theindependent--2019-08-25--Plants prescribed for anxiety and depression in new aposfeelgoodapos scheme

Plants prescribed for anxiety and depression in new 'feelgood' scheme

Doctors have started prescribing pot plants instead of pills in a new scheme for patients in Manchester.  A GP practice is harnessing the well-known feelgood effects of greenery and gardening to treat people suffering from anxiety, depression and loneliness.  Instead of sedatives and anti-depressants, patients may get herbs, veg and pot plants to help lift their spirits.  The new scheme – believed to be a first in the country – means patients who may be experiencing low mood could be given a plant to care for before bringing it back to the surgery for transfer into a communal garden.  This then gives patients a chance to join in with further gardening and social activities.  The grassroots idea comes from Cornbrook Medical Practice in inner-city Hulme, where many patients live in flats and may not have access to gardens or greenery.  Augusta Ward, a medical secretary at the practice, said: “The plants we will be giving people are mainly herbs – things like lemon balm and catmint, which all have mindful qualities.  “Having something to care for brings so many benefits to people – especially for those who may not have a garden or be able to have pets. The plant is then a reason to come back to the surgery and get involved in all the other activities in our garden and make new friends.”  The idea is backed by the city’s health commissioners, who want to promote community support or “social prescribing” as one of the holistic ways to improve wellbeing.  Many of the plants for the scheme have been donated or have been funded through the social enterprise group Sow the City.  Plants in the Cornbrook garden range from herbs to tomato plants and vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli and kale.  Dr Philippa James, one of the surgery’s GPs, said: “I’ve seen how our patients relax in the garden – and how they then get involved in wider events like picking litter, which all adds to pride in our area. There’s a lot of evidence now about how two hours a week in a green space can lift mood – and then that too has physical, mental and emotional benefits. That’s something we need to harness.”  Dr Ruth Bromley, GP and chair of Manchester Health and Care Commissioning, added: “So much of what keeps people happy and well isn’t medical. That’s why ideas like this one are so wonderfully effective, building on what is best about our communities and supporting patients close to where they live.”  More information about the scheme and health and social care plans for Manchester, is available at healthiermanchester.org.


theindependent--2019-09-09--Ecosia Could a search engine that plants trees really help save the Amazon

Ecosia: Could a search engine that plants trees really help save the Amazon?

Images of the Amazon being ravaged by wildfires has unified the public in shock and sadness.  Scientists warn that these fires are destroying “the lungs of the Earth” which will seriously jeopardise our ability to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming.  In response to this destruction, people have been downloading a tree-planting search engine called Ecosia – the eco-friendly rival to Google – which has seen a 1,150 per cent surge in users. It has pledged to plant an additional 1 million trees in the next six months in response to Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-environment policies.  The Berlin-based firm donates 80 per cent of its advertising profits to tree-planting schemes – which it runs in Brazil and elsewhere – and says it now plants a tree every 0.8 seconds.  It has been described as a “modern and inventive method of saving the world climate without a huge effort”. For many it might seem “too good to be true” – but is it?  Each month the company releases financial reports which show how it is spending money.  Its July 2019 report shows that 52 per cent of its total income was spent on tree-planting (which is 80 per cent of surplus revenue). This amounted to more than €800,000 (£725,000). It spent 5 per cent on advertising, 30 per cent on operational costs and 12 per cent was saved to fund future investments.  Organisations that work with Ecosia confirmed to online fact-checking website Snopes that they received the money as outlined in the financial report.  Experts agree that the company is a progressive and environmentally conscious organisation. However, funding tree-planting schemes must not distract people from stopping deforestation – much of which is driven by unregulated trade agreements with the EU and US.  “Users who have downloaded the browser since the Amazon fires obviously feel they are playing a part in helping plant trees in the Amazon, but it is too little to initiate the urgent large-scale action required,” said Andre Laperrière, executive director of UK-based NGO Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (Godan).  “What the Amazon needs at this stage is not more trees, it needs a policy level change at the government level, to truly make a difference. Temporary planting of trees only to be cut down by the industries and farming communities would be unhelpful.”  Brazil is home to 200 million cows and is the largest beef exporter in the world. The proposed EU-Mercosur free trade agreement could mean South American countries can increase their beef quota to 99,000 tonnes on a new low 7.5 per cent tariff.  Investigations have found meat farmed on illegal pasture in the Amazon can already be bought on the shelves of five major British supermarkets.  Mr Laperrière said global governments – particularly those that import Brazilian beef and agricultural produce – need to put pressure on the country to create better environmental certification standards. The EU and US are some of Brazil’s largest traders and hold considerable influence over how produce is grown.  Reducing beef consumption, avoiding food waste and shopping more ethically can also avoid environmental destruction. “The individual carbon footprints have the biggest impact, often in places hundreds of miles from your home,” said Mr Laperrière.  In an open letter published in April this year, more than 600 scientists and 300 Brazilian indigenous groups asked the EU to ensure that trade deals with Brazil respect the environment.  Richard George, head of forests at Greenpeace UK, agreed that reforestation is essential but means nothing if the Amazon is still going up in smoke. He said people can make a difference by eating less meat and dairy and eating more plant-based foods.  “Alongside this, governments must suspend trade deals and companies suspend purchasing until the Amazon and its people are protected – we can all put pressure on them to do this ... We can’t just plant our way out of the climate emergency by using a different search engine – if only it were that simple,” he said.  According to Anna Kitulagoda from WWF-UK, it is important that tree-planting projects – although important – don’t make people lose focus from tackling deforestation.  “Well-designed projects to plant trees – ensuring the right trees in the right places – are urgently needed. But it’s critical that projects like these continue to complement and don’t replace a focus on tackling deforestation, and the loss of the most carbon and biodiversity-rich forests on our planet: our tropical rainforests,” she said.


theindependent--2019-12-27--How gardeners are working together to protect the world's plants, one seed at a time

Agriculture has changed significantly in the past century. Bigger machines, bigger farms and bigger budgets allow fewer farmers to produce more food. Changes in science and policy have also resulted in an industry in which power over what we grow and eat is increasingly held by very few.  Consider one of agriculture’s most basic inputs: the seed. Although there have long been farmers and merchants who specialised in growing and selling seeds, it wasn’t until the 20th century that people started talking about seed production as an industrial process. Thanks to changes in farming, science and government regulations, most of the “elite” seed that is bought and sold around the world today is mass produced and mass marketed — by just four transnational corporations.  This transition has made many people uneasy. As a result, a new movement is growing, one that aims to wrest power back through the renewal of an age-old agricultural task: setting aside some seeds from each season’s harvest to plant in the next. Community gardeners, home growers and small-scale farmers increasingly insist that seeds should be something they produce themselves, or get from a friend or neighbour, rather than something they buy off the shelf.  For some, seed saving is a way of keeping history alive, for example by growing the vegetable varieties their grandparents enjoyed. For others, it’s a way to save money, or to connect with their community. And today, it is increasingly a political statement – a choice that allows consumers to avoid fruits, vegetables and other foods produced at an industrial scale. Depending on the grower, it may even be all of these — and more.  Many seed savers are motivated by the idea that their actions contribute to keeping diverse crop varieties from disappearing, especially those ignored by industrial farms or commercial seed companies in their pursuit of profit. Organisations such as the Heritage Seed Library (UK) and the Seed Savers Exchange (US), and the growers they represent, routinely connect the individual acts of growing, storing and sharing seed with a global conservation mission. In cultivating awareness of this connection, they have transformed a timeless task into a powerful political act.  So how exactly did this transformation occur? New historical research shows that concerned citizens and organisations have worked hard to make it happen.  The Heritage Seed Library, today a part of the British non-profit Garden Organic, offers a case in point. This collection of 800 or so local and rare vegetable varieties has its roots in a campaign to save endangered vegetables that Garden Organic launched in the 1970s, back when it was known as the Henry Doubleday Research Association, or HDRA.  At the time, the HDRA was well established as source of expert advice on organic gardening in Britain. Its director Lawrence Hills had founded the organisation in 1954 to encourage gardeners to experiment with natural pest deterrents, green manures and other alternatives to the synthetic chemicals that were becoming common in agriculture.  Among the many subjects on which the HDRA offered advice from its earliest days was helping “own growers” — backyard gardeners, allotments holders, and others growing food to eat themselves — to decide what varieties to plant. Hills was adamant that newer types of tomatoes, carrots and green beans lacked the flavour of earlier generations and performed worse in small-scale cultivation.  He was therefore dismayed to learn in the early 1970s that changes in British agricultural regulations would make it difficult for seed companies to sell “old-fashioned varieties”. He feared, rightly, that the small market for such seeds would not justify the price that a company would now have to pay to register these for legal sale. If seed companies weren’t stocking them – and growers accustomed to buying their seed weren’t saving them – these old-fashioned varieties would simply disappear.  In a 1975 letter to The Times, Hills announced an initiative of the HDRA intended to address this impending extinction crisis: establishing a collection of Europe’s “vanishing vegetables” at the HDRA.  Hills asked fellow gardeners to help him locate as many uncommon varieties as possible. Ambitious as it was, that collection was only the start.  The HDRA soon began a campaign to start a “seed bank”. Hills envisioned that this long-term storage facility would gather and preserve vegetable varieties from around the world. In this sense, it would be just like a few already existing international seed banks, which ensured that diverse seeds would be available for plant breeders in the future. Unlike those seed banks (also called “genebanks”), the vegetable collection that Hills imagined would have a public-facing component, a “seed library” that any grower, regardless of professional expertise, would be able to access.  Both seed bank and seed library eventually came to fruition, though not in a single institution. When it became apparent during planning that a government-supported Vegetable Gene Bank would mainly serve professional researchers, Hills and HDRA staff organised The Heritage Vegetable Seed Library for Research and Experiment — later shortened to the Heritage Seed Library — to serve the needs of ordinary gardeners. Launched in February 1978, the library gave away seed of its rare varieties to subscribing members.  The Heritage Seed Library was the more innovative of the two projects, and arguably the more transformative of British vegetable conservation in the long term. This was because it emphasised the need for the active participation of individual gardeners to to achieve conservation goals. The library only functioned with the help of “seed guardians” who helped keep it stocked with seed. HDRA also encouraged library users to learn how to save their own seed.  Together with other HDRA initiatives, the seed library helped cement the idea that conservation of vegetable diversity would only succeed through the commitment of ordinary gardeners to purchasing, growing, saving and circulating seeds of useful or delicious varieties.  Today, many home and allotment gardeners who save seeds see themselves as protectors of endangered plants – and their gardens as repositories of important biodiversity. They believe that their stewardship of vegetable diversity contributes to the possibilities for a better, fairer global food system in the future. The history of the HDRA reminds us that there was — and still is — work involved in connecting these individual acts of seed saving to the future of the world’s food.  Helen Anne Curry is a Peter Lipton senior lecturer in the history of modern science and technology at the University of Cambridge. This article first appeared on The Conversation


theirishtimes--2019-09-06--A potted history of plants at Dublins National Botanic Gardens

