Sport Relief

I just spent an unusual but worthwhile Sunday, taking part in the Sport Relief Mile (well, three miles, actually) challenge, joining thousands of other people raising money for worthy causes both here, and overseas. My three mile route took place round the parks in Southampton where there was a wide diversity of participants: all ages, serious athletes, able-bodied, disabled. Some ran, others walked; one woman using a walking frame took her own time to complete the course. Take a look here:

Thank you to everyone who sponsored me. If you haven't done so, but would like to, please go to this link.

What iPhone Apps do you use?

As anyone who knows me personally will vouch, I’m a big fan of the Apple iPhone. I’ve had an “original” since they first became available in the UK, but have recently upgraded to the latest iPhone 3Gs. What makes the iPhone so special & valuable to me is the wealth of free, or really cheap, add-on “apps” that can be downloaded from the iTunes app store to bring extra functionality to the device, as illustrated by this picture from the Apple iPhone website.

If you’re considering a “smartphone”, here’s my personal recommendations:

iPhone built-in basics (other than making and receiving phone calls!) are:

• 
  
  Calculator - has lovely big "keys" for normal mode and includes the scientific calculator with trig functions just by turning the iPhone sideways. Valuable aid on site surveys (see Clinometer below)


• 
  
  Calendar - I use this for all my appointments, and would be lost without it. Thankfully, syncing with the PC (which I do at least once a week) backs up the calendar into MS Outlook. I also rely on the calendar alert facility to remind me of appointments, but this is a really weak aspect of the iPhone - the alert signal is pathetic and you can't customize it like you can with the clock alarm. Please sort this one out Apple!


• 
  
  Camera - not the best phone/cam on the market, but adequate, and really useful when out doing site survey/analysis.


• 
  
  Clock - I set different wake-up alarms for normal weekdays and weekends, as well as repeating alerts for other regular items like my networking meetings. I like being able to customise the alarm signal - wish the calendar alert allowed this. I also use the stopwatch timer when I'm rehearsing presentations and the countdown timer when I'm cooking!


• 
  
  Compass - standard app on iPhone 3Gs, excellent for surveys (especially if the sun's not out) and gives you the geographic Eastings/Northings reference too, so you can determine the sun sweep properly in your designs.


• 
  
  Contacts - I love the direct touch link to make a call or email and to go to Google maps from the address, but it does seem lacking in having no ability to group contacts into personal friends, family, social groups, business contacts (colleagues, clients, suppliers, etc). I cheat by using "keywords" in the “Company” field - I can then use the search facility on these keywords to short-list what I’m looking for. Maybe there's a good app out there for this?


• 
  
  Email - one of the essentials of any "smartphone"!


• 
  
  iPod - of course, keeps me entertained on those trips out to client sites, whether music or some of the great podcasts available from the Beeb.


• 
  
  Maps - direct link to Google maps - useful for finding clients & suppliers, though I've now got CoPilot – see below.


• 
  
  Safari - the web browser is the 2nd smartphone essential. The iPhone's ability to have many open web pages, and to fill the screen by tapping & pinch-zooming is simply brilliant.

Additional apps which I've added:

• Classics, by Andrew Caz & Phill Ryu - excellent free set of 23 (current count) classic/kids novels to read when you've a spare moment. Good user interface.


• Clinometer, by Peter Breitling - 2 really good uses of the iPhone accelerometer - a brilliant spirit level, and the angle measure - which is great for measuring heights of buildings, trees, etc during a survey. You need a horizontal distance measure to the object (I have a Leica Disto laser for this) then use the iPhone’s scientific calculator for the tangent of the angle read from clinometer.


• Convert Units, by Free the Apps - although I'm generally OK with imperial / metric linear measures, it makes area, volume and weight conversions easier and saves googling how many square meters in an acre!


• CoPilot Live UK & Ireland, by ALK Technologies Ltd - now I've upgraded to iPhone 3Gs, with the GPS facility, this is a really cheap & very effective SatNav - especially teamed with a windscreen mount and a charger-cum-FM-transmitter to get the speaking instructions thru the car radio, and play the iPod at the same time. I also got CoPilot Live NA (North America) at a bargain price of £12 over Christmas, ready for my next USA trip.
  
• Dictionary.com, by Dictionary.com - for those moments of word blindness!


• Discover, by mAPPn Inc - one of several "USB" stick apps that let you up / down load files between iPhone & PC. Let's you carry around MS Excel, MS Word documents, PDFs, etc.


