I mentioned the sunflowers in my last update from Old School Garden. I sowed a few different varieties and the big ones are now coming into their own, though the remnants of Hurricane Bertha have done their best to topple them in the last couple of days. In case of disaster I thought I’d better capture them right now, especially so that I can enter the title race(s) for the tallest, largest flower head and thickest stem….
Whilst on holiday in Suffolk recently, I ventured into one of several Charity Shops to look at the books, especially those on gardening. I came across a little paperback which takes a ‘sideways look’ at gardening and bought it (for the princely sum of £1) in order to share some of the best little offerings with you. For a 1990’s book it sounds a little quaint, I think, especially in relation to gender stereotyping in the garden (and elsewhere)! Tell me what you think…“1. Never plant anything in the garden that can subsequently be held against you.
2. Birds can be fooled once… the family pet, never.
3. A man who helps with the weeding is up to something.
4. Men who have difficulty making a start in the garden have no trouble at all with the motorbike or car.
5. No matter who plants it, you’ll end up peeling it.
6.’Popping down the road to borrow Fred’s tools’ translated means, ‘Popping down the pub, and should I by chance see Fred I’ll ask if I can borrow his tools.’
You and I both know it’s important to treat water with the up most respect, it is after all our most basic and needed resource on the planet.
Yet I just didn’t know how needed this resource is. I just imagined that seeing as we get rain in this country (usually quite a lot in some places) that we only ever had to worry about conserving it when Britain was in the mists of a belonged drought.
Take a look at this infographic below:
Photographic courtesy of Easy Watering
There are two big things that really stood our for me on the above poster:
Both the above have come from reliable sources (although I’m still trying to track down year by year household water usage data), but I was…
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Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent
Meeting the Challenge of a Sustainable Urban Future: the contribution of green walls
Anyone concerned with the quality of life in urban areas will find the conference of interest.
Green walls are an important component of Green Infrastructure – possibly the only cost-effective approach to coping with some of the immense challenges currently facing urban areas:
Green walls are easier to retrofit than many alternatives, take up less space, and can be rapidly deployed.
The Green Wall Centre
At Staffordshire University researchers have been studying the environmental and biodiversity values of green facades and different living wall systems in Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Birmingham, London and the Greater London area.
Taking advantage of this expertise, and experience with different commercial…
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As we saw in last week’s post, Hull had acted energetically in building homes and clearing slums after the First World War but the impact of a second would require it to redouble its efforts. New estates were built on its northern fringes which made the original North Hull Estate seem rather old-fashioned – a good or bad thing according to taste.
Certainly, the Estate was ageing and subject, in recent decades, to the difficult transitions that have affected much of our council housing. This, and a conjuncture of the ambitions of politicians national and local, would combine to make the Estate the nation’s first Housing Action Trust in 1991.
King Edward Street and Prospect Street during the Blitz
The strategically vital city of Hull suffered more damage from German bombing than any other in the UK except for London – over 1000 hours of raids destroyed 5300 homes outright and damaged almost 115,000. In fact, it was…
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The wall cleaned of its Ivy- and, inadvertently a mouse nest too…
Nigel Boldero aka 'Old School Gardener'
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