Expanding our environmental view

This is a piece I wrote for the Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft but Ive also shared it here as I think its an interesting topic that many dont quite see. The environment is not just land in the countryside, or parks and gardens, but its avery space we inhabit, icluding our homes and so we need to expand our view of environmental issues to cover everything that covers. Which, I might add, is pretty much everything.....

In 1980 the right to buy council housing became law in the new Housing Act and thousands of people up and down the country achieved what they had never thought possible-a home that they owned. Little wrong with that  I hear you cry but in reality what happened was that, instead of reinvesting the monies raised by building new social housing for a population that was growing exponentially, that money was ring fenced by the then Tory government, and the growth of building of social homes has steadily declined ever since, whilst the prices of housing has risen at rate that is almost unbelievable. With land being seen as an asset, it’s cost has risen and average house prices, which includes the prices of all those once council houses, have risen alongside that at a rate that soon will make home owner ship by anyone other than the wealthy impossible. Average house prices in 1977 were still less than £10,000 where today the average price is around £190.00 nationally and in London and the South East that figure rises to just over £400,000.

Of course for the generation that were able to buy their council homes this has lead to the possibility of making huge sums of money on homes that were sold for enormously more than they were purchased for and these homes are now a part of the national housing stock and sold as such, meaning that they are now generally not affordable homes at all. Indeed the governments’s idea of an affordable home is one that is 20% less than its average cost which is still completely out of the average wageholders budget of £26,000 per year. With mortgage companies generally asking for at least a 5% deposit and often far more we have created a situation where we will have future generations renting and never being able to get onto the property ladder, already saddled with huge debts from university fees and relying on more and more unscrupulous landlords as need for housing outweighs availability.

Constantly we hear the cry that we must leave the world a better place for our children and our children’s children. That we must care for greenbelt, encourage more conservation areas and SSSI but rarely do we see housing mentioned as a part of this. However, how can it not be? Our environment is not just the outdoors, the countryside or parks, but it is everything we live in. It is our cafes, those areas in city centres between buildings, that grassed area behind the fence on an estate. Our environment is the space in which we live.

So on Stokes Croft, Bristol’s independent district where creativity is at the centre of so many lives, how can we look at a building that is threatened with a London developer’s plan of gentrification as any other than an environmental issue. Stokes croft, the area known for its incredible squats, its street art and its independent spirit, who fought as a community to keep Tesco at bay cannot be the place to put a gated community in any way. In fact, frankly, gated communities, designed with mainly safety and security as its main criteria, cannot possibly help maintain any form of independent spirit. The fact that only 7% of the dwellings will be affordable and that is likely to be just the 20% lower rate rather than social housing, in an area where the housing crisis can be seen every day, on the streets, ought to be seen as a scandal and a disaster for our future generations, rather than a positive solution to a building that has been crumbling for many years.

Positive solutions need to be the way forwards, looking at how we ensure people are safe and secure in homes they can afford and in communities where they feel they are safe and secure. Rather than continually looking at constant development at the outer edges of our cities of box type homes, we need to look at the building stock within our cities, leaving the greenbelt alone for our ever growing population, and looking at the amount of buildings that could be turned into decent homes within the city, where people will be able to be car free, and rather than looking at bus routes that stretch ever further out of the city, the routes can concentrate on the areas that are already populated. With a larger population living within city boundaries, parks budgets and budgets for urban landscaping could increase, helping the city to cope with rising temperatures due to our changing climate. 

With all this in mind surely at the centre of the Carriageworks plan should be community. The Carriageworks Action Group and Knightstone Housing have put together a plan with community at it’s heart, and that must be the plan that is implemented at the very least. Imagine a beautiful city centre community building, with homes that are affordable and with the quantity of social housing that Bristol city Council recommends in all housing schemes of 30%-40% available to people struggling to pay the ever increasing private rents in the area. Imagine that it has beautiful and productive gardens that are open for the entire community of Stokes Croft to use and which people can safely use as a path through to the area at the back of the building 24 hours a day. With small shops and workshops built in at affordable rents on the ground floor, it can also become a centre for micro businesses to begin and flourish, creating a truly local economy and holding the money spent within that economy, adding to it’s wealth, both financial and creative.

This should not be a dream. This is the vision of green and sustainable living that we must move towards if we are to create a world that we are proud to leave for our children. As a species we must stop looking at houses as assets and begin to look at them as homes. Only then can we leave a planet that we are proud of for future generations.