• ECB Cricket, by the OTHER media - useful when you're out if, like me, you're a cricket fan & don't always have a radio handy. Better still, Tunin.FM (or iCarRadio lite as it's now called) so you can listen on R5live Sports Extra - even without a WiFi link.


• Elevation for Real, by homedatasheet.com Inc. - if knowing altitude is important to your site.


• Flashlight, by John Haney Software - sometimes helps, so I keep it at top left of my home screen - so it’s easy to find.


• Google Mobile App, by Google Inc - let's you search the web just by speaking into your iPhone. It's amazingly accurate providing there's not too much background noise, and great when you've got dirty hands from handling soil, etc!


• Identify Tree, by Christoph Duyster - an app for doing what it says on the tin, using leaf & bark as identifiers. A bit limited in its repertoire, but it was very cheap!


• iPhone.tvcatchup.com - not an app, but a web portal that streams live Freeview TV channels, even allowing you to pause them – but, as with all video, draining on battery charge, and streaming video’s not very good without a WiFi connection.


• Keeper Password & Data Vault, by Callpod Inc - if you're anything like me, you'll have zillions of card pins, web account logins and all sorts of other "secret" data to keep track of. This provides a much more secure way of storing things than making up fictitious people in your contacts list!


• Met Office Weather Application, by UK Met Office - a better weather app than the builtin one, but can be slow.


• Milebug Lite, by Izatt International - I use this for logging my business trips – the free Lite version only holds 10 trips so it has to be emailed (so I can load it to a spreadsheet on my PC) when it’s full, but it does the job. Now that I've upgraded to the iPhone 3Gs there may be apps which can use the GPS to track trips rather than having to enter details?


• Park’n Find, by Affinicore Inc - probably the best "where did I leave my car" app for those times when you're out in a strange place, or at a trade show / exhibition, etc.


• Project Tracker, by collabtools - one of the many project tracking tools. I find this one really easy & useful, using a new project for each current client, and task headings such as travel, client meetings, survey/site analysis, draw up survey, concept design, design detail, construction/specification, planting design, etc. As I have the separate To-Do app, as well as the inbuilt calendar app, I haven't found a use for PTracker’s voice notes, todo list, etc


• Ruler, by DAVA Consulting - a very simple measuring tool for those occasions when you've forgotten a ruler - would be even better if it let you specify a scale, so it became a scale ruler to read off plans!


• SketchBook MobileX, by Autodesk Inc - an app which lets you draw / paint sketches on the iPhone, including overlaid onto photos. Can be useful for helping to convey ideas to a client on-site - providing you've become fairly proficient with it!


• To-Do List, by Concrete Software Inc - one of many apps in this area. I used the free one for 2 years and have now upgraded to the "pro" version.


• Toilet Finder, by BeTomorrow - can help with pressing needs when out & about, but database has some strange anomalies!


• Travel News, by DirectGov – road and public transport live update. Can be useful when making long trips, but desperately slow.


• Tunin.FM iCarRadio lite, by Mobilaria BV - gives you Internet radio channels even without a WiFi link when you're out & about – but beware of running down your battery!


• Tweetdeck for iPhone, by Tweetdeck Inc - as a fan of Twitter, it's good to have this with me when I'm out & about.


• WifiZone@UK, by WeesWares - database showing nearest WiFi locations. Occasionally useful.

What apps have you installed that help professionally, or with personal organisation?

Time for Spring Cleaning!

Back in the autumn last year, I made a plea for not tidying up your garden, because of the advantages that gave to wildlife, etc. Well, at last there are signs of an emergent spring and with this weekend promising to remain dry, the ground should be firm enough to work on, so it’s now time for me to get on with that work!

I’ve already pruned the trees (Acer capillipes, Amelanchier and Euonymus europaeus) that I need to keep under control in my limited space earlier this year, so my list of tasks is

• start with pruning my few roses back to a good open frame;
• hard pruning (“stooling”) those shrubs whose purpose is coloured winter stems (Cornus species) and fresh foliage (Physocarpus, coloured-leaf Spiraea);
• clearing the dead stems & foliage of the ferns, perennials and non-evergreen grasses;
• wire-rake over the crowns of my hardy Geraniums to take out all the dead stuff and give them space for the new growth to breathe;
• dig out a Miscanthus grass which has outgrown the space available and looks out of balance with its neighbouring plants. I’ll probably replace it with a less dense grass such as Pennisetum ‘Red Buttons’ - I have another one close by at the edge of a rain garden I made last year - and fill the space around it with some contrasting low-growing perennials such as Heucheras – you can get such an amazing range of foliage colours in them, I’m a big fan;
• move a “lollipop” Bay tree into a larger pot that I got last weekend – partly to give it a bit more weight – it’s been blown over several times in the recent gusty high winds. I can re-use the smaller pot for a Carex ‘Frosted Curls’ which is in need of extra space;
  

I won’t tackle the Penstemons (which need hard pruning to stop them getting woody) yet, nor the back-to-framework pruning of the Buddleia, nor any of the evergreen shrubs, as it would encourage the new buds to break and it’s still too cold & frost-prone for sappy new growth to do well. Give it a few more weeks until late March/early April (at least in my neck of the woods!).