A potted history of plants at Dublin’s National Botanic Gardens

Plants and Power: Botanical Imperialism is the intriguing theme of a new series of guided walks in the National Botanic Gardens on Saturdays in September.  Devised by guide Charlotte Salter-Townshend, the walks will explore the geographical origins of plants and the role certain plants played in empire building, the development of slavery and international trading routes.  “I’ll be retelling certain parts of history through plants and look at how the world was shaped through the trading of tea, coffee, sugar, cotton and other plants,” explains Salter-Townshend, who has a master’s degree in public history and cultural heritage from Trinity College Dublin.  Admitting to having scant knowledge of how to grow plants, this enthusiastic guide at the botanic gardens has, instead, a fascination for the history of botanical gardens, 19th-century plant hunters and the often ruthless trading of newly discovered plants from Asia and South America.  For example, Salter-Townshead has tracked how rubber, which originated in Brazil, was brought through England to southeast Asia, where rubber production was then developed. And, did you know that the Dutch traded New York (formerly called New Amsterdam) with the British for control of the sugar plantations in Surinam in South America?  “We rely on plants for our survival, but there is a dark side to the story of plants and how people were exploited through slavery, smuggling and trade wars. Even today, in parts of the world, drug gangs are gaining control of avocado plantations,” she says.  On her tours, Salter-Townshead will take visitors on a potted history of plants whose trade played a role in the rise and fall of empires. Take tea, for example, which became a fashionable drink in England when Charles II married a Portuguese princess where tea drinking had already become popular.  “The British had been buying tea from the Chinese since the 17th century. This was costing them a lot of money so they began exporting opium to China in the 19th century, which led to huge social and economic problems in China and the so-called Opium Wars.  “The Scottish plant hunter Robert Fortune smuggled thousands of tea plants on ships from China to India so the English could grow tea in India instead, which led to the establishment of the British East India Company,” explains Salter-Townshend.  The National Botanical Gardens in Dublin was first developed in 1795 at the gardens of the Dublin Society and then the Royal Dublin Society. “Its original function was to support industry and agriculture with practical education for landowners and farm labourers. There was a hay garden and a cattle garden as well as a vegetable garden,” explains Salter-Townshead.  It wasn’t until the 1830s, as the British empire expanded, that the more exotic plants start to arrive. “Plant hunters in Asia, Africa and South America sent back seed and living plants to Kew Gardens and to the gardens here, as Dublin was the second city of the British empire.”  On her tours, she shows visitors many of these exotic plants held in the magnificent curvilinear glasshouses at the botanic gardens.  The gardens also has a collection of plants that Roger Casement brought back to Dublin from the Congo while on a mission there to report to the British government on the Belgian colonial regime.  “We have the original coffee, cocoa and baobab plants in our herbarium that Roger Casement brought from the Congo in the early 1900s,” says Salter-Townshead.  She will also take visitors through the wild Ireland section of the gardens to explore how potatoes, which were originally brought from South America to Europe by the Spanish conquistadors, became so popular in Ireland. “Potatoes, which belong to the nightshade flowering plants, were originally viewed with suspicion, deemed to be poisonous and associated with witchcraft. Yet when they were brought to Europe, they produced a high yield in a small patch, were nutritious and didn’t require harvesting equipment, so they became a staple crop, which led to population boom,” she says.  Interestingly, it was David Moore, the curator of the gardens in the 1840s, who first noted potato blight at Glasnevin on August 20th, 1845, and predicted that the impact on the potato crop would lead to famine in Ireland. He later correctly identified the fungal cause of the blight but narrowly missed finding a remedy.  The big focus at the gardens at that time was the building of the Richard Turner curvilinear glasshouses and the propagation of orchids. “This in itself shows the power of the Dublin Society and the prestige of the gardens at the time,” says Salter-Townshend.  While guided tours focused on such a vast historical theme can only whet visitors’ appetites, she is keen to bring a contemporary angle to her story of plants and power.  “The focus of botanic gardens has changed from being a place where plants are used for profit and power to one of protecting biodiversity. So, for example, we grow heritage apple trees here and we save seeds of tomatoes for future food security,” she says.  National Botanic Gardens conservation botanist Dr Noeleen Smyth is the Irish representative for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. “The trade of wildlife is the fourth-largest illegal trade after drugs, human trafficking and arms trafficking,” says Salter-Townshend.  Plants and power: Botanical Imperialism, a themed guided tour of the National Botanical Gardens, run on Saturday, September 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th, starting at the Education and Visitor Centre at 2.30pm. Admission €5. Booking: 01-8570909, botanicgardens @opw.ie


theirishtimes--2019-11-10--Michael D Higgins moves to protect plants and wildlife in Phoenix Park

President Michael D Higgins has asked for a specialist team to develop plans to protect plants and wildlife around Áras an Uachtaráin and the Phoenix Park.  The Office of Public Works, which owns the park, has commissioned a year-long “bio-diversity” audit of the 52.6-hectare (130-acre) site, which includes formal gardens and certified organic kitchen gardens, grasslands, wooded areas and a lake.  The Trinity College ecologists will be led by biodiversity specialist professor Jane Stout, and include experts in plants, fungi, insects, mammals, reptiles and amphibians.  Speaking at the first National Biodiversity Conference earlier this year, Mr Higgins said that we are facing “profound challenges” in terms of threats to our natural environment.  He said reversing biodiversity loss will require all of us to be leaders within our own spheres of influence.


thetelegraph--2019-07-07--RHS chief admits that she doesnt know all the Latin names for plants

RHS chief admits that she doesn’t know all the Latin names for plants

Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) chief has admitted that she doesn’t know all the Latin names for plants.  Sue Biggs, Director General of the RHS encouraged nervous gardeners by admitting that even she does not know all the Latin names given to plants.  “I don’t know most of the Latin names, so if I can be the boss at the RHS and not know the Latin names I’m sure everyone listening to this is fine with that too,” she said.  She added that cautious gardeners could use the My Garden function on the RHS website which gives all the common names.  “Through Plant Finder and My Garden on there, if you’re really not sure just quietly put it in and then you can wow everyone with your amazing latin knowledge,” she told Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.  She went on to say that she had also killed “hundreds of plants” in her life.  “The worst thing you can do in gardening is kill a plant and I’ve killed hundreds in my life. So feel free, you help the nursery trade by killing plants.


theguardianuk--2019-08-26--Ecotherapy why plants are the latest treatment for depression and anxiety

Ecotherapy: why plants are the latest treatment for depression and anxiety

Many gardeners already know the uplifting feeling you get from being muddied of hand, nurturing plants from seed to bloom and watching the seasons change. It is something the NHS is increasingly taking notice of, too, as a way to improve and manage mental health, along with other conditions.  A GP surgery – Cornbrook medical practice in Hulme, Manchester – has started prescribing gardening to people with anxiety and depression. Patients are given plants to care for, which are later planted in the surgery’s communal garden – a place where they can join in an activity with others and strengthen social connections.  There are other similar schemes, such as Sydenham Garden in south London, which takes GP referrals for its therapeutic sessions. “Research shows that outdoor exercise or ‘ecotherapy’, such as gardening or walking, has huge benefits for wellbeing and can even be as effective as antidepressants in treating mild to moderate depression and anxiety,” says Aimee Gee from the mental health charity Mind. “This is thought to be due to a combination of doing more physical activity, which is known to have many physical and mental health benefits; getting more regular social contact with people, which can reduce loneliness and boost self-esteem; and being surrounded by nature, which can boost your overall mood and sense of wellbeing.”  The colours, sounds and smells of a garden, she says, “boost our wellbeing, while nurturing a garden or allotment provides the satisfaction of completing tasks and a stronger connection with the natural environment, both of which are associated with improved self-esteem and decreased levels of anger”.  Monty Don, the gardener and TV presenter, has credited gardening with helping with the depression he has experienced. In a column for Gardeners’ World earlier this year, he summed up the optimism gardening instils: “When you plant something, you invest in a beautiful future amid a stressful, chaotic and, at times, downright appalling world.”  Even if that doesn’t convince you of the magic of gardening, there is a strong possibility that other forms of non-clinical “social prescribing” might be on their way to your surgery soon; other alternative treatments include arts and crafts, walking and singing lessons.


thetelegraph--2019-08-25--Pot plants prescribed to help alleviate anxiety and depression in move away from pills

For thousands of years plants have been used to alleviate anxiety and depression, with Pliny the Elder recommending borage, and the Roman military doctor Proscurides extolling the benefits of St John’s Wort, as early as the 1st century AD.  Now the NHS is catching up, prescribing plants instead of pills in a pilot scheme in Greater Manchester.  Instead of sedatives and anti-depressants, patients are being given a tubs of herbs, pot plants or trays of vegetables to tend in the hope that caring for a living thing will help lift their spirits.  Doctors have also selected specific herbs for their mood-boosting benefits, including lemon balm which is used in aromatherapy to relieve anxiety, stress and...


