing all manner of produce.
This is provided you have beds rather than lawns, known by horticulturalists as 'the spoiled brats of the plant kingdom'. Lawns do not like to be productive. They guzzle water, are routinely covered in herbicides and traditionally mowed by a polluting mower with all the energy efficiency of a knackered old motorbike. One study even found higher incidences of bladder cancer in dogs exposed to lawn fertilizers. Perhaps, the Viscount's plastic grass is a symbol of sustainability after all.