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Some Love for our Botanic Gardens

Botanic gardens, be they large or small, pull me towards them like a bee is drawn to nectar. These, often ancient, gardens with their collections of often rare, and always magical plants speak volumes not just about the British love of plants and gardens but also about the history of plants in the UK, the way they were collected and eventually planted out. Many a collector sent their finds back to Kew, or another of our world renowned botanic gardens, and those gardens would sow the seeds, nurture the plants and then offer out the propagation of these plants to nurserymen. The plants we take forgranted as being the backbone of our gardens began their life in the country being looked after by these incredible places.
Bristol has a wonderful botanic garden, that today sits just north of the Downs in the garden of one of the University of Bristols Halls of Residence. It has moved here quite recently from another site and it is proof of the brilliance of the team who work there, both paid and voluntarily, that it looks as though it has been there forever. The garden has 4 core collections, Evolution, Mediterranean, Local Flora and Rare Natives and Useful Plants and these can be seen used over a selection of gardens that include a herb garden, a Chinese Medicine Garden, beautiful herbaceous borders that are set out to show which plants are pollinated by which insects, or indeed small mammals in some cases, as well as sections based on the evolutionary collection and the collection of plants native to Bristol and its surrounding area.
It also has amazing glass houses with a National Collection of Lotus, which are beyond beautiful and offer an ethereal beauty to a glasshouse that also house the Victoria Amazonica waterlily and a huge collection of Nepenthes.
But, like every botanic garden in the UK and probably worldwide, it is being squeezed by budget cuts and constantly is having to fight to survive. Its well documented that Kews budget is always under threat but so are the budgets of the majority of these gardens, as few universities actually use them as a resource hence their constant fight for survivial.
So what can you do to help? Well make sure you know where your local botanic garden is and use it!! So many people I speak to about the Bristol Botanic Garden are completely unaware of its existence and I imagine the same is the case for many. Visit, become a member or a friend, go to their events or even volunteer to help in the garden or in some other way. An hour helping them once a week with marketing or admin releases someone else to raise precious funds or other do other vital roles that are less easy to find volunteers to cover.
Here are a few photos of Bristol Botanic Garden that I took at their recent Bee and Pollinators Festival.

 The Amazon waterlilies with the Lotus plants growing above them are quite beautiful in the tropical glasshouse.

 Always good to see a bee buzzing around at a Bee and Pollinator festival!!

 This is a custard apple and it was growing in the Native American Food Garden on which there will be a full post soon.

The wonderful bird of Paradise plants, which in their native countries are pollinated by sunbirds.

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The state of our plots

Those of you who follow me on social media or regularly read this blog will be aware of the ongoing work going on to put a bus only road through our allotments at Stapleton in Bristol. The year has been long, sad and felt fairly unproductive as the site has and continues to feel unwelcoming and difficult.
Still we have to show a key, now for a long lost lock, to gain access through fencing from a security guard who is on duty 24/7.
Still we arrive to find that there are constantly security dogs on site, which on a personal level makes me constantly anxious whilst there.
There are machines digging and moving things about and now the plots at the far end of the site, the ones that will be lost forever despite the love and attention given them by their tenants for, in some cases, longer than I have been alive, have been given a date to vacate and will finally be moving to the new sites that are located on what was  Feed Bristols wonderful wildflower meadow.
Being at the plot has felt stressful and caused anxiety and although we have tried to make it business as usual a lot of plots have been left untended, or not as well tended as usual. It has taken a huge mental effort to go there since the occupation of the trees, and its hard walking around the site and remembering those brave souls who fought so hard not just to save that land but also to create a wonderful if temporary community on our site. To this day and forever I will thank them for their bravery and for standing up for our land in the face of cold, wet winter and foregoing their personal comfort to do so.
But I have gone. And some things have been planted and some crops have appeared, mainly through their own determination to survive than anything that I have really done. The beetroots and chard, sorrel, spinach, potatoes, kale and herbs have flourished despite the sadness and we have cropped and eaten them as we would every year, but in all honesty they havent brought their usual joy. They are a constant reminder of what was and what will soon be gone.
But we move on and plans are beginning to become clear as to what must be done to move this sad and sorry place forwards. Plans for more flowers, new and bigger beds and a possible polytunnel are alive and running in my head. The area at the far end, left to nettles this year in order that the destruction of the wild flower meadow couldnt be seen from the plot, needs to be addressed now that there is a path and new allotments at that end rather than wildlife rich hedge and meadow. Dead trees that are at the end and were a part of the hedge, now need felling and a new area will appear for, as yet, I know not what. Perhaps a wildlife area to in some tiny way, make up for the loss of those trees, those wildflowers......
What this year has really made me realise is that my mental health has been directly affected by the state of the site and the destruction of the land. Half way through the occupation, when fences had gone up and security were brought in, depression hit in a way it does only rarely, knocking me into a deep and dark abyss that saw me having to stop.
Stop to let the dust in my head settle.
Stop take in what was really happening to that precious piece of land.
Rarely has a visit to the plot this year not seen tears as I so desperately needed to be there despite the destruction feeling that it was pulling me apart. And recently that deep abyss has been threatening to re-open as the time comes closer and closer to those plots being forever sealed under tarmac for a bus only route that is already reneging on its promises.
I dont share this lightly. But I share this in the hope that people, whoever they are, and whatever their link might be to growing, the land or food, might realise that us allotment holders dont just grow food.
 Its not just a little hobby.
For many its about sanctuary.
For many its about health and well being.
For many its about a connection with the earth and the seasons.
But for all of us its about a connection to that piece of land, that precious piece of earth that we call our plot.

