Shanghai Sponge City Project

I am alerted to a new concept for urban greenery; sponge city planning. As someone who lives in a city that sits on a spongy mass of gravel and clay, that oozes water in season (we're on a relatively gentle flood alert today) I am naturally fascinated.

Lingang/Nanhui in Shanghai is the green infrastructure experiment generating the headlines. The principles?

• Permeable pavements - cutting rainwater runoff and reducing pollution of surface water. This can be retrofitted through replacement of existing concrete impermeable paving.
• Wetland areas - crossed by raised walkways, these are also public parks and nature reserves.
• Rooftop plants - absorbing water but also enabling temperature control through slow evaporation
• Rain gardens - in traditionally wasted space such as central reservations. 
• Rain recovery tanks - to take rooftop run-off.
• Restoration of natural waterways - a lot of small rivers get filled in during construction; identifying and re-establishing these supports traditional flow and soil stability.
• Man made storage lakes - variable depths and expanse depending on water needs of the time.

The percentages are exciting and the goals are high (a sponge city should absorb 70% of rainwater!) Like lots of infrastructure experimentation in China, progress is bewitchingly fast; I have little doubt that new principles and cheaper materials will emerge. Hard-wearing and fully permeable surfaces are particularly needed, as our effective and low-maintenance green roofing solutions. Many of the rest are familiar already; the estate I live in is carved across by gullies which twitch away our floods into the Thames, doubtless cut through the same spaces as earlier ditches.

Of course, the challenges of the Chinese cities are on a whole nother scale, and the imagination of the solutions are stunning. Look at these beautiful images of a rain park before and after monsoon rains, more seductive than any mighty bridge, maybe. There are hints of more to come; permeable, water storing roads?

From this damp city that is (right now) building seasonal lakes and installing drainage-first roads, I feel theere is too much focus on getting the water away and not enough on keeping it in the cities to grow our trees and cool our walls. I'd like us to become more of a sponge city.

starving amaryllis

Instead of an amaryllis kit this year, I bought a lonely bulb from the fancy flower shop in the market. I had hardly any clean indoor compost at home so planted it in a desperate minimum of exhausted compost, the bulb more than half exposed. The results have been spectacular. Folks, starve your amaryllis. It'll panic and bloom spectacularly.

It's also a superb vermillion, so I'll feed it up and cosy it with some fresh compost - but after it's flowered.

the secret fern garden on the plain

Just outside a rather rowdy cocktail bar on the Plain Roundabout in Oxford (home of the Swedish Death Nettle, among other fine cocktails) there is one of those old hatches; part smoke outlet, part escape hatch, part light well, old safety glass and cast iron.

This one has a fine fern garden growing in it:

 

I never promised you a roof garden

It was all a bit W1A, the visit to [Redacted] HQ on the Strand last month. I accosted a stripling intern wearing the right lanyard in the lobby, only to be told that I had to sign in with the on-the-phone ladies in the lobby's starship deck. The phone calls were quite involved. After a little wait, I shifted gently, from one foot to the other. "I'm going to have to call back later," she said, with an eyeroll directed professionally at the phone, and not me. "I'm at work now."

Upstairs there was a wifi code and a display screen with controls in the next meeting suite, bemused presenters, quality tweet opportunities, new initiatives and disruptions, real-life testimonies from more of the interns. And this:

 

Little rows of hunkered lavender and palms, tucked down out of the November wind, warmed by the listed and leaky windows lined the balconies. Access was easy; just a door that the wind whipped out of your hands as you opened it. I was expecting it to be locked away, but why would you lock away a view like this?

Some of the other people at the meeting were muttering about how the other half live, but my office building has a flat roof. We could do this. Most places could.

It's a question of successfully balancing the health opportunities (a view, rainwater recovery, employment opportunities, pollinator stops, insect elevators, pollution soaks, urban greening, mental elevation) against the safety risks (jumping and falling, typically, though there's sometimes some loading and drainage work too) and following your priorities.

This place had very much prioritised the awesome, uninterrupted, impressive view.

December Roses

December roses are not unsual. You can knock snow off them and find a gust of heady scent tempting out sleeping bees for a hit of the good stuff. This pretty orange climber on a warm wall (here seen from inside the bathroom) was one of a froth of flowers on a bush in a sheltered spot in Cambridge. In my back garden I have a vigorous little red rose that never seems to be out of flower. It has generous froths of flowers; little clenched balls of crimson petals which you have to crush in your hand before there is a breath of scent; generous and mean all at once. It's a super culinary rose, too.
Once upon a time it was one of those cheap little roses in tins that people buy you when you leave a job.  Now it flowers through December snow and July heat from a bush I have to cut back every year.

snow on the garden

I was weirdly determined that it wasn't going to snow, but to keep Tim happy I went and gave the Tree Fern a proper wrapping up and tethered it to the fence. Just as well, as we woke up to this on Sunday. So much for going to London. We gave up on plans beyond walking carefully to the local park to observe the insanity of children (building disturbing hordes of snowmen, then piledrivering them) and dogs. Just as well, the M40 was carnage.