sottnet--2019-04-01--Keeping a jasmine plant in your room reduces anxiety panic attacks and depression

Keeping a jasmine plant in your room reduces anxiety, panic attacks and depression

Plants are an excellent way to increase oxygen levels in the room and improve air quality. There are also beneficial plants that will help you improve mood, and fight anxiety, depression, and prevent panic attacks.Researchers have found that there is a direct link between stress and oxygen levels and showed that high levels of toxins in the air lead to anxiety and stress. Therefore, you can drastically improve your mood and relieve stress and anxiety.Scientists have conducted studies on mice and discovered that the aroma of jasmine plant and jasmine essential oil significantly calmed them, and made them stop all activity and sit quietly in a corner.Their brain scans showed that jasmine fragrance boosts the effects of a chemical called GABA on nerve cells, and thus relieves anxiety and encourages rest.According to Professor Hanns Hatt, these findings published online in the Journal of Biological Chemistry can be regarded as evidence of a scientific basis for aromatherapy.Prof Hatt, of the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, stated thatResearchers found that jasmine is much more effective than sleeping pills, anti-anxiety medications, and sedatives, asResearchers at the Wheeling Jesuit University, led by Dr. Bryan Raudenbush, assistant professor of psychology, found that dispensing jasmine odor into a room where participants were sleeping "led to greater sleep efficiency and reduced sleep movement."Subjects who breathed jasmine in the air rated their level of anxiety and vigor lower, and performed cognitive tests faster, while the alertness level in the jasmine odor condition was greater during the afternoon hours, which helped maintain students' focus on academic work throughout the day.Jasmine essential oil is an effective natural way to improve sleep, boost happiness, regulate hormones, and treat anxiety and fatigue. It can be used to improve concentration, soothe spasms, and ease mild depression, since it:Therefore, keep a jasmine in your bedroom, and you will reap all the benefits of this amazing plant!Sources:


theguardianuk--2019-06-30--House plants the new bloom economy

House plants: the new bloom economy

In October last year, an American entrepreneur named Eliza Blank raised $5m in venture funding for the Sill, a New York brand described on its website as “A modern plant destination for the modern plant lover.” Blank established the Sill in 2012, with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. “We want to make it fun and easy to own a plant!” she wrote then. It had not been fun and easy for Blank up to that point. Every time she moved from one city apartment to another, she would “try to integrate plants into my home,” she says, but, “I would just kill every single one of them.” She noticed friends facing similar struggles: they neither knew of convenient places to buy plants nor, crucially, how to look after them. Monsteras slowly dwindled; peace lilies faded to stem; fronds slumped to an unhappy limp… You couldn’t call it a bloodbath, really, but there was slaughter.  “Plants are assuredly good!” Blank says. But where to buy them in the city and how to become a dutiful plant parent? “I asked: ‘Why isn’t there a consumer brand that can elevate this to commodity status?’” She became frustrated at first, then excited, the way entrepreneurs do, I suppose, when landing on a new growth opportunity. She would sell plants online! Bird’s nest ferns. Cheese plants. Moss balls… then offer consumers helpful information about how to not kill them.  Blank’s Kickstarter campaign raised $12,632, hardly big money, but enough as a seedling. She was banking on houseplants becoming rising stars of commerce – snake plants as retail phenoms. The market was ripe, she thought, or at least ripening, because she had noticed houseplants appearing more frequently online. And she was right. In the years since the Sill launched, business has grown month by month, in tandem with the increased standing of the houseplant as an arbiter of millennial taste. The American gardening industry alone is now worth $48bn, according to the National Gardening Association. That is big business and it is getting bigger. Younger fingers in particular are becoming greener. Last year Blank sold more than 100,000 plants, more than 270 a day, predominantly to millennials, pulling in around $5m in revenue, she says – profits succulent enough to keep investors chirpy.  To meet consumer demand, the brand recently opened three bricks-and-mortar stores, two in New York and one in Los Angeles. It is no great leap to assume that the yucca you just “liked” on Instagram, positioned carefully in the corner of a Brooklyn loft, or a Manhattan brownstone, or even some condo in Middle America – the Sill does not discriminate by postal code – comes from Blank’s stock.  Plants were not one of Blank’s childhood passions. Before launching the Sill, she worked in marketing, and she thinks like a retail strategist: how can we best reach consumers and ensure they’re happy? How can we convince our customer base of the must-have status of the kentia palm?  The same can be said of Freddie Blackett, also a former marketeer, also once not so green-fingered. In 2015 Blackett launched Patch, an online platform that sells houseplants to homes in London. By his own admission, he had few horticultural credentials before setting Patch up, but he too sensed an opportunity: how the millennial interest in technology, wellness, the climate and interior design might converge to transform the houseplant into a valuable commodity. Last year, Blackett sold 120,000 plants, more than 320 a day, and created a video series that helps customers care for their recent purchases. In my experience, the videos have gone viral in a kind of traditional sense. They pop up in my Instagram feed like troublesome weeds.  In the millennial mode, the Patch website is easy to use but idiosyncratic enough to be inviting and the brand’s packaging is elegant and simple. The same is true of the Sill. Sometimes the delivery is as much a draw as the product itself. In an unboxing video posted online, one YouTuber described a package as “kinda big” but “really cool”. “We’re in a new era of e-commerce,” the YouTuber says, with excitement, “where everyone is questioning what can and can’t we ship through the mail. The Sill is proving that you can ship a beautiful houseplant to you safe and sound!” A message on the delivery reads: “Plants Make People Happy.”  Both the Sill and Patch focus a large part of their marketing on a curious fiction: that plants are somehow active care-givers, able to alleviate all sorts of modern ills: anxiety, loneliness, indoor air pollution, the problem of great social-media content. An article posted on the Sill’s website titled, “Why You Need Plants in Your Life” includes a list of benefits that the brand says are backed by scientific studies. In an age of mental fatigue, houseplants “boost mood, productivity, concentration and creativity”. In an era of climate disaster, they “clean indoor air by absorbing toxins”. As work continues to define us, they “reduce stress”, and can prevent “sore throats and colds”. Plants “are therapeutic,” one line reads, “and cheaper than a therapist”.  This language is savvy enough to acknowledge the fact that millennials, craving comfort, have been widely reported to be relying on houseplants to fill a vacuum. We are struggling to connect with each other. We are struggling to connect with our planet, which is not-so-gradually falling to pieces. We are invited to think: might a houseplant help?  Blackett, in a clever early move, decided to baptise Patch products with human names – Chaz, the Swiss cheese plant (from £14); Fidel, the fiddle-leaf fig (from £12) – so as to rely less on Latin terms, which he worried might become a stumbling block for consumers, but also, you’d have thought, to suggest a more personal connection between houseplant and owner. Somehow, not long ago, the phrase “plant parenthood”, often prefixed with a hashtag, entered the lexicon as a legitimate term. It is no longer unusual to nourish and attend to a parlour palm as if it were offspring. “My fussy calatheas are starting to get brown tips because they lack humidity,” one Twitter user wrote recently. “I mean, seriously girls? It’s been hella humid!”  Can a houseplant fill so big a void? The answer, really, is hardly. A peace lily will never replace a partner, nor a child, nor even a pet (though sometimes you wonder). As far as I’m aware, no proud plant parent has launched an Instagram account dedicated to his cute monstera, in the way pet lovers frequently do for their animal dependents. And it’s doubtful whether a houseplant can affect the air to the degree necessary to create human benefit, though the marketeers will try to sell you on it.  Both Patch and the Sill include links to lists of “air-purifying plants” – “Grow your own fresh air” – though neither seems to agree on which plants are most purifying. “In theory, the claims are true,” Curtis Gubb, a PhD student in environmental health at the University of Birmingham, who is investigating how effective housplants are at removing harmful indoor pollutants, told me. Plants have been found to remove all kinds of pollutants, he said, “but just because a plant removes something doesn’t mean it’s affecting the room. You’d need 100 plants in a small room,” to have a significant effect. He added that, really, houseplants are “very unlikely to clean the air.” The science, he says, is well behind the claims.  Most of us can agree that plants are good, fundamental to our existence somehow, though often the benefits are subjective. In a recently published essay, the late neurologist Oliver Sacks praised the “healing power of gardens”. “As a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible,” he wrote. “In 40 years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.” A line on the Sill reads: “Even brief exposure to nature has been shown to make us more altruistic and co-operative,” and later, presumably to hammer home the point: “It’s true when we say plants make people happy.”  A few months ago, I ordered a peace lily from Patch. It arrived wrapped in plastic and planted in a distressed ceramic pot I’d bought as an add-on. I placed it immediately in my bathroom, because I’d read somewhere, rightly or wrongly, that it would thrive in all that after-shower humidity. When a couple of weeks later I went on holiday with my family, strict care instructions were given to my neighbour. To my surprise, the plant was the first thing I checked when we arrived home. Was it still alive? Had it missed me? Yes, it was thriving – my neighbour had done an excellent job of not killing it. And, no, of course it hadn’t missed me. I am not too proud to admit I felt a little disgruntled. I might need the plant, I thought, but the plant does not need me.


theguardianuk--2019-11-21--Re-greening: can Louisville plant its way out of a heat emergency?

