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January 2007

Lecturing in Columbus, OH

Just a quick post to say that I'll be speaking at the Exploring the World of Perennials seminar on Sunday 21 January at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. My topic is Transatlantic Perennials and other speakers are: Dan Heims, Dr Denise Adams, Stephanie Cohen, Melinda Myers, Dr Steven Still and Dr Laura Deeter. It looks to be great day.

For more information click here.


In print and online

I met with the editors of Garden Answers and Garden News, two of the top British gardening magazines, today.

The monthly Garden Answers is a practically based magazine with much of the information put across in an easy and accessible Q&A format and which concentrates on the plants - choosing the right varieties and how to grow them well - supplemented by thoughtful shopping advice.

Garden News is Britain’s, perhaps the world’s, only gardening newspaper. It features news, of course, wide ranging timely practical advice and, historically, rounded up awards from the shows around the country. It's still a regular weekly read for specialist gardeners – be it dahlia and chrysanthemum exhibitors or keen veg growers.

Gnandga Both titles have been around for a long time but, like most British gardening magazines, they’re selling fewer copies than a few years ago. A number of magazines are dead and gone, but GA and GN are very much alive and both are now putting a lot of thought into how best serve their readership in the digital age.

There’s a vast amount of information available online now, but just as radio never replaced the newspaper (as was once feared) and television never displaced radio (indeed radio goes from strength to strength) the internet will not replace magazines. The question is how to integrate print and online service to provide the information that gardeners need in the way they need it. There’s nothing like relaxing with a magazine, but the immediacy and richness of the web is equally tempting.

My idea? Use the web to add value to the material in the magazine – additional step-by-step practical advice, how-to videos, extensive where-to-buy information and expanded background on issues which can only be touched on in print. And make most of it available only to subscribers. You can subscribe to both Garden Answers and Garden News here.


Kissing’s always in season

“Kissing’s out of season when gorse is out of bloom” – so says the old English saying. Pull over! Stop the car! Let’s get comfortable…

Ulexeuropaeus500For as I continue my back-and-forthing visiting family and friends through southern England most of the motorways and other major roads have gorse, Ulex europaeus, in flower alongside  – sometimes miles of it. And that’s the point: it’s very rarely without a flower, even in a proper winter. This winter, of course, has not been at all proper: the January sunbathers in Central Park made the news here in England.

Gorse, known as furze or whin in some areas, has always been plentiful and so had many traditional uses: in particular it was bundled and used to heat ovens in homes and bakeries and, after crushing in a cider mill to flatten the nasty spines, it was used as a winter feed for stock. Rarely grown in gardens, the double flowered form is no improvement. It is mentioned in a number of traditional folk songs and its reminder that a kiss and a cuddle is always to be enjoyed remains potent.


Roadside apple trees

Driving around southern England visiting family and friends over the recent holidays, we’ve seen some intriguing plants growing alongside the motorways.

The most surprising, perhaps, were mature apple trees, well laden with ripe fruit. Two trees with bright yellow apples were spotted growing by the side of the A303 (one of the main routes from London towards the south west of England). There were just one or two green apples on the half dozen trees I spotted last year by the M25 (the huge ring road around London). And on the A14 in Cambridgeshire I noticed three trees in fruit – and only here was it possible to stop and take a closer look at one of them.Roadsideapples500

The A14, by the way, has an interesting history. It connects England’s two main north-south routes, the A1 and the M1, from east to west and it was first built to enhance the effectiveness of the nuclear deterrent. The American Air Force had a batch of nuclear-armed cruise missiles housed at RAF Molesworth, an air force base without a decent road that could accommodate their mobile launchers for twenty miles. So this major new road was built to allow the missiles out into the wider world. It was opened in the 1980s, but RAF Molesworth is now largely an intelligence gathering site. Bob Hope entertained at the base in 1943 and the base has the unique distinction of more of its American servicemen marrying English women than servicemen from any other American base in England.

Anyway, those apples… I also managed to pick a fruit safely. After scrubbing it well I found that it tastes rather like a soft and squidgy ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’ (Britain’s favourite apple). A friend, having also tasted a slice, suggests it would be ideal for an apple fool.Roadsideapplefruit500

The question is, where did these trees come from? Some, I’m sure, are the result of travellers struck in traffic munching an apple, eating their picnic before they got to the seaside, and wearily throwing the core out of the window. The trees on the M25 are sited at a stretch notorious for jams. But in recent years many trees have been planted alongside new and improved roads when construction is complete and these are mainly native species. So it has also been suggested that unscrupulous nurseries may have supplied surplus stock of culinary or fruiting apples instead of wild crab apples.

Either way, they're intriguing additions to our roadside flora.