Douglas Firs (the neighbours have the glaucous, easy-seeding, slower-growing variety rather than terrifying lime-green, bolting sterile lelandii) look at their prettiest in sticky snow, like Disney cartoons of fir trees. You keep expecting singing dwarfs or something. Out of shot, the Rhododendron is bent almost double, frost-collapsed. I have to remind myself that this is just what it does, and it will be fine. Hum, what's that on the table? Oops. They're not going anywhere till the melt.

farewell to the lawn

That's it. I'm done. I'm giving up on the lawn.

My lawn, a once-neat square created by lifting nine paving stones (so about 1.5 m sq) in the front garden, was originally turfed, with spring bulbs naturalised into the drive-side edge, Glory-of-the-snow and Snowdrops. I would trim it periodically with shears. My neighbour would offer his lawnmover, which I took as a joke. It was so tiny. The arrival of daisies was momentous and celebrated. The arrival of dandelions was amusing and tolerated.

Then it became a space where the local tom-cats left each other messages. Long, pointed, fetid messages. Occasionally we'd startle Grey Trouble or Tom Daley (a smart young black tom with a white cravat) mid yowl or poo. "It's the circle of poo," we'd say, resigned cat-owners, and tidy up after the toms our own cat thoughtfully kept out of the back garden, mostly.

This regular attention lead to irregular growth. Lush patches, bare patches. In came the thuggy invaders, Alkanet, Sorrel, Pineapple Mint and Marguerite. Grass clumped up or died. There was no more lawn, just another bed and a scruffy one, at that. Time to ring the changes.

It's the end of the season sale at the Garden Centre off the bypass. The plants are tired, and Christmas trees have marched through the bedding section. Tim's idea of a tiny wildflower meadow is adorable but impractical. We need something low, tough and shrubby, that will tolerate hard conditions and occasionally being run over by wheelie bins or having a cargo bike planted on it. I head for the municipal shrubbery section.

Escallonia "Golden Carpets" promises low growth and pops of hot pink flowers in season. Fluffy purple Hebes on three for two will fill things out until it's established. Once it's down I'll thread in pop-up plants to head up through it. Alliums maybe, or some slender tulips with mutilpe heads.

And there will be no more lawn in my garden. 

Dear Santa, for Christmas I would like...

The tinsel is in the shops. I've had my first mince pie. It's time to adjust my wish list. Here's what's making the list for 2017:

•  Aquilegia chrysantha ‘Yellow Queen’ - once again, despite my conspicuous failure to successfully germinate the easiest seeds ever this year, I'm asking for Aquilegia in luscious sunset shades. 
• Lily-Turf Liriope Muscari 'Okina' - easy-to-grow, eye-catching, low-maintenance.... and perfect for shady corners (which pretty much describes my entire garden).
• Rhipsalis Monacantha - flowering cacti are calling me right now. This one is a rare Argentinian sprawler with exotic orange flowers and (!!!!) pink berries.
• Coleus Blumei Wizard - Coleus I can grow just fine. The wizard series are single colour var.s rather than the usual allsorts mix, and include some lovely flames and a stunning flat-colour orange (how does it photosynthesise?). Seeds please, a cheap treat.
• Chinese money plant - I'm feeling a bit guilty about this one, as it's painfully hip and ridiculously overpriced, but I've just opened up a great space for trailing greenery.

That'll do me, I think. Quite a short list compared to previous years, but long enough for surprises (and short enough that I can make up the set myself after Christmas if need be). 

ten minutes before dusk

It was a warm day today, for December. In my garden (I got out for ten minutes before dusk, Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service playing on the radio and a yellowish smear of light in the western sky) there were tender Fuchsias still flowering; the Confetti Bush, stalwart of the Southern Hemisphere, had a spatter of pink, honey-scented flowers; Marguerites, my unkillable invaders, were in cheerful flower; and there were flowers on the geraniums both inside and outside the greenhouse. So I went in search of Broad Bean seeds because a warm day in winter is the perfect moment to get stuff down.

I didn't have any broad beans. There weren't any bulbs waiting to be sown. It's been a disorganised autumn. So I rearranged my pots, pulling them into more sheltered spaces, filing a few in the greenhouse. I found one last chilli on a frost-browned bush.

The patio was thick with willow leaves. The sky was dark. The temperature was falling.

Time to go inside and dress a Christmas tree.