There are parts of Louisville, Kentucky, that are enveloped in green, where towering trees arc over broad avenues and walkers, joggers and bikers enjoy beautiful parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who drew up plans for Manhattan’s Central Park.  Even on the hottest days of summer, these neighbourhoods feel comparatively refreshing next to the more sun-baked quarters of the city, where shade is often an unavailable commodity on the street.  Cities are their own climates, often hotter than their surroundings due to the way surfaces like asphalt trap heat even as cars and buildings exude it. When a city is markedly warmer than surrounding rural areas, it is called an urban heat island – and Louisville ranks among the worst heat islands in the US, according to a 2014 study, with an average temperature difference of 2.7C (4.8F). Worse still, a 2012 study by Georgia Tech’s Urban Climate Lab found that Louisville was the fastest-warming urban heat island in the nation.  Part of the reason for Louisville’s temperature extremes is geography. But a lot of it comes down to trees.  A study commissioned by Louisville in 2015 found that the city had lost 54,000 trees a year between 2004 and 2012, reducing the city’s canopy cover from 40% to 37% over the period. Today, canopy cover is likely to be around 27%, according to Cindi Sullivan, executive director and president of the nonprofit TreesLouisville.  Trees provide shade while also lowering the temperature of their surroundings through evaporative cooling. Without action, it is feared the tree canopy will continue to decline as trees fall due to storms, pests and age – a scenario that could see the city’s rapid warming continue, alongside a number of other deleterious effects.  “Without a robust tree canopy,” said Sullivan, “our air quality is going to continue to decrease, stormwater and flooding from these extreme weather events is going to increase, the effects of draught are going to increase. There will be more health problems.”  And while Louisville may be among the worst heat islands, the problems seen here are replicated nationwide – the city was only fifth-worst US heat island in the 2014 study, behind Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Denver and Portland, Oregon.  “Most cities by the middle of the century [will be becoming] increasingly dangerous places to be outside,” said Brian Stone Jr, who wrote the Georgia Tech report on urban heat islands. “So if no steps are taken, that will just be amplified.”  He added: “I think this is a non-trivial health-related issue for all large cities in the US.  “It isn’t just that heat is uncomfortable – it kills people and is only set to get worse as the climate crisis continues.”  While individual cities have little ability to impact the planet-wide climate crisis on their own, they do have the ability to temper the urban heat island effect within their own borders.  Louisville is hoping to do just that. When it was named the fastest-warming US city in 2012, it did not take its new superlative lightly. The city created an office of sustainability, hired an urban forester and tapped Stone to conduct an urban heat management study, the first of its kind for a major American city.  The city’s main approach to cooling itself has been twofold: promoting the use of more “cool surfaces” for paving and roofs to reflect radiation and heat away, but, more importantly, encouraging the planting of trees.  “You need to do both. It’s not one silver bullet,” said Maria Koetter, formerly head of the city’s office of sustainability.  The link between trees and health  TreesLouisville offers free trees to Louisville’s residents that can either be delivered to them or picked up. The group, in conjunction with the city, also offers a rebate to residents of up to 40% of a tree’s price – up to $80 – for trees they purchased themselves.  Sullivan says that with 70% of the land available to plant in Louisville privately owned, getting individual families and businesses to plant trees is the only way the city can preserve and ultimately grow its tree canopy.  “Five or six decades ago you wouldn’t move into a house without planting a tree, because that tree was your air conditioning,” she said. “So the idea that trees are a valuable asset is something that is not front of mind anymore for many people.”  The Depave Project aims to plant trees in parking lots, and the city is offering rebates to residents and businesses that use cool roofs.  Meanwhile, the University of Louisville’s Green Heart Project has just started to plant the first of its 10,000 trees in south Louisville neighbourhoods as part of a study looking into the impact on greenery on health that it says is the first of its kind.  Aruni Bhatnagar, the professor of medicine leading the project, calls it “a community-based clinical trial in which instead of pills, we have trees.”  The main hypothesis of the estimated project, which is expected to cost $20m, is that planting trees will reduce air pollution and thus improve cardiovascular health. But Bhatnagar says they will also be looking closely at secondary outcomes: when it’s greener and cooler, will residents be more inspired to exercise outside, lowering rates of diabetes and obesity? Will stress and anxiety levels drop? Will trees shield enough noise that sleep quality and duration improves?  In cities like Louisville, tree canopy cover often corresponds directly with things like race and income, bringing heat, lack of shade and the associated heat-related health problems to areas already suffering other inequalities. An NPR analysis of 97 major US cities this summer found that poorer neighbourhoods were more likely to be hotter in more than three-quarters of the cities.  Sullivan said a TreesLouisville analysis had found that Louisville neighbourhoods that were red-lined in the 1930s – that is, where loans and other services were refused based on racial discrimination – have 22% canopy cover today, while those that weren’t red-lined have 49%.  In announcing the city’s study of its heat island problem in 2016, Louisville mayor Greg Fischer said: “We know that too often the zip code where you are born can correlate with negative health outcomes. That’s unacceptable.”  But getting Louisville to a tree canopy cover to the city’s goal of between 40% and 45% may prove difficult.  Reaching those goals could take decades and cost north of $1bn, according to the city’s canopy study. Money is tight and the city, despite its commitment to the heat island issue, recently folded its office of sustainability into another department and laid off Koetter, the office’s director.  “I wouldn’t say we are necessarily on the path” to addressing the heat island effect, says Koetter. “I would say we are aware of what needs to happen.”  She added that to meet its tree canopy goals, Louisville needed to plant about 100,000 trees a year for the first 10 years of a canopy building program, but that she did not see the city as being able to generate enough revenue to do that.  Stone, the Urban Climate Lab director, pointed out that New York City was able to plant 1 million trees over the course of eight years, but said he was less optimistic that Louisville could reach its tree canopy goals.  In 2017, Louisville passed an ordinance requiring that trees removed from public rights of way must be replaced. A new tree-protecting ordinance that would require developments to maintain certain levels of tree canopy cover is currently being considered by the city’s metro council.  “We’re in a situation right now where many tree advocates and environmentalists think it doesn’t go far enough, that the percentage of trees that need to be saved in new developments needs to be increased,” said Bill Hollander, the councilman who introduced the proposal. “We also have some members of the development community saying it goes too far.”  Sullivan of TreesLouisville said the proposed ordinance is a step in the right direction, but that more needs to be done – and fast.  “There’s an old eastern adage that says the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is now,” she said. “We’re way behind, I’d say decades behind other communities that have already figured some of this out.”  Ebony Pryor, 42, hopes the planting being done now will make a difference. She works as a business manager at New Birth Church in Rubbertown, a largely industrial area of the city known for its chemical plants. In the summer, eggy, sulfury smells waft into the church on some days and the heat is relentless.  “It’s just straight sun and it’s 10 degrees or more hotter down here than other parts of the city,” she said. “That’s where the trees come in. The trees will be able to take some of that smell out – and definitely shade the area.”  TreesLouisville recently planted young trees at New Birth Church, the first of 10,000 trees the group plans to put in Rubbertown in the coming years.  “While you don’t seen an immediate effect, over time it will improve and help the quality of life down here,” said Pryor. In 10 or 15 years, “I think it’s going to be beautiful – and smell good.”  Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to join the discussion, catch up on our best stories or sign up for our weekly newsletter


