Gardening nanny, Chelsea Flower Show revealed, borderline allotments

1. Chelsea Flower Show- Crocus have announced they will supply Christopher Bradley-Hole/Daily Telegraph and Ulf Nordjfell/Laurent Perrier’s Chelsea Flower Show gardens for 2013.
Meanwhile, Hortus Loci is set to supply three show gardens.
The RHS is launching Chelsea at an event at show sponsor M&G in London in late November.
The society said they were keen to stop names leaking out and would talk to Crocus about releasing their designers names on its blog.
Michael Balston, Jinny Blom, James Wong and Diarmuid Gavin are all likely main avenue designers for the centenary show on 21-25 May. Tom Stuart-Smith, Cleve West and Andy Sturgeon are not planning to exhibit.

2. Interviewed Nicholas Marshall a week before his leaving by mutual consent from Garden Centre Group. No indication he was leaving. GCG people say Guy Hands and Stephen Murphy looked round the business, decided they needed a new leader and NM resigned. Shame. Hope he stays round the industry. Neil Fishlock has left Dobbies too. And Garden Centre Association has lost its chief. Some of this change might be the aftermath of a bad year. Incidentally, I reported all these three stories first.

3. Looking to talk to new Kew boss, ex BBCer Richard Deverell. When Steve Hopper got the job Times set up an exclusive with him. Wonder where we’ll be in the queue?

4. Royal Parks half marathon pix.

5. ‘Gardening nanny’ Mr Bloom is back for a harvest special episode of Mr Bloom’s Nursery will tx next Wednesday 17 at 10.35am on CBeebies.
And here is some general info on the new series which filmed over the summer and will be shown on CBeebies early next year: Mr Bloom’s Nursery: Get Set, Grow! (20 x 22 mins plus 2 x 24 min specials) sees Mr Bloom pack up his Compo Car and head out across the country to set up a travelling village fete for thousands of Tiddlers. Mr Bloom is, of course, joined by his loveable team of Veggies who are thrilled to discover about life outside the Nursery from an amazing maize maze to meeting enormous vegetables; from scarecrow competitions to rooftop gardens.

In conjunction with the new series, BBC Learning are staging a series of family events throughout the country this summer*. Hosted by Mr Bloom (aka Ben Faulks), the events will show the audience how to have fun in the garden and of course there will be the usual mix of humour, music and lots of audience interaction!

6. The Organic in the Garden website forum has closed because it gets too few new members.

7. View on peat from Poland: “Peat is not banned in Poland either. The fact is we have huge deposits of peat comparing to other countries in Mid-Western Europe. That’s why peat-free composts are still unavailable in our country. Producers like Compo still concerns launching them on the local market because it’s very hard to sustain high quality of peat-based products in our climate… But from the other hand, it won’t be easy, because Poles generally don’t want to invest in sustainable goods and decrease harmful impact on our environment. We can estimate that there are less than 3 per cent of customers, who consider investing their money in their own composting units. In case of any further questions, please don’t bother to ask.”

8. There is a row brewing about a vocal gardener’s green-based accusations against an established garden hack, written across many blogs. Watch this space.

9. There’s also a row brewing on people getting chucked off their allotments by over zealous committee members. I got a ‘borderline’ notice the other day for my award-winning (and very tidy given the poor season) plot. Ummm.

10. Alan Titchmarsh was at the recent HTA conference having a pop at talent shows. Luckily, no-one was taking notes.

11. Free thinking:

“I hope that you can join us at the Battle of Ideas 2012, an annual festival of debate and discussion, organised by the Institute of Ideas, which is a must for the intellectually curious and open minded. The festival, now in its eighth year, will take place on the weekend of 20 and 21 October, and will for the first time, be held at the Barbican in London, one of the world’s leading art centres.

During the festival weekend, over 2,000 delegates will attend over 80 sessions, together with hundreds of insightful and thought provoking speakers from across the globe, who represent a wide range of disciplines and viewpoints.

The Battle of Ideas provides a forum for free thinking, debate and discussion: in particular, evaluating to what degree the great ideas of freedom, equality, and solidarity, can still provide a foundation for living together in the 21st century.

This year’s programme includes exciting debates such as; What is wrong with equality? Capitalism: kill or cure? The illusion of free will The 21st Century case for freedom Austerity: here to stay? and Risk, regulation and red tape.

Speakers at this year’s event include; David Lammy MP, Ferdinand Mount, Trevor Phillips, Natalie Bennett, Piers Hellawell, Vicky Pryce, Philippe Legrain, John Haldane, Raymond Tallis, Zoe Williams, Ivan Krastev, Brendan O’Neill, Rob Riemen, Frank Furedi, Mick Hume, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Andrew Keen, Wendy Kaminer, and Mark Walport.”