One final run through the paper pile, picking the final green meats from the show garden bowls. Of the plants I bought, some are dead already. Some are clinging on. One or two are thriving. But it isn't just plants you come home with....
Thanks to the Manchester Garden, I'm now aware of SuDS, AKA Sustainable Drainage Systems. These look at water and run-off in human-shaped environments and attempt the matching/adaptation you would see in a natural environment. You can apply this in your garden. Where do the puddles gather? What gets silted up after rain? Where do you lose water to run-off or drains? Could you tweak to get more rain on your plants and less pouring into your over-stressed local drainage system? Key here is stopping thinking about pipes, drains, etc. Start thinking instead about permeability, surface penetration, percolation and bio-uptake (that's plants and trees). Reduction in flooding is the carrot, green spaces in cities comes as an agreeable side-effect.
Thanks to the Creative Roots garden, Green Windows have steeped up as a much easier alternative to Green Walls. Described dryly in the brochure as "pockets of planting breaking up the stone" the reality was more a gap in the wall with verdant foliage pouring through, as if green was pouring through the windows of an abandoned house. Downward plunging hart's tongue ferns suggested a green waterfall. Sprays of ferns spattered green into the space.
Check out this wall. This is the back wall of someone's trade stand, and they have matched a flower precisely to a shade of paint. That's a pretty sweet idea, and you could do it at home through putting some pots onto a backboard which you paint to match the plants. Ta-da! The matchy-matchy flower panel is born.
I have a lot of houseplants, and every time the cat spills a pot, I seem to end up with another few from the inevitable knockings and cuttings. Seeing so many nurseries and show gardens setting the houseplants free with cactuses and spider plants and air plants outside suggested that treating these little guys as summer bedding might be fun and sustainable. Of course indoor scale and outdoor scale are quite different, at which point enter the exotic nurseries like Jurassic Plants to make you think oooh could I grow that?
My garden has three levels. Urban slope living, it's a thing. There's the back-yard, the terrace, and the top. It's not a big garden. But could I take it up a level? Or down a level? The Subterranean Sanctuary border wasn't much bigger than the weird little corridoor I have at the bottom of my terrace, and suggests a helpful approach for that space. And the back, which has a large rough bed of hard rootsy soil impoverished by a heavy screen hedge belonging to my neighbour, could we take that up a bit somehow?
Let's pick up also on the Rose Meadow - from the Perennial Lifeline Garden. Not so much a new idea as I already mix up roses, perennials (and usually a bunch of weeds) in my garden. I'm kind of nervous about cutting the roses, and wary of planting grasses. This feels more like a honing of what I'm doing already than a radical change of direction - a "get better at this" item.
Finally, there's my waterwall. Where can I put it? What will it do? The Silent Pool Gin Garden made it a linking feature between overhead planting and an area that needed watering. But that feels too contructed for a home space. I'm more inclined to make it almost a washing line, in the urban backgarden vernacular, and put in a perforated hose at head height above the big bed, where the water can safely soak down into the Oxford clay.
Thanks to the Manchester Garden, I'm now aware of SuDS, AKA Sustainable Drainage Systems. These look at water and run-off in human-shaped environments and attempt the matching/adaptation you would see in a natural environment. You can apply this in your garden. Where do the puddles gather? What gets silted up after rain? Where do you lose water to run-off or drains? Could you tweak to get more rain on your plants and less pouring into your over-stressed local drainage system? Key here is stopping thinking about pipes, drains, etc. Start thinking instead about permeability, surface penetration, percolation and bio-uptake (that's plants and trees). Reduction in flooding is the carrot, green spaces in cities comes as an agreeable side-effect.
Thanks to the Creative Roots garden, Green Windows have steeped up as a much easier alternative to Green Walls. Described dryly in the brochure as "pockets of planting breaking up the stone" the reality was more a gap in the wall with verdant foliage pouring through, as if green was pouring through the windows of an abandoned house. Downward plunging hart's tongue ferns suggested a green waterfall. Sprays of ferns spattered green into the space.
Check out this wall. This is the back wall of someone's trade stand, and they have matched a flower precisely to a shade of paint. That's a pretty sweet idea, and you could do it at home through putting some pots onto a backboard which you paint to match the plants. Ta-da! The matchy-matchy flower panel is born.
I have a lot of houseplants, and every time the cat spills a pot, I seem to end up with another few from the inevitable knockings and cuttings. Seeing so many nurseries and show gardens setting the houseplants free with cactuses and spider plants and air plants outside suggested that treating these little guys as summer bedding might be fun and sustainable. Of course indoor scale and outdoor scale are quite different, at which point enter the exotic nurseries like Jurassic Plants to make you think oooh could I grow that?
My garden has three levels. Urban slope living, it's a thing. There's the back-yard, the terrace, and the top. It's not a big garden. But could I take it up a level? Or down a level? The Subterranean Sanctuary border wasn't much bigger than the weird little corridoor I have at the bottom of my terrace, and suggests a helpful approach for that space. And the back, which has a large rough bed of hard rootsy soil impoverished by a heavy screen hedge belonging to my neighbour, could we take that up a bit somehow?
Let's pick up also on the Rose Meadow - from the Perennial Lifeline Garden. Not so much a new idea as I already mix up roses, perennials (and usually a bunch of weeds) in my garden. I'm kind of nervous about cutting the roses, and wary of planting grasses. This feels more like a honing of what I'm doing already than a radical change of direction - a "get better at this" item.
Finally, there's my waterwall. Where can I put it? What will it do? The Silent Pool Gin Garden made it a linking feature between overhead planting and an area that needed watering. But that feels too contructed for a home space. I'm more inclined to make it almost a washing line, in the urban backgarden vernacular, and put in a perforated hose at head height above the big bed, where the water can safely soak down into the Oxford clay.
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