theindependent--2019-11-30--How plants are the new millennial craze

How plants are the new millennial craze

They came armed with totes, trash bags, empty strollers and collapsible nylon wagons. They came with wish lists and whispers of their “unicorns”, whose Latin names sounded like incantations: adansonii, patriciae, obliqua. Some travelled by aeroplane to get here. Others, in moving trucks. Because one does not walk into the 42nd Annual International Aroid Society Show and Sale simply to browse.  Aroids (it sort of rhymes with “steroids”) are a family of tropical plants that have surged in popularity in recent years and inspired a revival of the freewheeling Seventies jungle aesthetic. The monstera, whose perforated deliciosa leaves adorn smartphone cases and statement wallpaper, is an aroid. So are philodendrons, anthuriums and tetraspermas – plants prized not for fussy flowers, but for dramatic, lush foliage.  “With orchids, you have to be patient for it to flower,” says Anat Scham, 25, an animator who lives in Washington DC, and sold botanical illustrations at the show. “Whereas with foliage, it’s instant gratification.”  Several years ago, the Aroid Society, like some of its rarest specimens, appeared to be dwindling. The hobby had an arcane, almost Victorian dustiness to it, akin to collecting stamps or coins.  But in the past two or three years, says Alex Bello, 33, the president of the International Aroid Society and the chairman of the event, attendance has spiked from around 500 people in a weekend to a few thousand. “It has been exorbitant, the amount of people we’ve been getting,” he says. “We’ve been pummelled.”  When Bello opened the door of the Garden House at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden on the first morning of the sale, on 21 September, attendees heaved into the room shoulder to shoulder. After the frenzy of buying and selling, I find Micah Garner, 32, posted up in line clutching two handfuls of plants and waiting for his girlfriend, Alessia Resta, 27, whose Instagram account, @apartmentbotanist, has nearly 40,000 followers. The couple live in New York and share their 700-square-foot apartment on the Upper West Side with around 200 plants. They brought an extra suitcase to carry home all the new ones.  Resta found the plant at the top of her list, a $110 Philodendron luxurians “Choco.” “Right now it’s a little bit of an ugly stump, but one day, it’s going to be beautiful,” she says.  Another aroid type that has become a bona fide object of obsession for this new generation of collectors is the eminently photogenic variegated monstera, whose leaves are marbled with painterly splashes of white. At the show, one vendor from Ecuador sold individual cuttings for $200 apiece. A large, potted version sold for $650.  But that’s nothing compared to the madness and mythos that swirls around the Monstera obliqua. “When you’re talking about how the Aroid Society’s changed, obliqua is probably the best example,” says Mick Mittermeier, 27, the aroid curator at Fairchild. Obliqua (in Latin, “lopsided”) is tiny, typically no taller than six or so inches, with lace-like foliage that almost appears to be more negative space than organic matter. A decade ago, a collector sold its cuttings at the show for $8 apiece, Mittermeier says. Now, a plant might go for a thousand bucks or more. “Last month,” he adds, “Enid sold one on eBay for $3,700.” It was $2,700, but still.  One houseplant queen to rule them all  Enid Offolter, 49, isn’t a botanist. She doesn’t operate a wholesale nursery. She has a tough time explaining to the uninitiated what it is, exactly, that she does now. Before this, she sold vitamins. The simplest explanation is that Offolter sources, propagates and sells some of the most sought-after specimens of the tropical plant-collecting world. She’s become a bit of a plant celebrity in the process.  Born and raised in southern Florida, Offolter taught herself propagation through trial and error, and a few trustworthy books. Typically, she buys individual segments of plants (cuttings) from international importers, then carefully cultivates them until they’ve established root systems and leaves. This process can take one month or six, she says, depending on the species of plant, the condition in which it arrives (“sometimes I just get a box of goo”), and the season. A cutting acquired in May might be ready in a month, while the same plant started in October might not be viable until the following spring. “They’re a lot slower once the days slow down,” Offolter says.  She has run Natural Selections Exotics Tropicals, or NSE Tropicals, since 2000 from her home, on an otherwise typical residential street in a Fort Lauderdale suburb. Behind the tall wooden security fence in Offolter’s driveway hides an acre that is thrumming with life. There are so many plants that it’s almost impossible to focus on one at a time, like looking at a pointillist painting in a million shimmering hues of green.  Offolter loves propagation; it feels like magic to her. If it’s magic, it’s a practical kind: business is booming, and no one appears to be more surprised by this than she. “I feel like I was busy raising my son, then I looked up and all this was going on,” says Offolter. “I never realised this would go so far.”  When Offolter started NSE Tropicals, she mostly supplied to botanical gardens and speciality landscapers. Now, her customers are almost all young people. A lot of Offolter’s high-ticket specimens end up going to Portland, Seattle and New York. And they go fast, she says, often minutes after she posts about them on Instagram. She started the account last year and shot up to 40,000 followers in a few months.  “I certainly don’t advertise anymore,” she says. “All I have to do is say I have the plant, and people just go nuts.”  At the aroid show, strangers sheepishly approach her – “Hi, are you Enid?” – and ask for selfies. Some stifle a gasp when they see her. By lunchtime, she estimates she’s taken about 100 pictures.  Aroids make up the vast majority of Offolter’s business, largely because she has a soft spot for weird. Their oddities abound: the protruding “unicorn horn” of a flower’s spadex, the snakeskin-like petioles of a particular anthurium, the vicious fish hooks along a cyrtosperma johnstonii. Then, there’s the melodrama of their foliage. “Flowers are a dime a dozen,” Offolter says, gazing at the curtain of philodendron tumbling from the wall of her shade house. “But I mean ... just look at these leaves.”  While Offolter lists most of her plants on NSE Tropicals’ website, she often turns the rarer stuff over to bidders on eBay (in part because she feels guilty for asking the sky-high prices they now frequently fetch). Recently, she auctioned off a variegated monstera adansonii and set the opening bid at $19. It sold for $2,700.  Few of Offolter’s plants have evoked quite the level of excitement that the variegated monstera has. It’s how I first learned about her – in a message board thread about how to find the increasingly scarce plants, where “Enid” and “NSE” were passed around like whispered passwords at a speakeasy.  Despite the incessant stream of orders, Offolter works alone and prefers it that way, spending seven days a week hunched over a packing bench in one of her four shade houses, carefully rolling up each plant in paper “like a burrito” before tucking it into a package. She could probably hire someone to help her with the mounting administrative duties. She could flex to meet what appears to be an insatiable demand for her plants. She could buy more land. “I have the option to go big or go home,” she acknowledges. But she’s sceptical: People can’t keep spending money like this, right? Then again, that’s what she said last year, and the year before.  Working with nature in this way is a constant dance of give and take, and nature is always leading. Caterpillars and cold snaps can wreak havoc on valuable plants. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a rare specimen might bear fruit, like one of the variegated monsteras Offolter planted in her yard recently has. She can only hope that the squirrels don’t get to the corncob-size collection of seeds before they’re ready. “This thing could pay off the house,” she jokes.  Perhaps the most daunting and unpredictable challenge is climate – namely, surviving the ever-worsening hurricane seasons in south Florida. In 2017, after Hurricane Irma, Offolter says, “it looked like someone drove a bulldozer through here.” She lost two of her shade houses and the roof of her greenhouse to the storm, which reduced many of her plants to, in her words, “creamed spinach.” A storm could easily destroy her only source of income, but Offolter’s plants are more than just assets. “Imagine if your dogs got hurt in a hurricane,” she tells me. “Now imagine you have thousands of dogs.”  Countless articles have sought to unspool millennial motivations for loving plants: they’re a replacement for children, a respite from urban cityscapes, a totem of climate anxiety, a life preserver to which one can cling in uncertain times, a kind of self-care. Versions of all of these sentiments are echoed at the aroid show.  “It puts me in a really good head space,” says Chelsea Grace, 32, who owns a Seattle plant shop called Cultivate Propagate. “And,” she adda, “as dorky as it sounds, when things put out a new leaf, it feels really constructive.”  There’s also the unavoidable underbelly of any consumer bubble: hubris and hoarding, grifts and theft. There are shady sellers shilling questionable “seeds” online, rabid collectors swiping cuttings from botanical gardens and poachers ripping rare specimens out of their habitats without permits.  “Instagram has spawned a lot of people who are influencing people’s buying decisions on plants, so those plants become more scarce, and all of a sudden everyone needs one, then five, then 10, then a 100,” says Trevor Bradshaw, 31, who works at a garden center in Nashville, Tennessee. “It’s crazy that you can convince someone to buy a living thing, like it’s a luxury item.” Bradshaw says that he recently apprehended someone stealing variegated monstera cuttings from his store after they posted about the theft on Instagram.  Offolter, for one, doesn’t keep plants inside her home. It took time for her to get comfortable with the idea of sending a rare tropical specimen to go live in a decidedly not-tropical apartment. More recently, she’s seen how dedicated young collectors are making their homes hospitable to plant life, kitting out their living rooms with grow lights and foggers. “I’d hate to be some of these landlords,” she jokes.  And she understands, as Grace pointed out, that it’s hard not to feel connected to nature when it’s unfurling right there in your living room. “You have your own little microcosm that you’re trying to control the climate in,” Grace says, “and you really see how that impacts your plants.”  Of the thousands in Offolter’s collection, there is one indisputable crown jewel, one she says she’ll never cut up and sell: spiritus sancti, a philodendron whose name, at least in these circles, is usually uttered with a kind of hushed reverence. In the wild, Philodendron spiritus sancti is nearing total extinction; Offolter says that the plants that still grow in native Brazil probably number in the single digits. The plant’s long, slender leaves are cloven at the top and tapered at the tip, like an exaggerated cartoon heart. What it lacks in Insta-optimized splashiness, it makes up for in understated beauty – not to mention its scarcity, which is why collectors will pay upward of $1,400 for one.  Offolter estimates that in the two decades she’s been in business, she’s sold maybe 20 or 30 spiritus sancti cuttings. One recent evening, she received four consecutive email enquiries from people hunting for it.  Plant mania is complicated, though. The spiritus sancti is a species on the brink of disappearing from nature entirely. While stockpiling it inside one’s Brooklyn apartment isn’t exactly the most generous interpretation of “conservation”, it is, at the very least, keeping it on the planet.  And, in the long run, a growing appreciation for plants might inspire more people to want to understand them, and not just as decorative objects. “It’s living things,” Offolter says. “It’s not puppies, but it’s still living things.”


