Old School Garden

Social housing – council housing in plain terms in earlier years – has transformed countless lives over the decades.  For some a safety net, for others a springboard, for nearly all a decent home, council housing has met the basic human need for shelter for millions for whom the free market has failed.

The recognition of our duty as a community to ensure good quality and affordable housing for all emerged in the late nineteenth century.  Industrialisation and urbanisation created slums that offended the Victorian social conscience.  An increasingly organised working class demanded reform.  And there was recognition too that housing conditions which stunted individual lives weakened the nation as a whole.  A case for council housing grew that was moral, political and economic.

Eldon Grove, Liverpool, opened in 1912. Imaging Department © President and Fellows of Harvard College

Before 1914 it was Conservative governments which were responsible for the most…

Another form of art…
©copyright2014owpp

Architecture… another form of art.
Wherever I go my head usually is turned
up toward the sky, down toward the microscopic
results of nature or sideways toward the magnificent
Denouement of mankind’s work of patience… the facades.

Isn’t she a beauty?
©copyright2014owpp

Magnificent denouement
©copyright2014owpp

a flower that grows wild on the side of the Vermont road, also grows in Alabama. this flower reminds me of summer.

Are you growing fruit trees in your garden? Yesterday I was weeding my vegetable garden when I saw all these tiny pears laying on the ground. My first thought was that the raccoons had been in the tree and had been playing with the fruit. They think they own my pear tree. I was wrong. I remembered my master gardener training and the June drop information I had learned .

The pears are very tiny as they are Bosc pears and do not mature until the fall. So why did the fruit drop off the tree? This is actually a normal stage of development since both apple and pear trees tend to produce more fruit than the tree can bear. About a month after the blossoms dispappear the fruit will drop to the ground. Its natures way of thinning the crop. If all that fruit remained on the tree there…

Last year we posted a blog article about the role of infographics in communicating policy and advocacy messages in a simple, accessible and powerful way. The trend for the infographic to present big data and hard hitting facts to the masses is still growing and here are some more infographics we think you should take a look at:

1. Oxfam Australia in their infographic, What’s wrong with our food system, look at why so many farmers are hungry.
2. The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center documents Advances in global agriculture.
3. Public Health Degree investigate the Two sides of the global food crisis.

1. Online Schools compare Oil fields with corn fields in terms of their productivity and greenhouse gas emissions.
2. The United States Agency for International Development’s infographic, The global state of agriculture, looks ahead to how we must increase food for a growing population.
3. The International Food Policy…

It’s easy to miss the modernist masterpiece of Hornsey Town Hall, completed in 1935, as you fight your way through the yummy mummies and baby buggies of Crouch End but take time to admire it.  It’s been described as ‘the quintessential English modern public building of the decade’. (1)  And look to the buildings to left and right and through the clutter of contemporary commercialism – this was a civic complex intended to enshrine the role of local government at the very centre of local life.

Hornsey’s first local administration had been formed as far back as 1867.  The Hornsey Local Board built its offices in Southwood Lane in Highgate the following year.  At that time, Hornsey was basically a collection of local villages but the coming of the railways would radically transform it.  With seven local rail stations by 1887, Hornsey became a centre of middle-class villadom – the…