We were driving through London and I was looking for the aesthetic, so rich and rising in late summer, of gardens spilling over city walls. That edge of the return to the green that we surf blithely through every year as nasturtium bindweed balsam buddleia blasts up to the sky.
Inexplicable signs, portacabins, decaying brick walls smeared with traffic filth, and over it all the spears and flags of buddleia. The nature of buddleia is irrepressible. The nature of layered urban signs is incomprehensible. Summer bleaches the late afternoon sky to pitiless white.
Here the world is fancy, the plants are fancy, the houses are fancy. Look at that palm! Or is it a Cycad? I honestly can't rememeber what Canary Palms are, but that one is very established. Look carefully and you'll see its isolate splendour in the fancy gravel is being threatened by a light froth of seasonal weeds. Next door, the lavender and bougainvillea has gone bananas. I wonder what's in the plant delivery box just inside the fancy gate? More fancy plants, doubtless.
Clune Terrace doesn't have a roof garden. Yet. But a bold shrublet has designs on that roofspace. It's struggling, though - it's had to give up most of its outer leaves and the remainder look dessicated. It's not going to die, though because it is of course a buddleia - and someone is going to have to go and get it out or it'll break that roof edge into bits.
This ziggurated modernist penthouse flat has its two floors of smart balconies outlined with tidy rectangles of clipped box. Discreet, tasteful. But something has been planted that is none of those things. It looks like Russian Vine, the invasive shed-smotherer of suburbia, and like a drunk oligarch at a cocktail paty it is having a fabulous time on that balcony.
Deep in the urban zone, a fence on a rooftop. Behind it a glimpse of grasses, maybe a bamboo wind break. Shade and shelter is key in these little spaces between the chimneys, accessed by attic windows, where every gram of soil has to be justified and balanced against the fragility of ancient beams. I love the privacy of it and I bet the owner does, too.
Then there was this. I don't know what it is. I tracked down where it was on Google streetview and it was just a sign saying "Waterside Development opportunity". Everything I've tried googling (living green rotating blinds, innovative eco building shading, new chelsea mad architecture, north bank green innovative building) had come up blank. Looks pretty exciting though, doesn't it?
Inexplicable signs, portacabins, decaying brick walls smeared with traffic filth, and over it all the spears and flags of buddleia. The nature of buddleia is irrepressible. The nature of layered urban signs is incomprehensible. Summer bleaches the late afternoon sky to pitiless white.
Here the world is fancy, the plants are fancy, the houses are fancy. Look at that palm! Or is it a Cycad? I honestly can't rememeber what Canary Palms are, but that one is very established. Look carefully and you'll see its isolate splendour in the fancy gravel is being threatened by a light froth of seasonal weeds. Next door, the lavender and bougainvillea has gone bananas. I wonder what's in the plant delivery box just inside the fancy gate? More fancy plants, doubtless.
Clune Terrace doesn't have a roof garden. Yet. But a bold shrublet has designs on that roofspace. It's struggling, though - it's had to give up most of its outer leaves and the remainder look dessicated. It's not going to die, though because it is of course a buddleia - and someone is going to have to go and get it out or it'll break that roof edge into bits.
This ziggurated modernist penthouse flat has its two floors of smart balconies outlined with tidy rectangles of clipped box. Discreet, tasteful. But something has been planted that is none of those things. It looks like Russian Vine, the invasive shed-smotherer of suburbia, and like a drunk oligarch at a cocktail paty it is having a fabulous time on that balcony.
Deep in the urban zone, a fence on a rooftop. Behind it a glimpse of grasses, maybe a bamboo wind break. Shade and shelter is key in these little spaces between the chimneys, accessed by attic windows, where every gram of soil has to be justified and balanced against the fragility of ancient beams. I love the privacy of it and I bet the owner does, too.
Then there was this. I don't know what it is. I tracked down where it was on Google streetview and it was just a sign saying "Waterside Development opportunity". Everything I've tried googling (living green rotating blinds, innovative eco building shading, new chelsea mad architecture, north bank green innovative building) had come up blank. Looks pretty exciting though, doesn't it?
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