cutting success

One of the cuttings in my new IKEA cutting starter (a repurposed fancy spice rack) has taken! Rooting the first. Of course, they call this stuff invasive Lonerica in America, and TBH it doesn't need any coddling at all, I can just ram a random branch in anywhere I want a bush, if the birds haven't shat out a seed there already (it berries profusely, juicy purple berries). But don't feel sad, one out of four ain't bad...




Emboldened by my success, I nipped off a cutting of this beauty, that was raving it up in University Parks. It rooted in a week. Cutting tubes are go!!!!

the gutter gardens of abingdon road

My normal morning commute has been diverted by a period of particularly intense works being carried out on a bridge, which has to be done now, because we're between the swallows (that I knew about) and the bats (that I didn't). I'm delighted that the work has been so sensitively windowed; and for all that it's added ?maybe 6 minutes to my commute, also with the change of scenery. Even the main road isn't as much of a downer as I anticipated, because of this:



What you're looking at is plants growing in the drainage kerbs that were installed after the Abingdon Road floods of 2014. While not our most spectacular floods of recent years (that's 2007) they were notable for the speed of the inundation, the disruption to the sewerage (the councils had to bring in temporary toilets for the residents) and the importation of some innovative inflatable flood barriers from Holland. There's a long term solution coming, in the shape of vast seasonal storage lakes which will take the run-off away from the cities and the villages (the current solution -- storage channels and lock-gates -- often leads to accusations of villages being sacrificed for the city, or (more rarely) vice versa, though how much can be done to shape the flow often comes down to the speed of the inundation) but that's not due to complete for a few years yet. In the meantime, multiple other works are afoot to mitigate the thrills and spills of Oxford's Isis-Cherwell confluence, from uphill tree-planting around tributary rivers, to altering building regulations to make contractors legally liable for new water-flow mishaps. But let it never be said that Oxfordshire neglects the details. These drainage kerbs are one such detail; hollow kerbs (aka kerbdrains) which whip the surface water off the roads, keeping our causeways open.



They come in both dropped and raised kerb versions. As you can see from the lush growth of escaped garden oregano in the raised kerb, there's quite a big hole there; but the shallower holes are more attractive to flat growth, like grass.



It's been a summer for the plants, with lots of sun and lots of rain, but I'm still impressed at how fast the weeds have colonised this new habitat niche.



Initially I worried that the holes might be blocked by this miniature overgrowth, but that's 20th Century thinking. Flood water scours, and the loose aggregation of city-dirt and rain dust these weeds are growing in will be swept away, and the weeds with them too, should the need arise. In the meantime they add to the water-pull, a million tiny green elbows flexing to help lift the water up out of the sewer system. They're not a problem in the system, but rather a benign side-effect. Like green leaves on the branches of a deciduous tree that are lit and warmed year-round by a street light, they are part of the humaniformed environment.



Nothing has flowers yet, but I see plenty of buds. Before autumn closes the season, there will be flowers in the gutter, and insects tumbling among the vehicle-gusts, and another thin green thread through the grey.

gardening the roofscapes

I'm working on a piece about architectural angles at the moment, which means a lot of looking upwards, craning my neck, looking for interesting corners. I can't resist catching a few other things, though. This friendly finial dragon, for example, or the Notting Hill TV aerial garden. That looks like a nice place to hang out, of a summer evening.




London, like all cities, has greenery among the greyery, London Planes and thoroughly modern maples, and the tough noughties acacias here and there. But the real excitement comes when the greenery starts to spill up the walls, over the balconies and take back the roofscape.

The most modern of the buildings know that already and are faking it with organic curves, coloured glass and fairy lights, like Nova Victoria there, owning its Carbuncle prize grand style. 

RA Summer Exhibition Gardens

Unless you count the front court, there isn't really a garden at the RA, as such. Perhaps in some secret member's space. But inside, especially in Room 1, there is a lot of gardening going on.




Other beauties not photographed: Rocks Landscape, Seize the Night, and Pale Green Hydrangea.

This year the architect's room was concentrating on services, utilities facilities. This meant fewer models and more diagrams, not to its detriment. The mysterious and ?unrealised Edgveg project and a gorgeous 1920s pencil sketch of a pumping station provided gardenish interest.



Elsewhere we found pictures of concrete spaces, garden thrones made of decommissioned arms, and a fancy birdbox (it's not a birdbox), among other things.




Other gardening pieces not photographed include a sinister Terrarium,  a bewildering mural, an exploration of garden statuary hubris, and a Magrittesque allotment shed.

reading for a chilly evening : rakes progress

I was doing one of my regular searches for other punk gardeners (like you do) and found myself on the Worlds End website (yes the Kings Road punk shop) looking at this picture:

Of course I know about Vivienne Westwood's gardening ways (didn't I see her showing somebody around a studio roofgarden on GW at some point?) but the magazine.

It's called Rake's Progress, it's garden/photography/etc. and there are a bunch of sample pages online (or just look at the (very) pretty pictures. There's a certain loveliness here, but still, hmm. I've been drifting around their online content for an hour or so now, wondering about committing to a physical item.

More lovely things from Rake's progress: Milton Keynes Pinterest Board - very utopian. irrigation pinterest board - very functional.

Oh, and the flower installation board. The lovely, lovely flower installation board....

formal and informal tender plants

It's a lovely time of year. The soil is warm so all manner of fragile lovelies are happily doing their thing, tender Salvia growing so fast the slugs can't keep up and Cherry Pies and Lantana kicking out deeply unbritish gouts of sweet tropical scent. The Morning Glories are having a glorious morning, and the Fuchsias are getting their lurid on. Above we have my favourite formal fountain in Christchurch Gardens and a bit of classy planting in University Parks. Below, the Morning Glories doing their best to cover up my disastrous shed.

I'm so proud!

 The beautiful Magnolia Tree I planted at my old place is lush, huge, and producing the famously disturbing Magnolia seed pods.

Magnolias are famous for pre-dating bees, and so are pollinated by a motley assortment of non-specialist beetles. They can be less than expert at getting everything pollinated, resulting in disturbingly misshapen seedpods. And just sometimes one that looks exactly like a thingy.

body-gardening and dreamers awake

Surrealists have a particular take on gardens. Sometimes it's a sexy take, sometimes it's more plane disturbing. Gardens have an eerie smoothness, or inaccurate lighting. Grotesque gnomes with hidden secrets and objets with high insurance values look askance at art-washed functional items. 

These approved items belong to the Guggenheim collection (Peggy, Venice). Despite being a proper garden space, most of the artwork (even where it claims to be things like enchanted forests) is defiantly non-representational, although here and there it does veer off the canonical and into something a little more bright.

These surrealists came from another space; younger, less canon. The gardens they are building have the temporary feeling of fast-erected tents, pavilions without the curtain-wall of the canon.



   

But this style of art, this deep-dive into the mists and shadows has elements shared with the gardener; of digging/revealing or contructing/depicting. Of assembling/appropriating or changing/building. Of finding the dreamer in the garden and not awakening her.