Ignore everything I've said so far about self-sufficiency and eco-chic, green gardening, because over the next three weeks I'l be chugging through enough carbon to consume a small forest! I've escaped the polar weather in Auckland this week by sneaking off to Europe to go to all the summer gardening shows over here. Or at least, that was the plan, but the weather in London today was no cause to break out the bikinis. Blustery and showery sums it up, although apparently we missed a shocker of a day yesterday, with torrential rain causing all sorts of trouble. Certainly the grounds of the Hampton Court Flower Show looked more like that of the Glastonbury Festival - or a graveyard for mud-stained sparkly sandals. I sensibly wore jandals. Came back to the hotel with mud-caked toes. Eww.
There were three stand-out gardens for me at the Hampton Court show this year, and each for different reasons. Today I'll start with the Sustainability Can Be Sexy garden designed by (and surely this is the best-ever name for a landscape design company): Floral and Hardy. The judges only gave it a bronze (they apparently told the designers their planting was too sparse and the "sexy" name wasn't appropriate for a family garden. Which is funny, because you can actually produce a family without, well...)
Anyway, to the nuts and bolts of the garden. It was packed with fun features, from the blue hammock and outdoor cushions woven from recycled seat belt straps from cars that had failed their warrant of fitness tests, to a shade sail knitted from recycled shopping bags. There were birdhouses made from recycled real estate For Sale signs (what else can you do with them after you've sold your house?) and a big bug hotel made from a stack of firewood. The walls were made from Hempcrete (a mix of hemp fibres and powdered lime) and the compost bins were made from recycled timber pallets stained with (presumably organic) English tea! Also quaint was the grass-clad hobbit house, with its round door made from a recycled wine barrrel with the top and bottom cut off. The hobbit house was clad with turf recycled from the show garden site itself. And there were bat boxes on the back wall. I like the idea of a bat box more than I like the idea of bats living in it, but all in all, a really cute garden.
Ignore everything I've said so far about self-sufficiency and eco-chic, green gardening, because over the next three weeks I'l be chugging through enough carbon to consume a small forest! I've escaped the polar weather in Auckland this week by sneaking off to Europe to go to all the summer gardening shows over here. Or at least, that was the plan, but the weather in London today was no cause to break out the bikinis. Blustery and showery sums it up, although apparently we missed a shocker of a day yesterday, with torrential rain causing all sorts of trouble. Certainly the grounds of the Hampton Court Flower Show looked more like that of the Glastonbury Festival - or a graveyard for mud-stained sparkly sandals. I sensibly wore jandals. Came back to the hotel with mud-caked toes. Eww.
There were three stand-out gardens for me at the Hampton Court show this year, and each for different reasons. Today I'll start with the Sustainability Can Be Sexy garden designed by (and surely this is the best-ever name for a landscape design company): Floral and Hardy. The judges only gave it a bronze (they apparently told the designers their planting was too sparse and the "sexy" name wasn't appropriate for a family garden. Which is funny, because you can actually produce a family without, well...)
Anyway, to the nuts and bolts of the garden. It was packed with fun features, from the blue hammock and outdoor cushions woven from recycled seat belt straps from cars that had failed their warrant of fitness tests, to a shade sail knitted from recycled shopping bags. There were birdhouses made from recycled real estate For Sale signs (what else can you do with them after you've sold your house?) and a big bug hotel made from a stack of firewood. The walls were made from Hempcrete (a mix of hemp fibres and powdered lime) and the compost bins were made from recycled timber pallets stained with (presumably organic) English tea! Also quaint was the grass-clad hobbit house, with its round door made from a recycled wine barrrel with the top and bottom cut off. The hobbit house was clad with turf recycled from the show garden site itself. And there were bat boxes on the back wall. I like the idea of a bat box more than I like the idea of bats living in it, but all in all, a really cute garden.
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