Sacred Trees

THE subject of tree-worship is a vast one, as anyone may gather who will read the Golden Bough. Fortunately for my readers it is not necessary to discuss the whole or even any great part of it in connection with the inquiry which now concerns us. I may say that only rarely is the old tree-worship considered with its concomitant of temple-worship, so that I now have to bring together information widely separated because the connection which I have to show was intimate has not been enlarged upon; indeed, in many cases it has not been suspected.  There is another limitation of the inquiry. We have only to deal chiefly with those plants and trees recorded as worshipped at the chief festival times of the year, which have already been marked out for us by the fire ceremonials. These fires were like the chronofer installed in modern days at the General Post Office, their practical function being to give the time; they announced the beginning of a new season.  In Chapter IV. I referred to the association of Mistletoe with the Solstitial worship. When we deal with the May year we meet constantly with references to the Rowan and the Hawthorn in the folklore connected with it. We seem in presence, then, not only of tree cult generally, but of sacred trees special to each of the two worships we have been considering. I propose now, therefore, to bring. together some of the information to be gathered from a very cursory reference to the vast literature which exists on the subject.  In the first instance I begged my friend, Professor Bayley Balfour, Keeper of the King’s Garden at Edinburgh, to give me some particulars of the Rowan Tree, which I imagined (1) to have been chosen on account of its flowers being prominent about May Day (Beltane) and its berries in early November (Hallowe’en), and (2) to have a different habitat from the Mistletoe. I have to thank my friend for much valuable information.  The Rowan Tree, called also the Mountain Ash (Pyrus Aucuparia), seems to grow pretty freely all over the Northern parts of Europe. Professor Balfour tells me: “Rowan is essentially a Northern plant—an immigrant to Europe from N.W. Asia—and now is spread all over North and Central Europe in abundance, with only some ‘feelers’ passing south into the Mediterranean Basin. It does not go south of Cappadocia in Asia Minor. It does not reach Greece. In Italy it occurs on the Eastern Apennines, and also in N.E. Sicily. In Spain it runs over the higher regions in the N. and into the centre, passing just into Portugal. Its occurrence in Madeira is not certainly established as a natural phenomenon; perhaps it is only introduced there. In all these Southern outruns the tree cannot be said to have any dominance, and its area and abundance are infinitely, less than in the North. Scandinavia is one of its best homes. Everywhere it is found right north to 71°, there becoming a bush only, but yet ripening seed. It reaches Iceland, where trees of some size occur. All over Great Britain and Ireland it is generally spread. You may certainly say there is much in Norway, and there is equally certainly less, even little, in Italy.”  In Pratt’s Flowering Plants of Great Britain (vol. 2, p. 260) it is stated, “The flowers, which grow in dense clusters, and are greenish-white, appear in May . . . . In autumn, however, the tree is more beautiful than in summer, for at that season the rich cluster of red fruits gleams among the foliage, each berry having the form of a tiny apple, and containing a little core and seeds within.”  At Christiania the mean of ten years’ flowering is given by Professor Schübeler as—first flowers, June 19; general flowering, June 30. This, then, is later than in Britain. On high grounds the fruit is conspicuous here on November 1; on lower levels the birds attack it and reduce its striking appearance before that date.  Associated with the Rowan in the folklore connected with temple worship is the Hawthorn, Whitethorn or “May” (Crategus oxyocantha), which also flowers at the beginning of May, while its berries or “haws,” like those of the Rowan, are conspicuous in November. We see, then, that there is a most obvious reason in this for the association of the two trees. According to Rhys, the English name appears to be of Scandinavian origin, the Old Norse being reynir, Danish rönne, Swedish rönn; and the old Norsemen treated the tree as holy and sacred to Thor.  These two trees interest us from. three points of view. We find them connected with:—  In this chapter I shall deal with the two former.  Seeing that the year beginning in May was established because that month really opened the vegetation year, it is little to be wondered at that among the chief features of New Year’s Day was what we may term a flower worship; it is probable that we are here dealing with the sacred-tree side of the general festival at all the monuments erected in connection with the year worship. The old traditions have lingered longest around the things we have still with us, the trees and flowers; and it is in connection with this. side of the worship that most information is available. From the facts I have already stated, for Britain the Rowan and Hawthorn were most naturally, selected as the typical forms.  Many poets have written of this festival Chaucer, Shakspere, Milton; Bourne, Herrick and others. Chaucer writes:  when not the courtiers only, but lowliest of men and maidens sallied forth  There is a vast literature connected with May Day celebrations, among it references to Celtic customs, and I may add that, besides May Day, August, November and February had their flower festivals also. I shall, however, deal chiefly with May in this book to keep it within bounds.  May Day in Manx was termed Shenn Laa Boaldyn; it is the belltaine of Cormac’s Glossary, the Scotch Gaelic equivalent of which is bealtuinn.  The traditions and customs connected with May Day in Great Britain have survived longest in the West of England; even now, as will be seen by the account of recent celebrations at Helston in Cornwall, given below, they are still continued.  Altogether the customs, ancient and modern, of which the flower worship formed a part, may be summed up as follows:—  1. Lighting of bonfires, and, in the evening, houses illuminated with candles, torches carried about, and fireballs played with.  2. Man, and beast passed through the: fire, or between two fires.  3. Going out at daybreak to gather Whitethorn or May (Sycamore in Cornwall), and making whistles of the branches for the May-music and merry-making. Blowing of tin horns at daybreak by boys, and from money received getting breakfast at a farmhouse.  4. Flower-bedecked girls dance round a Maypole, and one chosen as “Queen of the May.”  5. In Cornwall the custom prevailed till lately of going out with buckets or any available vessels full of water and thoroughly wetting anyone who was not wearing a piece of May.  6. The “Furry Dance” (in Cornwall), which consists in dancing through the town and also through as many houses as desired. If resistance is offered it is permitted to break open the door, and no penalty can be imposed.  7. Sacrifices made (Isle of Man) at a very ancient date, and probably human ones still earlier (Scotland).  Flowers are public property on Flora Day, and this custom of dancing through the houses is supposed to have originated probably for the purpose of picking the flowers in the gardens behind.  The following is a short abstract of a very interesting account given. in The Western Weekly News, May 13th, 1905, of the “Flora Day” at Helston, Cornwall, which took place this year. It gives us an idea of former festivals which are so quickly dying out:—  The Furry Dance is always the feature of the day. The first part took place at seven o’clock in the morning, at which hour two couples started out and danced through the streets and through some houses of residents. The great dance was at noon, and those taking part 1n it assembled in the Corn Exchange.  When all was ready the whole company, headed by a band playing the old Furry Dance, started out and danced through the town and through many houses.  The rest of the day was given over to a Horse Show and to much merry-making. Excursions had been run from all parts.  There is little doubt that in the constant association of the Rowan with the May worship and the holy wells which were adjacent to the stone circles where the worship was conducted, we find the reason of the selection of the wood of the Rowan Tree as an antidote to all the ills which witchcraft was supposed to bring about. Rhys tells us that “The tree has also the old names of Quicken-tree, Roddon, and Witchen-tree.”  To quote again from Pratt (op. cit. vol. 2, p. 261): “The old notion that the Mountain Ash, or Rowan Tree, as it is called in the North, was efficacious against witchcraft and the evil eye, still prevails in the North of England and the Scottish Highlands. Pennant remarks, in his Tour of Scotland, that the farmers carefully preserve their cattle against witchcraft by placing branches of Honeysuckle and Mountain Ash in their cowhouses on the 2nd of May. The milkmaid in Westmorland may often be seen, even now, with a branch of this tree either in her hand or tied to here milking-pail, from a similar superstition; and in earlier days crosses cut out of its wood were worn about the person. In an old song called “Laidley Wood,” in the Northumberland Garland, we find a reference to this:  Rhys, referring to May Day customs in the Isle of Man, writes : “This was a day when systematic efforts were made to protect man and beast against elves, and witches; for it was then that people carried, crosses of rowan: in their hats and placed may-flowers over the tops of their doors and elsewhere as preservatives against all malignant influences. With the same object in view, crosses of rowan were likewise, fastened to the tails of the cattle, small crosses which had to be made without. the help of a knife.”  In connection with this last reference, Rhys, quotes a passage showing that a similar thing is done in Wales on May Eve. “Another bad papistic habit which prevails among some Welsh people is that of placing some of the wood of the rowan-tree (coed cerdin or criafol) in their corn lands (ttafyrieu) and their fields on May eve (Nos Glamau) with the idea that such a custom brings a blessing on their fields, a proceeding which would better become atheists and pagans than Christians.”  Rhys also tells us that in Lincolnshire, “a twig of the rowan-tree, or wicken, as it is called, was effective against all evil things, including witches. It is useful in many ways to guard the welfare of the household, and to preserve both the live stock and the crops; while placed on the churn it prevents any malign influence from retarding the coming of the butter.”  We also read (p. 358): “Not only the Celts, but some also of the Teutons, have been in the habit of attaching great importance to the rowan or roan tree, and regarding it as a preservative against the malignant influence of witches and all things uncanny. . . . Moreover, the Swede of modern times believes the rowan a safeguard against witchcraft, and likes to have on board his ship, something or other made of its wood, to protect him against tempests and the demons of the water world.”  In the Hibbert Lectures, 1886, we have another interesting reference to this tree. Rhys first relates an old Irish fairy story, the scene of which is supposed to have been “on the plain near the Lake of Lein of the Crooked Teeth; that is to say, the Lake of Killarney.” In it we are told that the scarlet quicken-berries were first brought from the “Land of Promise,” that one was accidentally dropped and took root, and “from the berry there grew up a tree which had the virtues of the quicken-tree growing in fairy-land, for all the berries on it had many virtues.” Then we learn (page 358) that these berries “formed part of the sustenance of the gods, according to Goidelic notions; and the description which has been quoted of the berries makes them a sort of Celtic counterpart to the soma-plant of Hindu mythology.”  This suggests that at the November Celebration a decoction or brew of Rowan berries was used for curative or superstitious purposes.  I have thought it desirable to enter at some length into the use of the Rowan as a protection against witchcraft and as the basis of a brew used for different purposes, because the Mistletoe has been dealt with in exactly the same manner; indeed, it was to the later Solstitial worship what, the Rowan and Maythorn were to the earlier May worship.  Mr. Frazer has collected in his Golden Bough much information bearing on these points.  In Sweden, on Midsummer Eve, Mistletoe is sought after, the people “believing it to be, in a high degree, possessed of mystic qualities; and that if a sprig of it be attached to the ceiling of the dwelling-house, the horse’s stall, or the cow’s crib, the ‘Troll’ will then be powerless to injure either man or beast.” The Oak Mistletoe, we are told, is “held in the highest repute in Sweden, and is commonly seen in farmhouses hanging from the ceiling to protect the dwelling from all harm, but especially, from fire; and persons afflicted with the falling sickness think they can ward off attacks of the malady by carrying about with them a knife which has a handle of Oak Mistletoe.  “A Swedish remedy. for other complaints is to hang a sprig of Mistletoe round the sufferer’s neck, or to make him wear on his finger a ring made from the plant.”  It would appear from Mr. Frazer’s inquiries that the Mistletoe was en évidence at both the summer and winter solstice—precisely as the Rowan and Hawthorn were associated with the May and November festivals.  “The sacred mistletoe may have acquired, in the eyes of the Druids, a double portion of its mystic qualities at the solstice in June, and accordingly they may have regularly cut it with solemn ceremony on Midsummer Eve. The conjecture is confirmed when we find it to be still a rule of folklore that the mistletoe should be cut on this day. Further, the peasants of Piedmont and Lombardy still go out on Midsummer-morning to search the oak-leaves for the ‘oil of St. John,’ which is supposed to heal all wounds made with cutting instruments. Originally, perhaps, the ‘oil of St. John’ was simply the mistletoe, or a decoction made from it. For in Holstein the mistletoe, especially oak-mistletoe, is still regarded as a panacea for green wounds; and if, as is alleged, ‘all-healer is the name of the plant in the modern Celtic speech of Brittany, Wales, Ireland and Scotland, this can be nothing but a survival of the name by which, as we have seen, the Druids addressed the oak, or rather, perhaps, the mistletoe. At Lacaune, in France, the old Druidical belief in the mistletoe as an antidote to all poisons still survives among the people; they apply the plant to the stomach of the sufferer, or give him a decoction of it to drink.”  If we attempt to collate the different festivals with the vegetation most striking or abundant at each, in different countries naturally possessing, different floras; a great variety of plants and trees has to be considered. It is probable that the Rowan-tree was chiefly taken here as the representative of the ash in more southern and eastern lands, and the ash indeed did not always take second rank, especially in the worship connected with wells, as we shall see. Grimm calls the ash “a world tree which links heaven, earth and hell together; of all trees the greatest and holiest.”  In the same way at the later established Vernal Equinox festival, the palm which grows in lower latitudes was replaced here by the willow: Coles, in his Adam in Eden, writes: “The willow blossoms come forth before any leaves appear, and are in their most flourishing state usually before Easter, divers gathering them to deck up their houses on Palm Sunday, and therefore the said flowers are called palme.” Willows are still used to deck churches at this time.  As in the case of the Rowan, the willow (or palm) was a protection against witchcraft; small crosses and palm were carried about in the purses and placed upon doors. These crosses had to be made on Palm Sunday out of the wood used in the church. Sometimes box replaced the willow.  We are driven to the conclusion that practices connected with magic, the precursor of the later “witchcraft,” were associated with the festivals now in question, and that the products of the vegetable world at the different seasons were utilized for these purposes.  The putting on of a special garb by the vegetable world at each season in turn would be one of the first things to be manifested, and the close association of it with the stars and the sun in their yearly course would cause the representatives of it to be worshipped together with them, and it would appear from the records that the astronomer priests did not neglect those magical arts which were practised by man in the early stages of civilisation.  Indeed, these magical practices seem to have taken such firm root that it was difficult to get rid of them even in much later times. Newton writes: “I once knew a foolish cock-brained priest which ministered to a certaine young man the ashes of boxe, being (forsooth) hallowed on Palme Sunday, according to the superstitious order and doctrine of the Romish Church, which ashes he mingled with their unholie holie water using to the same a kind of . . . . exorcisme; which . . . . medicine (as he persuaded the standers by) had vertue to drive away any ague.”  Among the virtues attributed to the May thorn was that of preserving the beauty of those maidens who at daybreak on May morning each year would wash themselves in hawthorn dew: As late as 1515 it was recorded that Catherine of Aragon, accompanied by twenty-five of her ladies, sallied out on May morning for this purpose.