Then it will also be time to sow some annual flower seeds to provide more nectar for bee foraging (one of my contributions to International Year of Biodiversity) and to get my spuds (which are chitting nicely indoors) out into the spud-bin and large pots that I use on my sunny deck.

Happy days!

How Sustainable is Your Garden?

The UK government recently launched a new approach to food production over the next 20 years (The Food Strategy), including the aim of greater sustainability in our food supply. In the Guardian report of (Environment Secretary) Hilary Benn’s speech to the Oxford Farming Conference he is quoted as saying:


"Food security is as important to this country's future wellbeing, and the world's, as energy security. We need to produce more food. We need to do it sustainably. And we need to make sure what we eat safeguards our health ...We know that the consequences of the way we produce and consume our food are unsustainable to our planet and to ourselves ...We know we are at one of those moments in our history where the future of our economy, our environment, and our society will be shaped by the choices we make now." He said consumers, rather than retailers, should lead by buying "greener" food, wasting less and growing more of their own.

Interestingly, the imperial war museum is staging an exhibition this year about how we Brits coped with food shortages during WW2, including grow-your-own, eating seasonal produce and recycling. Perhaps with the current revived interest in these areas, we can learn from the experience of our grandparents?


Sustainability is also prominent in this year's Gardener's World Live Show, with the announcement by NS&I (National Savings), the show sponsors, of the winning entries for their “Growing Gardens Today” competition.

So, growing your own food is a sustainable choice in your garden, and sustainability is “a good thing”, but ...

What exactly do we mean by sustainable?

A short while ago my local group of the Society of Garden Designers (Southampton Cluster Group - contact me for more information) were pleased to have Rosie Yeomans, a tutor in garden design & horticulture at Sparsholt College, and one of the presenters on Radio 4's "Gardeners' Question Time", lead our discussions on the subject. Rosie defined it very succinctly as “creating and managing a garden with as little input as possible”.


Aspects of sustainability from our discussions can be summarised as:

If you’re a gardener:

• garden organically – reliance on input of fossil-fuel-derived fertilisers & pesticides is not sustainable; use natural barrier methods to protect crops, not poisons;
  
• multiply your own plantstock from cuttings or seed – join a gardening club – swap with friends, family & neighbours;
  
• use mixed-species hedging, and allow natural undergrowth to develop, rather than keeping it "clean";
  
• conserve natural resources – compost your waste in a heap, rather than a plastic bin, of at least 1 cubic metre (they need air & water to work, and space to work around them) and use it to feed your soil; mulch to preserve moisture, suppress weeds & maintain soil structure;

Design decisions:

• change as much lawn as possible into more productive green space – meadows, shrubs & trees will give much better habitat / environmental benefits and need far less input;
  
• plant sensibly to fit the local climate & garden microclimate - avoid wasting resources on plants that don’t really belong – whether “native” or “exotic”;
  
• manage your rainwater, don’t flush it down the drain! Food crops, especially, need a high water input, so consider the movement & storage of rainwater in your design; use whatever elements of the rainwater chain you can (green roofs, rain cups/rain chains, storm-water planters, permeable surfaced paths & patios, rain gardens, swales, ponds & bog areas. You can see more rain garden information on my website .
  

The HESCO garden at the 2009 RHS Chelsea show, includes a short video clip describing how rainwater is managed through the features of the garden

If you have a pond, be careful what you plant in it, and especially what you do with any excess plant growth (or even water from emptying it) to prevent alien species from escaping into the natural environment where they can become invasive & destroy native ecosystems - for more information see the "Be Plant Wise" campaign endorsed by celebrity TV gardener Charlie Dimmock.

