Archive for March, 2014
You may remember my recent visit to Canterbury and the wealth of architectural detailing I found ‘over my head’. Well, visiting Chester at the weekend gave another opportunity to crane my neck and seek out some wonderful ornamentation and other building features in this largely late Victorian/ Edwardian ‘Mock Tudor’ set piece City Centre. Here are a few pictures to capture the spirit of the place. I’ll do a separate post with those I took in and around the cathedral.
You don’t generally look to Richmond upon Thames for political radicalism and pioneering social reform. But look again – at a street of modest Victorian terraced housing: Manor Grove in North Sheen. This was the first council housing in London. It was built through the efforts of Richmond’s very own ‘People’s Champion’, William Thompson.
Of course back then Richmond was in Surrey and it had been created a municipal borough only in 1890. That, it turned out, was an auspicious year: a young Liberal schoolmaster, William Thompson, was elected to the local council and, nationally, the Housing of the Working Classes Act was passed which allowed local councils not only to clear areas of slum housing but to build new, municipal, housing where necessary.
Then, as now, Richmond was a relatively affluent area but it too had areas of poverty and slum housing. Existing housing supply was, in Thompson’s words…
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A great way to introduce children (and playful adults) to imaginative design, growing and caring…..mini gardens.
Old containers like this metal bath are great for putting some limits on the space and provide a focal point in the garden too…..
…and plastic trays can replicate ‘real garden’ shapes…
or maybe you have some old cracked pots?
…let the imagination run wild and create a whole ‘fairy world’…
..or why not let them loose in your big garden?..
..and maybe even add a miniature (recycled) greenhouse..
Old School Gardener
By 2025 1.8 billion people will be living in regions of absolute water scarcity. Global water use grew at more than twice the rate of human population increase in the last century. Of the world’s population without access to clean and safe water, 37% live in sub-Saharan Africa. These are just some of the shocking statistics that highlight the urgent need to ensure access to clean and safe water for people across the world.
Tomorrow is World Water Day 2014, a day that aims to increase global recognition of the water resource scarcity challenges we face. It seems that more and more we are hearing reports of water scarcity leading to transboundary conflict, particularly in regions that may already be politically unstable. For example, in 2006, Israel bombed irrigation canals that supplied water from the Litani River to 10,000 acres of farmland in Lebanon. And these conflicts are…
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In November 2013, the
African Union Commission
(AUC) and
Kofi Annan Foundation
, with support from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
, convened a group of senior African leaders and experts in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to
discuss
actions that could be taken to “sustain the momentum of the many positive transformations taking place in African agriculture and food systems”. A Chairs’ Summary of the high-level dialogue, “
Harnessing Innovation for African Agriculture and Food Systems: Meeting the Challenges and Designing for the 21st Century
,” was recently released. The report details the discussions of the meeting, looking at some of the past successes, future challenges and opportunities for action.
The meeting, held in support of the 2014 Year of Agriculture and Food Security in Africa and the 10th anniversary of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), noted the recent change in language used to describe African agriculture…
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Old School Gardener
‘The lively breezes fleecy flocks are chasing
Across the sky; from field to field go racing
Cloud shadows, hurrying on beneath the sun.
On every side man’s work is being done,
To profit by his time when all around
The life renewed is springing from the ground.
Dawn’s chorus swells; at dusk the blackthorn’s glowing,
Hedges grow green, and chattering children stray
Along the banks where primroses are growing
With daffodils. And on this first warm day
A butterfly with sunlit, yellow wings
Goes gaily gliding by; a robin sings,
And celandines among the mosses gleam,
Casting their gold upon the busy stream.’
Old School Garden 