Old School Garden

The very pretty 15th century Château de Chaumont, high on a cliff overlooking the Loire river, is the setting for the annual Festival des Jardins.

Chateau de Chaumont

The Castle itself has an interesting history – inhabited by Catherine de Medici in the 16th century, she entertained astrologers here, including Nostradamus, and took a great interest in the Arts and Architecture. On the death of her husband, Henri II, she forced his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who had exerted great power at court, to relinquish her Château de Chenonceau in exchange for Chaumont.

View of the Loire through the old windows of the Chateau

The Castle has extensive parkland and here one can visit the 20 or so gardens which form part of the Festival. Each year a Theme is chosen – this year it was Jardins des péchés capitaux or “Gardens of the 7 Deadly Sins”. Unlike many…

Held over 5 days from the 1^st September in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the African Union’s annual Africa Green Revolution Forum this year was centred on the AU designated ‘Year of Agriculture and Food Security’ and the political will needed to achieve sustainable food and nutritional security across the continent.

In conjunction with the 2014 Year of Agriculture and Food Security, a report from the AU Commission, presented as a feature issue of the AU ECHO newsletter, highlights stories and experiences from member states of the African Union and from regional institutions as they have worked to implement the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) over the last 10 years. For example in Rwanda the joint Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Assessment (CFSVA) and National Nutrition Survey of 2012 showed that the proportion of households failing to meet minimum food requirements declined from 35% to 21%, in part…

I recently made a visit to the National Trust property of Wallington, situated in Northumberland and not very far from the birthplace of our man ‘Capability’ Brown. I was intrigued and keen to follow-up the connection between this impressive estate, Lancelot’s older brother George and our man Brown.

Wallington’s East front. © Gary Webb 2014

While holidaying around Cambridge earlier in the year we stopped off on our travels to have a wander around the gardens at Cliveden, the one time home of Nancy Astor. She was an English MP even though American born. Her second marriage was to Waldorf Astor who inherited to a peerage and entered the House of Lords. Nancy was the first ever woman to be a member of the House of Commons, but also gained notoriety as a Nazi supporter.

Her garden turned out to be a garden planted in a style we do not actually like but definitely “of its time”. We are definitely not fans of formal gardens or bedding schemes and here we found both but viewed from an historic perspective they were interesting. Classical figures, topiary and “grand fountains” are also not my style but Jude the Undergardener, being more of a history buff doesn’t mind…

One of the great things about traveling in far northern Ontario this July was the fact that our multi-disciplinary botany team included a lichenologist.

It was great because lichens are amazing, because lichen experts are very rare, and because there’s so much left to learn in lichenology that every lichen outing seems to result in spectacular discoveries.

Powdered funnel lichen (Cladonia cenotea)—Just like in this photo, the specimen of powdered funnel lichen that we collected for exhibition at the museum is mixed with the common boreal feathermoss called big red stem (Pleurozium schreberi). Image: R. Troy McMullin © R. Troy McMullin

It was also great timing, because we’ve been making the (already ultra-cool) temporary exhibition Creatures of Light even better by adding material from the Museum of Nature’s research and collections… and as it turns out, some lichens are dazzling creatures of light.

Dr. R. Troy…

St Wilfred’s, Kirkharle. ©Gary Webb 2014

On this day in history, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716 – 1783) was baptised in St Wilfred’s Church, Kirkharle. Set in the rugged Northumbrian landscape, this charming church would be the place of Worship for the Brown family for many years to come.

A recent paper, No Dominion over Nature, authored by UK ecologists, Professors Mark Huxham, Sue Hartley, Jules Pretty and Paul Tett, describes how current approaches to food production are damaging the long term health of ecosystems, hampering their ability to provide ecosystem services and leaving them vulnerable to collapse. Focusing on continual (and unsustainable) increases in agricultural productivity, for example through intensive monocultures, will inevitably lead to a “boom and bust” cycle.

The “dominant narrative” in meeting the ever increasing demand for food (some estimate we need to increase food production by 100% by 2050 to meet this demand) is to intensify agricultural production, an approach, such as the Green Revolution, that has so far allowed food production to keep pace with population growth. Such a pathway, as authors argue, is causing ecosystem deterioration, eroding the ecosystem services we rely upon such as pollination, climate regulation and water purification…