Materials choices:

• reuse existing hard landscape materials, so far as possible (eg using old paving as a base for a utility area such as beneath a shed);
• recycle materials where they can't be reused (eg breaking up old concrete or paving for use as part of the hardcore sub-base beneath new hard landscape);
• use reclaimed materials for new features, if possible (eg old stock bricks for garden walls & paths);
• use recyclable materials for new components (eg avoiding pressure-treated timber, which can't be chipped & composted at the end of its useful life);
• use locally-sourced materials to minimise transport energy input;
• use sustainably-managed resources (e.g. FSC-approved timber, alternatives to peat, etc);
  
  

The subject of sustainable materials used within a garden design is a tricky one.

Take, for example, decking - which is still an extremely useful & popular surface material in some contexts, despite the "yesterday's fashion" connotations. There are basically 3 "flavours" of decking:

• cheapest is pressure-treated softwood, which is relatively low energy to produce, usually comes from European, FSC-certified, sources where the forests are managed sustainably and shipping the timber to us doesn't need huge transport energy. But pressure-treatment uses non-sustainable chemicals, which prevents the timber from being recycled at the end of its 20-year-or-so lifetime. It probably also needs regular chemical re-treatment to keep it sound and looking good.
  
• hardwood, which is more expensive, but lasts longer - it doesn't need chemical treatment (except, maybe, for a plant-derived oil), is relatively low energy to produce (though the trees grow more slowly, so can't be replaced as quickly), but it mainly comes from tropical forests, so has high shipping energy and the forest management may not be FSC-assured. We certainly don't want to lose rain forests, but hardwood timber, without chemical treatments, has the advantage that it can be recycled at the end of its (much longer) lifetime.
  
• composite, which is manufactured from waste hardwood and recycled plastic, into boards that have the look and feel of hardwood timber, but which don't require any treatment for an extended lifetime, and won't rot, warp, split or splinter. They require energy to manufacture, but can be low transport costs (made in the UK), and have sustainable credentials through their use of otherwise waste materials and their long, treatment-free lifetime. They may well be the most expensive initially, but perhaps comparable when lifetime costs are considered.
  
  
  Sustainable, or "green", building materials is an extremely complex area!

For more information click here

There are many more elements to sustainability and, not surprisingly, it’s strongly linked to many of the topics I’ve previously written about:

• the fight against climate change
  
• helping to save the bees, and generally improving habitat for wildlife
  
• maintaining bio-diversity

Further information on sustainability in gardens & landscaping can be found here

If you'd like help taking further sustainable steps in your garden, but aren't sure how to go about it, call in a professional - me! http://www.blooming-good-gardens.co.uk/

If you enjoyed reading this article, and would like to subscribe to my regular updates, but aren't sure how to do it, click here

Report on UK Ponds

I just had to say it’s a shame that, according to a recent report by The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and Pond Conservation, 80 percent of ponds in England and Wales are in poor or very poor condition. Apparently, ponds are more important for the protection of freshwater biodiversity than previously realised.

Pond Conservation is a charity for creating and protecting ponds and the wildlife they support, and they have a Million Ponds Project which aims to create a network of new ponds across the UK. These new ponds will have clean water which, the Pond Conservation website says, is important, because most countryside ponds are damaged by pollution. Making new, clean ponds is the simplest way of protecting freshwater wildlife. Pond Conservation gives advice on creating new ponds, or how to make a donation.

The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology is the UK's Centre of Excellence for integrated research in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and their interaction with the atmosphere. Their website describes their scope as: “Working in partnership with the research community, policymakers, industry and society, we deliver world-class solutions to the most complex environmental challenges facing humankind.” Their press release on the ponds reports can be seen here. They report some positive signs for water habitats, such as “improvements in the quality of headwater streams, an increase in the number of ponds, a reduction in phosphorus in soils and recovery in some soils from the effects of acid rain”, but also negatively on the degradation of ponds in England and Wales.

The British countryside has around 50,000 man-made and natural ponds, according to this report, including the heathland ponds of the New Forest (close to where I operate, so of particular interest to me). Hampshire has over 20,000 hectares of low heathland, more than any other county in England, providing a diversity of habitats for many species of plants and animals.

The bogs and wetlands of the New Forest (which contribute to the National Park’s designation as a Special Area of Conservation) may be either year-round ponds, or simply wet areas, but both support a wide range of wildlife. Makes me realise I’m privileged to live so close to such a special area.

A Year of Biodiversity

The UN have designated 2010 “International Year of Biodiversity” in recognition of both its importance to all life on Earth, including the human species, and its increasing loss – mainly due to human activities such as deforestation, industrial monoculture food production, habitat pollution and climate impacts. The website declares the designation “is a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives. The world is invited to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth: biodiversity.”

