The world's best potatoes?
But a little over-cooked, sadly.
Top quality home grown organic Charlotte potatoes, seaweed-fed, flavoured with wild mint and dressed with parsley
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But a little over-cooked, sadly.
Author Archives: Tom Turner
But a little over-cooked, sadly.
Safety for sustainable green cyclists in London
My 19th (?) escape: the cycling accident I nearly had in London
I picked up this helpful leaflet from the London Cycling Campaign and modified it a little to show an the occasion on which a truck driver nearly killed me – about two years ago. He behaved exactly as illustrated and knocked me onto the footpath. Lying between the wheels of his turning truck, I screamed. He heard me and stopped. Then he told me it was my own silly fault – and drove off leaving me too shocked to claim for damage to my bike. Limping home, I remembered my Mum’s poem:
“Oh dear Mama
What is that mess
That looks like strawberry jam”
“Hush hush, my dear,
That is Papa,
Run over by a tram”
Cyclists need to be sustained if we are to have sustainable cycling in London.
Socrates, chives, tomatoes and biodiversity on my London roof garden
Tomatoes and chives on a sustainable green roof in London
Socrates looks pleased to see that my chives are doing well but misty-eye puzzled that I have let weeds grow when the space could perfectly well be used to grow tomatoes. I tell him that while my wife grows the excellent tomatoes I am contributing to London’s 2010 Sustainable Green Roof Biodiversity Action Programme. See below post on beautiful food gardening.
Beautiful food gardening – for fruit, vegetables, honey, mushrooms and eggs
Beautiful food gardening in Culross Palace Garden: for apples, figs, herbs, berries and chickens
‘Food gardening’ is a good American term for what the British tend to call ‘vegetable gardening’ – which is an inappropriate activity because it excludes fruit, fungii, honey, chickens, eggs, berries etc etc. But it would be better still if we could have an agreed name for what may have been principal activity in the world’s oldest garden and has certainly been carried on for a longer period than any other type of gardening: the combination of aesthetic and gastronimic objectives in enclosed and cultivated garden plots. Growing food was a major objective in Europe’s Medieval and Renaissance gardens – and may well (according to Craig Clunas) have been important in the pre-Qing classical gardens of China. In modern Europe and America food gardening is already showing signs of being the ‘next big thing’ in the design of private gardens and public parks. So we need a good name for this good activity. It is illustrated by photographs of Culross Palace Restored Medieval Garden.
I propose BEAUTIFUL FOOD GARDENING as a name for aesthetic-gastronomic horticulture but would welcome suggestions for alternatives.
A beautiful food garden - the re-created medieval garden at Culross Palace in Fife, Scotland
Garden grotto design can help save planet Earth
Bring back the grotto!
The Fantastic Cave Landscape with Odysseus & Calypso was painted by Jan Brueghel The Elder with Hendrick de Clerck. It looks the other way about, but its theme is the seduction of Odysseus by Calypso. Boccaccio, writing in the mid-fourteenth century, uses a grotto in one of his tales: …. “he let himself down thereby into the grotto and there awaited the lady, who, on the morrow, feigning a desire to sleep, dismissed her women and shut herself up alone in her chamber; then, opening the privy door, she descended into the grotto, where she found Guiscardo. They greeted one another with marvellous joy and betook themselves to her chamber, where they abode great part of the day in the utmost delight; and after they had taken order together for the discreet conduct of their loves, so they might abide secret, Guiscardo returned to the grotto, whilst she shut the privy door and went forth to her women. The night come, Guiscardo climbed up by his rope to the mouth of the tunnel and issuing forth whence he had entered in, returned to his lodging; and having learned this road, he in process of time returned many times thereafter”. In history, garden grottoes are associated with the Earth Mother, Gaia, who was also manifest in the house, the courtyard and the womb. James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, holds that the Earth (atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere) form a single complex interacting system – an organism. Garden designers can help save the planet by building grottoes which remind everyone to love and respect our fructiferous Earth. Grottoes also give gardens conceptual and perceptual depth, defining their status as a thin biotic layer between the heat of the sun, the thin wet layer, and the heat of the magma. I am confident that a grotto could win a Best Garden Design in Show Award at the Chelsea Flower Show. So “Bring Back the Grotto”.
Does Leeds Castle have the lovliest castle garden in England?
No. It does not.
Leeds Castle gets enormous and well-deserved publicity as ‘the lovliest castle in England’ and is crowded with visitors paying £17.50 each in 2010. My guide book says the garden is Grade II listed. If correct, this is ridiculous. The designed landscape around the castle should be Grade I+++ listed. The riverside garden and the Culpepper Garden (supposedly designed by Russell Page) are mediocre. But why? With such a host of visitors the Leeds Castle Foundation must have a sufficiency of funds. I would not criticise the design if it were a public park in run-down town in a depressed part of the English Midlands. But for the surroundings of the very finest example of a designed medieval landscape in England – I recommend the appointment of a skilled designer-manager.
England has few better places in which to dream of gallant kings, beautiful maidens and the age of chivalry. At the time of their marriage, in 1524, Edward was 15. Eleanor was 10 years old, Spanish and beautiful. It was an exceedingly happy marriage, arranged by their parents. They had 16 children. Edward was a great military leader and in 1271 he and Eleanor were in Acre, crusading. Her child miscarried and they returned home via Rome, where they met the Pope, and via Paris. We would frown on the early marriage and the anti-Muslim crusade. One can rarely judge an earlier age by the standards of a later age – but we need have no reservations in criticising the current design of Leeds Castle Gardens. It’s pathetic. And why did they litter the streambank with old railway sleepers?
Maze, 1988, by Vernon Gibberd. Who will win the fair maid?
The maze at Leeds Castle is of a different quality: it is well conceived, well made, well positioned and popular. Unicursal (one-path) labyrinths were popular religious symbols in the middle ages and symbolized the spiritual path a pilgrim might take. Multicursal (many-path) mazes were popular renaissance games. They were fun to experience and symbolic of the difficulties of finding and winning the game of love: a fair maid might be placed at the centre of a maze. The Leeds Castle Maze is enjoyed in precisely this way and does not conflict with the medieval castle landscape.