the gloom of dark november

In the gloom of dark November, the wind steps up and slaps the leaves from the trees. A first hard round of frost whips around the geraniums and begonias left carelessly outside, rupturing cell walls, scattering flowers. The plants withdraw water and drop down their leaves like the ears of a panicked cat. Petals brown in sudden shock on the deciduous lingerers (Forsythia, Roses) and the year-round chancers (Abutilon, Marigold). The winter jasmine opens its starry eyes in earnest; the pansies raise their bright ceramic faces to the sky. To be a flower in November takes a certain vigour, a grit, a minimalist fierceness.

And then you come across a winter cherry, already in opulent bloom; a garden so full of blowsy Michaelmas daisies that they're been tied up with string so the bikes can squeeze past; an unexpected mass of marigold, fuchsia, roses, nodding unconcernedly from a sheltered spot.

And it's not just the garden flowers. Down on the tow path, every day, I'm walking past a White Campion in bright, defiant bloom. Up on the allotment, my winter crops are sprouting, despite being planted weeks behind schedule.

The twigs are already showing red, as if spring is stretching back across winter to take autumn's hand, gently, inevitably, terrifyingly.

dreaming of spring in the dark season

I just cracked and bought all of the bulbs. It's impossible at this time of year, not to head into fever dreams of next spring's flowers, and opening boxes of promises of flowers, all crushed into the shape of bulbs, corms and tubers, but some days that isn't enough the lift the darkness of November evenings.

Enter the games of looking at catwalk shows full of flowers. This is Rodarte, 2018. Some sweet shots from backstage, and the full show.

This is Christian Dior Couture, 2003

Click through to view the whole gallery is highly recommended, as it is full of dramatic, ecstatic detail shots. And this:

Funeral flowers cascade over the brides in the Comme des garcons wedding collection from 2005, in gothly black white and incongruous rainbows:

The tinsel is a particularly fine touch; in one look not shown here, it forms a kinds of nest with giant pearlescent "eggs" nestling in the model's hair; alas, the high res photographs seem to be unreachable.

The Maison Margiela creepily faceless 2013 Fall Artisanal, with its blocked patterns and colours is bedecked with artificial flowers; some almost seem to crawl across the models' faces.

But my biggest, sunniest smile is reserved for Moschino's split personality spring-summer 2018 RTW punk-femme/flower fairy show, bonus points for hilarious items like dresses pretending to be made of petals, pretending to be a discarded bouquet and more.

 

But they all pale compared to Erykah Badu on the saffron carpet at Black Girls Rock this summer, with many more bold and brilliant looks through the link,

Not terribly practical for everyday wear, but maybe I could sew some artificial flowers to a bobble hat...

november's dak botanicals

Ivy on my street corner (early morning) chrysanthemums in a garden (early evening). The dark days are upon us.

a real-life green thread

It looked greener in real life. But under the blank London sky, all colours rush towards grey.

Halfway down the brick skirt on the concrete the mortar has slightly loosened, creating a tiny rewilding planter, a spiky green thread halfway down the wall, a thin green line.
#

Of course, it will need to go before it prizes the bricks off and cracks the concrete. But even then, the formal plants will remain, and reseed every crack around them.

unexpected moss on the walls of a student bar

So, we were in Bristol to see Chromatics play the Anson Rooms. They're a favourite band -- ice cool visuals, sweet electronica full of wide spaces -- and it's a favourite venue. We got there just as the first of the die-hard fans were starting to queue, which was plenty of time to have a cuppa in the Student Union Bar, sorry the Balloon Cafe. And the walls had stuff on them. Kind of looked like model railway set trees:

But actually it's real living architectural moss, and it carries an important message about consent and respect: I'm alive, don't poke, prod or pull me. Advice for us all I think.

Sadly, I can't find many details about who provided this curious interior detail. But there are lots of sellers, mainly to the corporate sector. There are semi-fakes, using preserved and dyed mosses. You can get them serviced, and with your company logo incorporated. You can pick from a variety of colours. You can go DIY in 25 easy steps - or just 5. But I am drawn to the conclusion that the walls in the student union may be a little less alive than they are claiming.

But then, artificiality is amazing in its own way. Just ask Chromatics.

urban greenvasion : graffiti gardens

As a long-time lover of graffiti and street art, I was disappointed when I read about the Kees Keizer Graffiti letterbox experiment. This study showed people were more likely to break rules (steal, trespass, litter) in a graffitied environment.  That said, there is good and bad graffiti. Oxford being Oxford, there was at one stage a critic who was attaching stickers by particularly egregious examples saying "This is a sh*t tag". I laughed. Fair. And I'm willing to bet that the graffiti in the experiment was disordered tag-and-run scrawl rather than considered, planned, cared-for items of serious street art. And I think, we could use street art to encourage and enable urban greening. Stay with me.

We do have permissioned street art in our town. Building site barriers designated to local graffiti groups. Brick walls covered with curiously polite psychedelic counterculture mural-meets-graffiti colour. But this little pioneer created without any permission, this tiny red tulip, points the way:

Could we start by drawing in the flowers we want to see? Will the sign lead to the actuality?

The trouble with volunteers (Buddleia, Willowherb, Scrub Willow, Bog Myrtle) is that the larger ones tend to damage the urban enviornment  that they've colonised. Kezier didn't use overgrowth in the experiments on urban decay symbols and petty offending, but it seems reasonable to expect similar results. But would this be true of green graffiti? Or would we see an arcadian response, with greater openness, sociability and positive feeling towards others? In a greened environment,would we expect greater compassion? And would it matter if some of the larger bushes and the trees were painted on?

