Biscuits, Titchmarsh, Edward Woodward, 10 horticulture stories from this year
Here’s the latest. Check out Telegraph Gardening for my latest. No frills this week.
1. Garden writers have had a slow week. In The Times, Stephen Anderton’s piece on conifers comes two months after everyone else wrote theirs during National Conifer Week. And Alice Bowe continues her idiot’s guide to gardening. In the Guardian, Lia Leendertz runs through some stuff to do in the garden if you have run out of ideas of stuff to do. How about stay in instead and write a garden page filler piece? This weekend I read a recommendation of the book New Trees by Grimshaw and Bayton, which Kew Publishing launched six months ago. Finally, Helen Yemm is headlined ‘my allotment mayhem.’ Turns out it’s on how she’s cleaned her shed.
2. Went to Soil Association conference last week hoping to hear president Monty Don say something silly. The corduroyed one was disappointingly balanced but the view of Defra chief scientist Dr Bob Watson entertained. He ran through a load of graphs showing Doomsday scenarios worldwide because of global warming. Someone from the floor (not Alys Fowler who was with a doppelganger with a teacosy on her head) said Dr Bob was doing a Dr Nutt by coming out with an extreme view that was far from the Government’s more conservative position. Dr Bob disagreed and said his views were the same as Government chief scientist Dr John Beddington. Where things did kick off was when Dr Bob said the Government was still looking into GM. Boos and hisses rang round. The afternoon session before Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser chatted in the evening sesh to Guradina hack Felicity Lawrence was mostly anti-GM. I liked the hissing when Dr Bob from Defra mentioned GM. Interestingly to me no one talked at all about growers-it was all about community gardens or starving Africans. Tiny or global. Confused on Soil Assoc’s role. Are they Oxfam? An allotment society? Maybe should focus on supporting UK organic growers?
3. Titchmarsh – The announcement about his new BBC programme has been put back until December say the BBC. Was to be last week. This is probably because the story has already been out there-Mail says he’s back on Gardener’s World, HW says BBC/Titch’s agent says he not. I’ll ask Titch next week at All-Party event.
4. Ex Gardenlife publisher Seven was apparently one of those who went for the contract publishing job to do Britain’s biggest circulation gardening mag recently. Haymarket retained the Beautiful Gardens contract, which involves 4m mags sent by Tillington group garden centres to households.
5. Email from Ben Webster. “I am the new environment editor for The Times and I get copies of Horticulture Week which you send to Lewis Smith, who has now left The Times. I do not have time to read your magazine so please stop sending it.” Webby writes almost exclusively on climate change but does hack on food waste, beekeeping, supermarkets, etc. Maybe he should find a bit more time to do his research. We’ve had several stories in the Times this year-before Webby arrived.
6. James Alexander Sinclair emailed the other day to say he was part of the RHS tapas seven, who lunched recently to celebrate the autumn. James asked me to write a piece on biscuits for him. I told JAS that bourbons are vegan and all the world’s custard creams come from Carlisle, but I would have to think hard before I could get a whole column out of it.
But Garden News columnist Phil McCann (“always has something interesting to say”) has got in first!
Phil says biscuits are close to his heart and name-checked David Cameron’s taste for oatcakes (not a biscuit) and Nick Clegg’s like of Rich Tea (no-one’s fave). Phil continues: “But in time-honoured fashion, the whole biccy chat got me thinking 9and reaching for the biscuit barrel!)
He carries on the say gardeners like growing different things just as biscuit lovers like eating different biscuits. Alpine lovers like Rich tea, herbaceous lovers like Crinkle Creams, fruit growers like garibaldi and veg growers like digestives. The “bedding brigade” like Jammie dodgers. With another 150 words to go, Phil starts listing other biscuits he likes as he…scrapes the bottom of the barrel.
7. Ten horticulture stories from this year:
1.Alan Titchmarsh Wikipedia claim to be writing AT’s guide to the Kama Sutra
2.RHS chief Inga Grimsey resigns
3.RHS to rid itself of 10 per cent of workforce etc
4.Chelsea Flower Show loses one third of show garden due to recession-led sponsorship crisis. James May to show plasticine garden at Chelsea-Chelsea is quite fertile for stories. Hot pants to pot plants was my best from 2008-about Aussie stripper turned garden designer Jamie Durie. This year Flemings burnt down so the Aussies didn’t come over.
5. Buckingham Palace visit with head gardener Mark Lane garden ahead of first guided tours
6.New Gardener’s World garden in Birmingham
7.Future Gardens to happen. Future Gardens goes pear-shaped
8.Golf courses membership fall off in recession
9.Revamped Gardener’s World hit by viewer backlash
10. 10 Downing St-Sarah Brown copies Michelle Obama
8. Former World Bank chief economist Lord Stern has suggested people give up meat to save the planet – two-thirds of the world’s agricultural land is given over to livestock. Methane from livestock is the clear cause of global warming. Putting land over from livestock to crop growing is an unanswerable way to solve food shortages and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Meat causes 18 per cent of global carbon emissions. But the NFU thinks different. President Peter Kendal comes up with bad science-”Focussing on a single issue as way of saving the planet is extremely irresponsible and likely to be counterproductive. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock in the UK by a contraction of the industry, in order to reduce output and livestock numbers, would simply ‘export’ our emissions to other countries. This could also lead to an increase in the amount of UK food which we would be forced to import. I have always said that farmers and growers see themselves as part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem.”
This leads me to ask: Why are all TV chefs meat-fiends? And why are all celeb gardeners organic?
9. Coincidences: Wrote about Wicker Man starring Edward Woodward on latest Daily Telegraph column. Sadly Woodward died the next week. Also wrote a piece on poinsettia for HW a couple of weeks ago ahead of the annual newspaper pic of someone standing in a glasshouse among thousands of the Xmas potplant. On the way to Southern Growers reading Metro the story appeared before my eyes. Except this year it featured wasps used to kill whitefly on poinsettia. The third coincidence is I bumped into an old BBC contact at Cabe Space’s launch of its new Grey to Green campaign at the London College of Printing last week. She told me she is now working on promotions, which I wouldn’t like. Dig In being one. I still don’t get Dig In. The BBC sends seeds to Gardeners’ World viewers, who already know how to garden and have their own seeds. The campaign also goes out to BBC kids telly watchers. Who would rather have a young plant-most beginners fail with seeds. The BBC type asked me if I was the one who had sold my Dig In seeds on Ebay. Now there’s a thought. The last coincidence, if you’ve got this far, is that Paul Downer from Oak View Landscapes appeared on BBC news on 14 November talking about Office of Fair Trading complaints being up about rogue traders. I wrote a warmly received piece on this issue on 30 November after speaking to BBC Rogue Traders’ Mitch Westwood. Another coincidence is both of these high profile examples to the industry backed trade bodies as a way of upholding standards. They also said recession was to blame for dodgy landscapers setting up to make a quick buck.
10. At the Cabe Space event Dan Pearson came over and was charming as ever. He said he tried to get a community allotment thing going but couldn’t raise the interest. I said Alys Fowler had advertised on Facebook for punters for her Homegrown Life TV project (BBC2 January 11 8pm). Dan sadly said he hadn’t been on TV since 1999 and that people forget. Also met Chris Baines at Cabe event. He said ex-Afghanistan serving former soldiers should take up gardening skills to green eco towns. Then the fire alarm went off and we all wandered out into Elephant and Castle to try and find the way home.
Dan will be signing his book Spirit at Petersham Nurseries, London – 10am, 21 November
Kew Gardens, 4 – 8pm 12 December and Toppings Books, Bath 6 – 8 pm 17 December.
