Wednesday 30 August 2017

glimpses of two gardens - querini stampalia and murano docks public toilets

Our hotel was next to a mysterious building dotted with neon signs, and on our last day in Venice we decoded the instructions on what turned out not to be its door and found our way into the Querini Stampalia, the bottom floor of which has a famous renovation which shades seamlessly into a fabulous modernist garden, designed by Carlo Scarpa. I missed buying my photographer's pass, so there is only the narrowest glimpse of it visible here, but you can read a lot about it elsewhere, including how it protects through submission, diversion, celebration and flow the lower floor and courtyard garden from the aqua alta.

querini stampalia the prettiest public toilet
the prettiest public toilet cacti outside

A similarly small glimpse here of the garden around the boat filling station and public toilets at Murano Dock, taken from the water bus stop. Spectacular Cannas and Cacti draw the eye, while the bright terracotta wall creates a lovely backdrop. Something fluffy in heavy stone planters (Astilbe?) turns back stumbling feet from the dock edge, while a drought-trimmed tree and a rich bushy mound of foliage punctuated with hot pink flowers provides an exotic but pared-back structure. Trees above provide cooling shade, and the space looks cheerful, functional and fun.

Sunday 27 August 2017

municipal gardening : venice marco polo

Covered elevated travelator are words to fill the heart with joy. Admittedly, we were flying from Luton (which currently has the builders in in grand style) but Venice Marco Polo airport still seemed a thing of bright glamour.

This is the covered elevated travelator to the dock. It only opened last year, which makes the planting all the more impressive; already shading out the sun.

green tunnel travelator

Down below, the ceiling of the dock was modern glass roof, like the British Museum court; underneath, the planting featured glass chip and grasses, very modern, very serious, very durable.


Upstairs in the food court, floor-to-ceiling water walls cool the air and feed blousy semitropical foliage in their base planters, which are broad-walled in the modern style, meaning people can sit on the planters' edge, almost among the plants, cooled by the leaves.

The true test of an indoor space's greenness is the Centre MK test: are there birds? I did not see any wild birds (ucelli) in Venice airport. But we saw a colossal and bizarre insect, and it's early days yet. Where insects fly, birds follow.

Wednesday 23 August 2017

tumbling vines and secret gardens

giant mirrored rhinoceros

Venice, pink and green jewelbox full of art, glass, vines, cacti and petunias. A world of pastel arches and courtyards, everything tumbling over with dusty greens fed by the moisture that breathes up from the canals, that steals up the steps to swell the succulents and drip another trail a bright green leaves down a flaking wall.

art is a rollercoaster petunias and sullen Christ this house likes plants alley foliage tumble

Above and inaccesssible behind high windows, fire doors and private staircases float the roof gardens, tiny spider-scaffolding platforms swagged with geraniums, balanced on the tilts of terracotta tiles. Ambitious cousins to the flowery balconies and pot-crowded windowsills, extending horionzontal space upwards into the soft sky.

Venice roof gardens   Venice roof gardens

There is green behind walls, green behind bars, vines that ooze over high walls and dribble down from incontinent windowboxes. Glance up in any alleyway, and leaves will be fluttering from stepped balconies and choked windows, through shutters and railings and batiments.



garden behind bars

vinous tumble    flowers behind bars

Animals and birds are few and far between. A few pigeons in a square, a conversational couple of rats in a shadowy doorway, a dart of hoverfly, a buzz of bees. As if to compensate, there are man-made animals everywhere, glass and stone, mirror and fabric, artifical eyes on real greenery.

bird in a shop

Monday 21 August 2017

inspiration: kelvedon hatch nuclear bunker

I went to Kelvedon Hatch for a night of experimental electronica from the delaware road, and found some garden inspiration in the lighting of the DJ/ projection balcony and the surrounding mature woodland.

Ian Helliwell and DJ Food     it rained while we were inside

Smoke machines are of course now just another cheap electronic consumable, so a set of all-weather fairy lights and a dangerously cheap laser projector is all you need for that rave-in-a-fogbank/x-files the-truth-is-right-here-behind-you ambience. Leave the weeds and leaves for that abandoned look.

outside the bunker

Concrete retaining walls, green accent lighting and decorative garden missiles. Sinister woodland backdrop (borrowed landscape). Bonus hipster eating a sandwich could be achieved by modding a garden gnome. Source some suitable warning signs. Encourage moss.

smoke and lights touches of terrifying whimsy

Nettles, dead things and whimsical signage can turn an old out-back bomb shelter into something altogether more now. Think of it as a 21st Century grotto. Don't forget to duck and cover.

Sunday 13 August 2017

cracked apples

My tiny potted apple tree was being a bit tardy about the June drop this year, so I decided to snip off the bulk of the fruit anyway. It's been dry, and the pot has suffered. A few fewer apples, I reasoned, would rescue the plant from killing itself fruiting.

The night after I'd got snippy it rained. It rained a lot. The following morning, the tree had visibly perked up, but some of the fruit was showing cracks, like unevenly watered tomatoes. I'd never even heard of this happening to an apple tree, though apparently it is a thing.

The cracks began to darken and widen and spread across the whole fruit tree. Now pretty much the entire crop is showing damage.