                   My plot can be seen here on the left with the greenhouse-that hedge is now tarmac.

                                  Flowers in the first year I had the plot-before the chaos began.

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For the love of all gardens all hail the NGS!!!

Im actually going to write a post about gardening!! Well, sort of. Im certainly going to write a post about gardens.

Every year I make an effort to visit an NGS garden or several. I do this for various reasons but mainly because I do love a garden and I really like to see what people are doing, how theyre using plants and why they are using them the way they do. Its fascinating to see how people put together their gardens, be they designed in a specific way, or with a nod to a specific garden genre or even a specific garden. Sometimes the plant pallette is the definitive design brief, be that English cottage garden or jungle, or sometimes it can be the size of the space that defines the design. And sometimes there is no design brief and its a persons very individual collection of plants that creates a garden that is opened.

I have visited some spectacular gardens, ranging from urban jungles to cottage gardens, to ex-Chelsea show gardens and productive biodynamic gardens to garden squares and designed landscapes. Gardens that have taken years to evolve and gardens that have been designed and installed in mere weeks. Gardens that are entire lifes works, including gardens of passionate plant collectors where one species is very much in the fore, to gardens that are still evolving and new. Gardens belonging to young and old, to men, women, couples and families. But most importantly, and heres the thing, to people who are passionate about their outdoor space and the way in which it is used. 

To gardeners. To growers. To plantspeople. Call them what you will, these are the people behind the gardens. Those who work tirelessly in the days and weeks before they open for that one day, to create their idea of heaven for you to see and wonder around, notebook and camera in hand. They make cakes, prepare plants for selling and often produce leaflets with planting lists and plans so you can take inspiration from their gardens away with you.

And they do this for love. Proceeds, which this year are £2.637 million, go to a variety of charities, including MacMillan Cancer Care and the Marie Curie nurses, as well gardening charities such as Perennial and supporting the Garden Museum to have a garden intern each year. They are Macmillan and Marie Curies biggest donators, giving each £500,000 this year. 

I have never opened my garden, but my mother opened hers the year before she died. It was, ridiculously, to her the biggest achievement of her life. She felt her garden was far from finished but had been encouraged by a friend who also opens her garden each year, and it was an enormous success. Teas were drunk, cake was eaten, plants were sold and over 200 people visited and stood in awe of the spaces that had been created in 5 short years. The rill and pond, the woodland garden, the kitchen garden, the rose arbour and the loosely named orchard, were visited, discussed, photographed and enjoyed by a line of people who were genuinely interested and pleased to see what was going on. For a woman who had spent years teaching and inspiring young people, to think this was the biggest achievement she had ever had was a little ridiculous, but I think it shows the passion of the hundreds or maybe thousands or millions of gardeners who create these beautiful spaces that we so rarely get to see. 

Ironically less than a year later we were relying on Macmillan nurses to see Mum through the last days and hours of her life, and they occasionally retreated to the garden for a tea break, aware of the sad irony of the situation themselves whilst returning to her to tell her what they had seen, or to bring her a posy of what was flowering in her beloved patch at that moment.

Occasionally a dissenting voice arises about the NGS and the gardens that open, as if the dissenter expects to see something designed to Chelsea Flower Show standards behind each entrance. To those I say, behave!! These are peoples gardens first and foremost. They are little pieces of paradise. Visit with open minds and be prepared to understand the people as much as their garden. Marvel in the fact that in their spare time this is what they do, what they love and be happy that they want to share it with you, even though they are often terrified. Understand they are often baring their souls by opening this space, in a way that only an amateur artist accepted for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy might understand. Be kind, be mindful and suggest thoughts but be mindful of open criticism, particularly if you arent find of it yourself!!

But most of all I say, in a bizarrely proud and British way, visit these gardens, these people, these souls. Buy some tea, take some photos, support those charities and enjoy the gardens whilst being proud of the charities you are helping to support.

To find your local gardens visit www.ngs.org.uk, where you can also discover how to go about opening your own garden to visitors through the NGS, whilst supporting their charities.

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