“Why is it so important?”

Humans are but one animal within the Earth’s diverse flora & fauna, however there is one huge difference between our species and all others – we have the ability to protect or destroy the natural diversity. We depend upon the networks of other living species for food, fuel, health & wealth. Whether your belief in how this arose is through Darwinian evolution, or in the design of nature by a creator God or gods, there is no living organism on this planet which does not perform some service to others, and it is to our own detriment to endanger these networks – whether deliberately or unwittingly.

“Yes, but what good can I do?”

The main International Year of Biodiversity website urges us to do just one thing towards biodiversity, and gives a huge list of what we might pledge to do - from creating a wildflower meadow, planting a window box, not mowing part of our lawns, applying for an allotment, tackling Japanese Knotweed see here for more information on this), to encouraging bats.

The UK’s IYB website, hosted by the Natural History Museum, explains how we can all get involved. There’s information on saving the British dormouse; how to build a bug hotel in the autumn to help insect over-winter; joining in with the Big Wildlife Garden (more of this below); looking for lichens; enemy invaders (helping to monitor non-native species of ladybirds) and counting banded snails as part of Evolution Megalab, being run by the Open University, supported by the Royal Society.

The Big Wildlife Garden

Natural England are running this campaign which recognises two major aspects - the important part gardens play as habitats for many species, and that gardening in a wildlife-friendly way can increase the diversity of plants and animals. This is a topic I’ve alluded to several times here, such as growing fruits in my front garden, growing veggies in window boxes, and (not) tidying the garden for winter.

You can register your own garden here as part of the Big Wildlife Garden and gain points for the things you do to encourage wildlife - even just leaving a patch of nettles (which hosts 40 species of insects, including some of our most colourful butterflies) - building up your score towards Bronze, Silver, Gold and Green award levels. There’s an online forum too, to share ideas from other organisations.

School Wildlife Gardens

Of particular interest to me is the competition for the Big Wildlife Garden School of the year since I’m involved with a local infant school to develop just such a garden. Schools must work their way to Green level, and then send in an article and photos of their wildlife project. Judges will choose regional winners, as well as an overall national winner.

Biodiversity - join in – whatever size space you have!

Biodynamics - mysticism or good sense?

Over the Christmas break I heard a couple of items on the radio about biodynamics, a gardening philosophy which treats the Earth as a dynamic, living organism which is affected by other elements of the universe – in particular the sun, moon and planets. The theory originated from ideas by Rudolf Steiner in 1924, as a response to farmers who had noticed a deterioration in the quality of crops produced using chemical fertilisers.

The USA-based Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association describes biodynamics as a “unified approach to agriculture that relates the ecology of the earth-organism to that of the entire cosmos”, whilst the UK Biodynamic Association describes the aim thus “to revitalise nature, grow nourishing food and advance the physical and spiritual health of humanity. Each biodynamic farm or garden is conceived of as an organism with its own individual qualities and diversity of life. Reliance on home produced compost, manures and animal feeds is a key objective and external inputs are kept to a minimum”.

It’s a philosophy that encompasses ideas such as planting (and harvesting) by the phases of the moon, and the lunar cycle as it travels through the zodiac, and is a natural progression from organic gardening, according to writer and biodynamic/organic farmer Tom Petherick in an article for The Telegraph. He also states that both Tesco & Marks and Spencer recently revealed they use the cosmic calendar to decide when it’s best for critics to taste their wine ranges!

I’d heard about biodynamics before, when Mark Rendell, a designer friend of mine, gave us a talk on the subject, and his own experiments with it based on Nick Kollerstrom’s book “Gardening and Planting by the Moon”, at a Society of Garden Designers meeting. However, I hadn’t realised that it was so widely used around the world – as well as the UK there are organisations in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA.

Biodynamic vineyards have also been developed in many areas of the world, with growers claiming to have improved the health of their vines.

The Elysia Garden, designed by Andy Jones and constructed in 2007, claims to be the only biodynamic garden open to the public in the UK. It’s part of Garden Organic, Ryton, (previously the Henry Doubleday Research Association, HDRA) an organic growing charity.

The Biodynamics emphasis on “spiritual” values, however, is a cause for some controversy in some circles, and I suppose it could be dismissed as “mumbo jumbo” by sceptics. However, it’s an interesting topic, well-founded in ancient belief systems which pre-date our dependence on ever-decreasing fossil-fuel-based industrial agriculture, and I see no harm in finding out about something that has so many supporters. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, I guess.