Turf roof gardens for the twentyfirst century?
Since the renewed cold weather is making English gardeners miserable, I recommend making the most of every short sunny interval, as I try to do. Garden ponds should be multi-purpose.
Image courtesy Artem
What type of plants grew in Eden, apart from apples and figs?
Apart from fig leaves, bougainvillia and sin, what was planted in the Garden of Eden? We can say little about the layout but something about the location and something about the planting design. It may be argued that ‘every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food’ (Genesis Chapter 1) meant those plants which grow wild, while the the Garden of Eden (as described in Genesis Chapter 2) might have contained only those plants that grow as a result of cultivation. Cultivated varieties of plants have existed since approximately 10,000 years ago the description of the Garden of Eden in Genesis took its final form approximately 2,500 years ago, when the distinction between wild and cultivated species was well known – though its scientific origin was of course unknown.
On the wider question, we should consider whether Adam and Eve were wrong to seek knowledge – and whether we are wrong to continue the quest. George Steiner wrote, in Bluebeard’s Castle, that ‘We cannot turn back. We cannot choose the dreams of unknowing. We shall, I expect, open the last door in the castle, even if it leads, perhaps because it leads, on to realities which are beyond the reach of human comprehension and control.’ He thought it possible that humanity is engaged on an endless quest for knowledge and that, as in Bluebeard’s Castle, opening the last door will lead to doom.
And is humanity descending ever-further into a morass of sin? I hope not – but Eve on the left (by Michaelangelo) does not look as though she has been leading the good life and Adam on the right looks emasculated as a result of eating too much factory-farmed chicken. I prefer the medieval Adam and Eve (from the Très riches heures) and believe that the planners and designers of more sustainable ways of living have much to learn from the middle ages and medieval gardens.
Wonderfully safety conscious park design in London
Dangerous behaviour in Munich's Englischer Garten
“It must be asserted that the Pancha Sila (Five Precepts) do not necessarily make a person a Buddhist, but to be a real Buddhist, one has to observe the five precepts”. Furthermore, to be a good Buddhist one should ride a bicycle instead of driving a car. Is there such a thing as a Buddhist approach to urban design? I wish there were: urban design based on bare scientific rationalism has produced, and is producing, ugly and unsustainable cities throughout Asia. The above photograph of the Great Green Machine was taken beside the canal in Kenzo Tange’s preposterously bombastic baroque design for the Buddha’s birthplace: Lumbini.
A brave girl going for a swim in the River Thames near St Paul's Cathedral in Central London
I guess she is going to be OK. If wild swimming takes place in the River Thames upstream, as it does, then the biological hazard should be less in the tidal Thames – because the water is salty and salt is a disinfectant. ‘The discovery of a colony of short-snouted seahorses (Hippocampus hippocampus) living in the Thames means that the London river is becoming cleaner, conservationists said…Scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have discovered five seahorses during routine conservation surveys in the Thames estuary in the past 18 months, evidence which they say indicates that a breeding population exists.’ The River Thames Website explains the position as follows: ‘The water quality is very good and in fact the tidal Thames is now acknowledged to be one of the cleanest metropolitan rivers in the world’. Thames water is pleasantly warmer than sea water with about 75% of its ‘thermal pollution’ coming from power stations. One man’s thermal pollution is one girl’s heated water. There is also a good supply of mud for her fair skin and she will be able to save money on spa treatments and make a sustainable contribution to combating climate change. One thing which does worry me though is whether she has a sufficient layer of Factor 30 sun screen. If the brave girl is poisoned there will be a public outcry and the River Thames Cleanup, underway since the 1960s, wll then be driven by a popular outcry. I regret that it takes a tragedy to effect reform but as Tertullian remarked, ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’.