renegadetribune--2019-09-07--The Cult of Sacred Trees

The Cult of Sacred Trees

The things said of sacred waters can also be said of sacred trees among the Celts; and, in the case of sacred trees, more may be added about the Druids and their relation to the Fairy-Faith, for it is well known that the Druids held the oak and its mistletoe in great religious veneration, and it is generally thought that most of the famous Druid schools were in the midst of sacred oak-groves or forests. Pliny has recorded that ‘the Druids, for so they call their magicians, have nothing which they hold more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided only it be an oak (robur). But apart from that, they select groves of oak, and they perform no sacred rite without leaves from that tree, so that the Druids may be regarded as even deriving-from it their name interpreted as Greek (a disputed point among modern philologists). Likewise of the Druids, Maximus Tyrius states that the image of their chief god, considered by him to correspond to Zeus, was a lofty oak tree; and Strabo says that the principal place of assembly for the Galatians, a Celtic people of Asia Minor, was the Sacred Oak-grove.  Just as the cult of fountains was absorbed by Christianity, so was the cult of trees. Concerning this, Canon Mahé writes:–‘One sees sometimes, in the country and in gardens, trees wherein, by trimming and bending together the branches, have been formed niches of verdure, in which have been placed crosses or images of certain saints. This usage is not confined to the Morbihan. Our Lady of the Oak, in Anjou, and Our Lady of the Oak, near Orthe, in Maine, are places famous for pilgrimage. In this last province, says a historian, “One sees at various cross-roads the most beautiful rustic oaks decorated with figures of saints. There are seen there, in five or six villages, chapels of oaks, with whole trunks of that tree enshrined in the wall, beside the altar. Such among others is that famous chapel of Our Lady of the Oak, near the forge of Orthe, whose celebrity attracts daily, from five to six leagues about, a very great gathering of people.”‘  Saint Martin, according to Canon Mahé, tried to destroy sacred pine-tree in the diocese of Tours by telling the people there was nothing divine in it. The people agreed to let it cut down on condition that the saint should receive its great trunk on his head as it fell; and the tree was not cut own. Saint Germain caused a great scandal at Auxerre hanging from the limbs of a sacred tree the heads of wild animals which he had killed while hunting. Saint Gregory the Great wrote to Brunehaut exhorting him to abolish among his subjects the offering of animals’ heads to certain trees.  In Ireland fairy trees are common yet; though throughout Celtdom sacred trees, naturally of short duration, are almost forgotten. In Brittany, the Forest of Brocéliande still enjoys something of the old veneration, but more out of sentiment than by actual worship. A curious survival of an ancient Celtic tree-cult exists in Carmarthen, Wales, where there is still carefully preserved and held upright in a firm casing of cement the decaying trunk of an old oak-tree called Merlin’s Oak; and local prophecy declares on Merlin’s authority that when the tree falls Carmarthen will fall with it. Perhaps through an unconscious desire on the part of some patriotic citizens of averting the calamity by inducing the tree-spirit to transfer its abode, or else by otherwise hoodwinking the tree-spirit into forgetting that Merlin’s Oak is dead, a vigorous and now flourishing young oak has been planted so directly beside it that its foliage embraces it. And in many parts of modern England, the Jack-in-the-Green, a man entirely hidden in a covering of green foliage who dances through the streets on May Day, may be another example of a very ancient tree (or else agricultural) cult of Celtic origin.


thesun--2019-02-22--Meghan Markle baby shower Flower display inside the Duchess lavish suite revealed as she donates t

Meghan Markle baby shower: Flower display inside the Duchess’ lavish suite revealed as she donates them to charity

MEGHAN Markle fans have been given a glimpse inside her luxury £57,000-a-night baby shower suite, after she thoughtfully donated her flowers to charity.  The pregnant Duchess of Sussex's lavish party, which is rumoured to have cost £380,000 ($500,000), included a bouquet arranging session in the Grant Penthouse at The Mark hotel in New York.  But the blooms weren't given to guests to take home.  Instead the 37-year-old Royal, who's expecting her first baby with Prince Harry, 34, in the spring, donated them to charity Repeat Roses.  Posts on social media made by the charity, who pass flowers leftover from weddings and events onto child cancer patients and disabled people, give a sneak peak inside the plush suite where Meghan's A-list pals stayed.  One photo - which shows a staff member collecting the colourful blooms - shows the £107 mandarin trees which were delivered to the hotel ahead of the event.  Others focus on the bouquets themselves - which include Meghan's favourite pink peonies, white poppies, purple tulips, roses, rhododendrons and yellow lilies.  The thoughtful move comes as Meghan has been accused of flaunting her wealth by Piers Morgan.  While Royal butler Paul Burrell told Fabulous Online she may have "infuriated Prince William by spending thousands and acting like a diva".  The stunning 10,000sq ft baby shower suite has been described as a "castle in the sky" and boasts a huge rooftop terrace overlooking Central Park, five bedrooms, six bathrooms, a conservatory and a living room that can be "transformed into a full-size Grand Ballroom".  Wednesday's baby shower was attended by an A-list crowd including tennis ace Serena Williams, designers Jessica Mulroney and Misha Nonoo, lawyer Amal Clooney and TV anchor Gayle King.  But the charitable donation shows another side to the pricey affair.  Speaking on US show CBS This Morning yesterday, Gayle said of the donations: "I thought that was a very sweet thing…  "It just speaks to who she is. She's kind, she's very generous. And a really, really sweet person."  Among the charities to be sent the flowers was Ronald McDonald House in New York, who house and care for young cancer patients.  They were also donated to patients at Unique People Services, who support those with learning difficulties, health problems or a history of substance abuse.  Repeat Roses described the gift as "the very special experience planned for this very special baby shower" in a gushing post on Instagram.  They added: "We were honored to match the beautiful floral arrangements designed by the Duchess of Sussex and her guests, including host @serenawilliams, to a few of our very favorite NYC neighbor organizations.  "The gesture of kindness brought smiles and an emotional health boost to pediatric cancer patients at @rmhnewyork, cancer patients at the @hopelodgenyc and to behaviorally and medically fragile men at the @uniquepeopleservices Vyse Avenues Program.  "The flowers brought a ray of sunshine on a cold winter day, and will be greatly enjoyed for the week ahead.  "Later, we’ll return to collect flowers and vases for composting and recycling to close the loop and ensure a zero-waste experience. Giving back to People + Planet."  Unique People Services also posted their praise for the Duchess, saying: "We were honoured to be a recipient" and praising Meghan's "big heart".  They added: "The results, and smiles, were stunning!"  The beautiful bouquets were created during a class taught by celebrity florist Lewis Miller, who's based in New York's plush Upper East Side.  He has worked with designer brands including Chanel, Estee Lauder and Valentino in the past - and is famous for his 'flower flashes', where he transforms street features like bins and construction signs with blooms.  They were delivered by Upper East Side florist Lady Fleur, who charge up to £300 for a single bouquet.


birminghammail--2019-07-03--Group praised for helping theft-hit flower festival in Bilston

A Wolverhampton-based community group has been praised for coming to the rescue of a local flower festival that was targeted by thieves who stole plants and compost last month.  Organisers of the annual 'Bilston In Bloom' festival have spent months preparing floral displays in the town centre in readiness for a visit from Heart of England judges later this month.  Last month thieves stole dozens of plants donated by members of the public along with eight bags of soil worth £250 from St Leonard's Church - setting the project back several weeks.  However, Councillor Linda Leach (Lab. Bilston North), who is one of the organisers, said she and volunteers in the town had been given a massive lift by a team from Wolverhampton community interest group Right Track who had visited the church to help replace the plants.  She said: "We were all so upset at the time. The thieves had not only stolen from the church but also from our community, and so many good people had given up their time to work really hard on the grounds.  "However, I was absolutely delighted that Right Track and the good people of Bilston all rallied round and gave us an amazing show of support to put the festival back on track. We had a fantastic turnout at St Leonard's.  "We have been truly blessed and received help from two amazing teams from Right Track and also Nova Training, plus our friendly and supportive neighbourhood police and drugs team. Also, Wolverhampton Homes have supported us throughout and been so kind."  Right Track Managing Director Andy Morris said: "We are an established community interest company that provides meaningful day activities for our service users which includes training, practical work experience, creative arts and other outside activities. So this was a great opportunity for us to help out.  "We strive to enhance the wellbeing and self esteem of the people we work with and their immediate families, and we aim to enhance personal development and develop life skills that will improve people’s  independence.  We also run friendship groups that help members to interact socially.  "We cover a lot of areas, including things such as gardening, carpentry, allotments, arts and crafts, pottery and computer skills. We are geared towards helping people with learning difficulties, special needs, disabilities and those who are disadvantaged or underprivileged to boost their wellbeing and help them to achieve their goals."  Cllr Leach added: "I would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who has volunteered for their help, kindness and generosity. It was a sad setback when all our plants and compost was stolen. But people have come forward and showed us so much kindness.  "It just shows what we can do when we all pull together as a community. The church grounds are looking fabulous now. There's still a lot of work to do but we are getting there. We really do have some great people in Bilston.  "The area surrounding the church has deteriorated over the years but these people have helped to make a real difference to how it looks now.  "We are trying to do a good thing here through 'Bilston in Bloom' and this community effort has proved these thieves haven't won," she said.  Judges are set to visit Wolverhampton this month.