It's a sweet image of our future cities. Blank windows colonised by a combination of painted on and real window boxes. Blank walls covered with instant, delicate and undamaging climbers.  Moss graffiti swirls, rising like green smoke from urban angles and flowers drawn along every urban kickboard and street corner. Painted-on flowers acting as guide and permission for the real thing to appear.

What do we need to get from here to there?

• A nuanced approach to graffiti management
• Hire some artists and give them the challenge
• Better approaches to surface respect and management from the graffiti artists - the tulip above is on unprotected sandstone, which isn't great
• Co-production between artists, town planners and stonemasons to create graffiti tolerant surfaces -- a kind of urban skirting board, if you like
• The political will to fill in blank urban spaces
• Experiments and work to prove this is actually beneficial -- following Kahn's technological nature studies, we need to check that the symbol of nature can be as (or at least partially as) helpful to health as the actual thing  

geodisic dome fantasies

So I found an amazing video of someone constructing a geodesic dome in a back garden in Birmingham apparently from components on twitter, describing it as a twenty minute build. Sadly twitter's advanced search is on hiccup this morning*, I'll put it back in if I find it later, but anyway, I watched it about ten times. It was lovely, and was reflecting on how sad it was that my back garden is too small for such shenanigans.

Then I remembered I have an allotment, that kind of needs a grow tunnel, but I can't find a good one, or a greenhouse, except that feels too permanent a build for an allotment, or a shed, except sheds are too dark for plants usually, and maybe what I actually need is a dome?

Does anyone make walk-in geodisic domes suitable for allotment use?

Oh, hello geopod.

The DIY cheaper version is Build with pods, but I quite like the glampy look of the proper one with its cute hazel lengths. Those small triangles could easily be filled with found plastic to create a greenhousish space, and it's big enough for a workbench and seat.

I think I'd end up putting it at the bottom of my allotment, which is pretty much dead centre of the plot. So I'm pretty sure I'll need tea-making equipment too.

*I think I'm unfairly traducing twitter and the original tweet's actually been taken down.

concrete green on the mtv

So my partner was away for a few days and I was chain-watching trash television. This always includes the modern equivalent of The Chart Show, which at the moment is The Official Top 40 on MTV. This has an ad break at a rate of every 4-5 videos, so I spend a lot of time on fast forward.

But every now and then an advert stops you in its tracks. The ad started with this tweet:

Yo I’ve been looking into this thing called urban greening lol. Where you take a space that’s run down, kinda concrete jungle and turn it into a green space for the community. Can anyone think of a spot that needs it? Preferably in south London

— Loyle (@LoyleCarner) July 16, 2019

And ended with this one:

You can choose how you use your influence. Everyone has some influence. Loads of positive energy in #ThorntonHeath yesterday. #collaboration ⁦@LoyleCarner⁩ ⁦@LondonNPC⁩ ⁦⁦@Timberland_EU⁩ ⁦@yourcroydon⁩ ⁦@urbangrowthlg⁩ #Natureneedsheroes pic.twitter.com/6Js5sX5NEJ

— Ben Smith (@Smithster76) October 18, 2019

So, ah yeah. I was left with the impression that MTV had just commissioned a gardening show starring up-and-coming urban stars from run-down areas setting up community gardens and hosting gigs in them. Yeah, that. And it's called Concrete Green. Sponsored by Timberland. Happening in cities across the world. Partnered with local parks and greens. Starring locals like Loyle. Sounds awesome, thought I, just the thing now Gardener's World has shut up shop for the winter. After all, you can green a nice toasty urban space at any damn time of year.

And of course I deleted the recording and now I can't find any evidence that this show even exists. Maybe it's just that little trailer spot, maybe I was in a Katy Perry-induced fugue state.

The Timberland campaign (celebrating a new boot with some recycled elements) seems real enough though, and pretty far-reaching. They're even doing one of the really big bits of green engineering that has been mooted for a while; planting the green river of trees across Africa to draw coastal water inland and combat expanding desertification. According to the theory (and there's some evidence to back it up, but nothing on this scale) it'll need human intervention (gardening) until it becomes self-sustaining, and then the trees will water themselves, and the crops and livestock too.

Hope for a green planet on MTV, trees flowing incontinently out of vast marketing budgets, rappers ripping the vape-fouled ceilings off their clubs and replacing them with triple-thickness polycarbonate greenhouse vaulting, ferns crawling up the walls to play with the stage lights, local kids made good going back to their estates with seed bombs and tree launchers, inspired kids using their knives as bulb planters, taking abandoned white goods for tree planters and filling their balconies with pigeons, geraniums, herbs, bees.

But this is a Twitter story, after all. So let's not get carried away. I'll give the last word to a grumpy local councillor, who I bet has given some holes in the road hard stares in his time, and his thoughts about the Local Community, accompanied by Loyle getting his fidget on:

Come along to the Ambassador House forecourt in #ThorntonHeath before 6pm to find out more about how @LoyleCarner @LondonNPC @urbangrowthlg and @Timberland are going to be working with the community about plans to bring urban greening to the space #natureneedsheroes @CllrTony pic.twitter.com/nbFiBu5lUk

— Your Croydon (@yourcroydon) October 17, 2019

a well-provisioned bird house

From the size of it, I'm assuming some kind of camera apparatus is also involved.



But also, how do they re-fill the bird feeders?