Had the tree been expecting twice as much fruit to pump the water into? Either way the results are brutal. I'm steadily thinning the fruit as they rot off, while the remaining few unblemished fruits seem to be dropping anyway; maybe the tree had already decided to stop supplying them. The slugs and snails are stepping in to finish the carnage.

cracked apples cracked apples
cracked apples cracked apples

Uneven watering is of course the culprit. We've had challenging dry spells this year, and there's only so much you can do with a hose. The compost bakes and the flow-through damages the soil. Plants settle into panic mode, and react unpredictably to water, sometimes refusing it, sometimes overtranspiring.

Of course, growing an apple tree in a flowerpot is a ridiculous idea.

Wednesday 9 August 2017

the strawberry problem

I have, as Harlequin cat is so urgently attempting to communicate here, a strawberry problem. You can see my strawberry pots in the background there. My yields last year had been pretty much negligible, so I did a semi-refresh this year; new plants, half and half new compost and old.

That was when I started seeing the vine weevils. There followed the usual process of sifting and murder, but insects being what they are, I think it's safe to say now that my containers are now, well, weevilly. Strawbs are vulnerable to the weevil, and sure enough, this year again (they nibble the roots) despite my best efforts, the harvest was negligible.

I also had to fight the slugs for every berry, but I digress.

judgey cat

So now, apparently I could try garden soil in my pots or wash the roots and chuck out all the compost, but one of the reasons I have so many containers full of compost is that I have very little soil in my garden, and washing my strawbs feels a bit bonkers. Alternatively I could try and get them devoured from within by nematodes, but  both ugh, really? and I also have waterplanters and apparently if nematodes get into those the results can be a bit um yeah.

There are chemicals, but we're using none of that because I have beautiful beetles of many kinds in my garden. There's a suggestion that heavy watering might help.

I'm back to washing the strawberries, aren't I?

Sunday 6 August 2017

the interface between you and the wild

I was falling asleep to Gardener's World this Friday (the hour-long format does make it something of a marathon, although I do like the new segments, they leaven the Longmeadow nicely) when Monty abruptly shared that when they had moved in, it had just been a field. Possibly he meant it metaphorically, or relatively; there are certainly some trees there which radiate significant age and authority, and some of the walls are very old indeed. But nevertheless I felt the emotional truth in what he was saying; it was a wilderness, a bleak space, and I enclosed it, wrapped it around. I made it a garden.

Suddenly the endlessly spawning little jewelboxes of prettyness that make up Longmeadow began to make sense. They are baffles between the gardener and the wind and the wild and the rabbits that come and munch on your precious cabbages; a little labyrinth to bewilder the approach, block prying eyes and dissipate attack. The garden is battlements against what waits outside, beyond the pale.

Therefore the garden has a graduated tone; from extreme, colourful control and tidiness in the inner reaches, alongside the house, the greenhouse, the potting shed, out to the symbolic and sympathetically prettified wildernesses of the outer edges. For a house placed in a landscape (as I imagine this one is, although it could be in the suburbs somewhere for all I know) that shading out softens the edges between the garden and the wild. There is no beginning as such, just a regular march of order/interference, spreading outward around the human habitation.

That graduation of wildness is even visible in a tiny space like mine, where the fuchsias and blue poppies and kniphofia gather nervously and centrally in pots and planters, while around the edges the wilder planting shades into a wilder state (the ivy, the passion vine, the grape vine, the miniature native hedge) creating a cut-off from the neighbours. Here the dip into wilderness is very shallow; an interstitial gap between properties choked with brambles, the deep shade under a Douglas hedge, a place where you don't pull the bindweed, or can't quite get the sucker ash up from under the fence.

But still it remains, that symbolic dip into wilderness between people, preserving peace, diffusing the crowding, separating safely.

Wednesday 2 August 2017

happy anniversary garden


It's my wedding anniversary today. I remember the early conversations with providers of flowers, and the months of looking at flowers at other people's weddings (everyone seemed to be getting married that year) which were always very nice yes, quite fussy and decorated (so many pins and ribbons) and my steady realisation that, a bit like going to a hairdresser, including someone else in the equation would involve painful compromise and a retreat to something more conservative, more generally pleasing.

So I went round the ring road and the local supermarkets and the local garden centre. I picked up three special items from the fancy florist in the middle of town (two matching orchids, a proto-bouquet, the fancy roses). I dug out the pots and vases on sale at IKEA and Robery Dyas that I'd been hoarding and assembled it all on the floor of my kitchen while everyone else panicked about random shit at the venue.

My flowers were awesome. And I also still have some in the garden, flowering, right now. That's my Kniphofia Timothy, from the planters in front of the high table at the reception, after a hard summer when it got congested and nearly died. It's doing fine, and in flower right now. The Lime border Datura is an annual, of course, but seeds so magnificently it's a regular returner.

pale green datura divide and hope
Decorated dinosaur Bouquet

Some things were disposable of course, though a few of the (cough choke) faux botanicals may still be knocking around. The dinosaur and seeds are a wedding favour. I dropped plenty of those (easy seeders all) into my own garden, and the fennel and nigella are still going strong.