eveningstandard--2019-01-15--Duchess of Cambridge announces she has designed aposmagicalapos garden for Chelsea Flower Show

Duchess of Cambridge announces she has designed 'magical' garden for Chelsea Flower Show... as she visits community garden in London for first engagement of the year

The Duchess of Cambridge has helped to design a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show inspired by “magic” childhood memories of spending time in the “great outdoors”.  Kensington Palace announced the tie-up with Kingston-based landscape architects Davies White today, ahead of the duchess’s visit to King Henry’s Walk Garden in Islington.  The “Back to Nature” garden, based on a tranquil woodland glade, will be the first that the duchess has been involved in creating at the world’s most famous horticultural show.  The RHS said Kate's garden "has been inspired by childhood memories that are triggered by the natural world, as well as special moments that will be created and treasured by families now and in the future".  In a statement, the Palace said: “The garden will build on Her Royal Highness’s passion for the outdoors and the proven benefits that nature has on physical and mental health — the duchess is a strong advocate for the positive impact that nature and the environment can have on childhood development.”  It added that the garden “seeks to recapture for adults the sense of wonder and magic that they enjoyed as children, in addition to kindling excitement and a passion for nature in future generations.  "Wild planting and natural materials will be used to recreate a woodland wilderness where children and adults alike can feel closer to the great outdoors.”  Sue Biggs, director-general of the Royal Horticultural Society, which runs the annual event, said:  “We could not be more thrilled, or feel more honoured, that the Duchess of Cambridge has co-designed our RHS Garden at Chelsea Flower Show.”  After the show in May much of the exhibit will be donated to a mental health trust.  The duchess and Davies White will also co-design gardens for the RHS at Hampton Court and Wisley.  The announcement came as Kate returned to work with her first engagement of the New Year on Tuesday.  Kate is viewing the King Henry's Walk Garden to learn about a project bringing people together through a shared love of horticulture and to meet keen amateur gardeners who have been running the green urban space for more than a decade with support from Islington Council.  The duchess sported a khaki tweed jacket by Irish brand Dubarry and skinny jeans as she arrived at the north London project, which is an RHS It's Your Neighbourhood group.  She also opted for a pair of sturdy walking boots for the visit to the community garden.  Kate will visit the garden to meet with volunteers from the community to hear about the benefits of the project - and to try her hand in an open air pizza kitchen.  The garden has been run for over a decade by community volunteers, with support from Islington Council.  Kate is known for her passion for the outdoors and the proven benefits that nature has on physical and mental health.  She is a longstanding supporter of organisations such as the Scouts and Farms for City Children, as well as having visited the Sayers Croft Forest School and Wildlife Garden, the RHS Campaign for School Gardening.

Robert Jobson, JOnathan Prynn, Ella Wills


eveningstandard--2019-02-07--Kew Gardens Orchid Festival 2019 Londonaposs flower fiesta to splash out with the colours of Colo

Kew Gardens Orchid Festival 2019: London's flower fiesta to splash out with the colours of Colombia

There is far more to Colombia than Shakira, great coffee and Narcos. The South American country, with its snow-capped mountains and white sandy beaches, is the world’s second most biodiverse, trumped only by Brazil – which is seven times its size.  Among Colombia’s rich collection of flora and fauna are 4,270 species of orchid, the most in the world. To celebrate this, and the country's vibrant culture, Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens are dedicating their 24th annual orchid festival to "the colour of Colombia".  This year’s festival will run from Saturday February 9 until Sunday March 10 within the Gardens’ Princess of Wales Conservatory. It will feature more than 6,200 orchids, including Colombia’s national flower, the purple-lipped Flor de Mayo.  Guests will walk through the different zones of the glasshouse to find a range of displays, each representing diverse aspects of Colombian wildlife and culture.  The central feature will be a "carnival of animals", depicting a toucan in flight, a hanging sloth and a swimming turtle, all created from an elaborate arrangement of orchids and other tropical plants. Other highlights include a floral recreation of Colombia’s Caño Cristales river, an enchanted forest scene complete with life-sized jaguars, and a floating display of yellow orchids to honour the legend of El Dorado.  As part of the festival’s wider theme, Colombian artist Vanessa Moncayo González will fill the glasshouse film room with colourful Bogotá-style street-art murals, while her compatriot, sculptor Omar Castañeda, will unveil a series of original sculptures for a "treasures of Colombia" exhibition.  A programme of special events and activities will also take place over the course of the festival, featuring Colombian music, dance and cuisine. This will include after dark evenings, half term workshops and behind-the-scenes tours.  Entry to the orchid festival is included in the standard ticket to the Gardens, and tickets to special events can be bought in advance here.


eveningstandard--2019-02-10--Duchess of Cambridge reveals plans for aposback to natureapos garden at Chelsea Flower Show

Duchess of Cambridge reveals plans for 'back to nature' garden at Chelsea Flower Show

A Chelsea Flower Show garden co-designed by the Duchess of Cambridge will highlight the benefits the natural world brings to mental and physical well-being.  Plans were unveiled today for the “Back to Nature Garden” showing in May.  The Duchess has co-designed the woodland wilderness garden alongside landscape architects Andree Davies and Adam White, ad the Royal Horticultural Society.  Its centrepiece will be a high platform tree house, clad in stag horn oak that draws inspiration from a bird or animal nest.  Kensington Palace said in a statement the garden will help "inspire families to get outside and explore nature together".  It added: "The garden hopes to trigger memories of time spent in nature, and encourage others to go out and create new experiences in the great outdoors."  The garden will also feature a swing seat, rustic den and a campfire as well as tree stumps, stepping stones and a hollow log for children to play on.  Interaction with the natural environment will be encouraged through the garden's "multi-sensory", green and blue plant scheme.  The design also includes "incredible edibles", plants for craft activities, "forest scents" and a range of plants, shrubs and trees of different heights and textures.  A waterfall and stream will provide an opportunity for children to paddle and play.  In creating the garden, Kate is following in the footsteps of her father-in-law the Prince of Wales, whose passion for horticulture is well known.  Her involvement with the 2019 RHS Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show was first revealed in January.


eveningstandard--2019-02-11--Why you should buy houseplants instead of flowers this Valentineaposs Day

Why you should buy houseplants instead of flowers this Valentine's Day

It’s that time of year again: romance, chocolate, and… plants? We’re big fans of giving all our nearest and dearest the gift of green on V-Day.  Though flowers die after a week or so, plants can really last if you care for them correctly… and isn’t that a beautiful metaphor for love?  However, the most romantic day of the year falls squarely in winter, which can be a tough season for plants.  Don’t let your loved ones stress — just share these helpful care tips.  1. Make sure your plant is getting all the light it needs  As we all know too well, sunlight isn’t particularly reliable during winter.  Since the sun rises later and sets earlier, you have to make sure that your plant is getting all the light it needs to thrive. Try moving your plants closer to a window for the dark winter months — a south-facing window is best, since it gets the most sun.  2. Give your windows a good clean to really allow the sun to seep in  You can also give the leaves of your plant a wipe with a damp cloth — this will allow it to absorb all the light it needs.  3. Make sure the temperature is right  Most plants don’t love being in temperatures below 10°C, so make sure they aren’t in those really cold spots in your home for very long.  On the flipside, they also don’t like being too hot, so make sure they aren’t too close to radiators or fireplaces.  4. Don’t give them any fertiliser in the winter  This would be like trying to force food down the mouth of a sleeping person.  Wait until growing season (that’s spring and summer) to give them feed again.  This is the most crucial bit: cut back on your watering routine.  Unless there’s a fair amount of humidity in the air, plants like it when their soil dries out completely between waterings in winter.  This means your plant’s soil should be dry all the way through, not just at the top layer.  The best way to check if it’s shower time: pick up your plant by its pot. If it feels really light, then it’s probably time for a drink — douse your plant in water, let it drain through, and then discard the run-off.  “Our love fern! You let it die?” 10 points if you can guess which film that quote’s from.  Hailing originally from tropical climes, this leafy fern is sure to bring heat to a relationship.  This trailing beauty has heart-shaped leaves, making him the perfect V-Day present.  But Phil isn’t just a pretty face: his laid-back personality means he’s a perfect pick for the clueless gardener.  If you absolutely have to give someone flowers, go with our girl Lara.  This gorgeous orchid stays in bloom all year round, a good symbol of your everlasting love.  If the object of your affection can’t even keep their electric toothbrush alive, then maybe you should consider giving them a hard-to-kill cactus.  Spike, our prickliest little pal, is the perfect choice for the black-thumbed people in your life.  Another nearly-unkillable house plant, Suri — our succulent — is exceptionally easy to look after, provided she’s kept in a bright spot.  Her lovely colour brings a bit of romance to any space.  Whether inside or outside your home or office, Patch helps you discover the best plants for your space, delivers them to your door, and helps you look after them. Follow @PatchPlants on Instagram to get inspired by the world’s best indoor and outdoor urban gardens.