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Scroll down for reports on Cambo, Geoffrey Dutton, Johnstounburn House, Culzean, German rhododendrons, two of the most famous gardens in the USA
Dundee Food and Flower Festival 2010
 
Research for our book on fruit and vegetables for Scotland took Caroline and I to Dundee flower show on Thursday for set up and Friday to see the show. What made it special this year was the National Vegetable Society's 50th Anniversary Championships which means that if you are into Show Vegetables, Dundee is the place to be this year. Show vegetables tend to set folk a snigger and to some extent with good reason. Producing these monster leeks and kelsae onions is somehow divroced from normal gardening. Just look at the paraphanalia required to get the results. Tubes, buckets, 24 hour liquid feed drips, huge amounts of energy.... We watched 11 time Chelsea gold medalist Medwyn Williams from Anglesey putting up his stand. This is a man for whom perfection is a properly staged and grown collection of vegetables. And in his case, vegetables that you wont have seen before. Small white and purple aubergines 'Hanse'l and 'Gretsel', multicoloured carrots and cauliflowers, chilies of every shape and size including the world's hottest 'Bhut Jalokia'. He barked orders to his long suffering family who worked for 12 hours or more stitching together the display. And I have to say, at the end of it all, it was magnificent, informative and inspiring. It does make you want to order some of his seeds and try some of these things for yourself. www.dedwynsofanglesey.co.uk. 
So what of the vegetable competition itself. First, the National Vegetable Society wish to shatter a myth. You often hear people say 'its all very well, but you cant eat that stuff'. Well apparently you can and most of it tastes delicious, even those giant leeks. OK, the giant marrows may not, but then again, the small ones are revolting anyway, so you cant blame the marrows for that. The vegetables were, needless to say magnificent in their serried lines of 2ft parsnips and carrots and polished potatoes. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of labelling. How can a celebration of vegetables be so unconcerned with what variety something was? Apples in particular. 
The potato was the most celebrated vegetable at Dundee. Two extraordinary displays by Three Countries Potatoes and The late Donald Mclean's collection, now transplanted to Aberdeen. Both displays had 150+ varieties of potato from the darkest black and purple 'Edzell Blue', 'Shetland Black', red 'Highland Burgandy Red' to to the white with purple eyed 'Kestrel' a Dunnet-bred variety from Caithness. We talked to potato guru Alan Romans who has a passion for potatoes, probably unmatched by anyone. His book The Potato is the classic reference. But even this only scrapes the surface of the 500 or more varieties in UK collections. Scotland has been the world's leader in potato breeding, though it is now losing that mantle to Holland and probably to China. Alan Romans quite rightly feels that the achievements of Scottish potato breeders have been largely overlooked.
Show September 3rd-5th 2010
JOHNSTOUNBURN HOUSE SE Humbie, East Lothian EH36 5PL Mr & Mrs Charles Plowden
Along with 1000 other people, I visited this on the SGS open day in August 2010. Johnstounburn house, first built in 1623 and much added to since. The house, gardens, extensive outbuildings, including a magnificent Doocot, have been lavishly restored, with no expense spared, from 2004 to 2010 by new owners Charles and Ruth Plowden. The garden is now maturing very well and there are some first class design elements. The box lined parterre is planted with fruit and vegetables with some flowers mixed in a potager arrangement with a line of espaliered apples along one side. T he greenhouses M & Moncur, at a guess? well restored, are filled with tomatoes, aubergines, chillies and a fig, fruiting well. The coup de theatre and the gardens most striking element is the 'hopscotch' a series of golden hop lined arches over a border of Stachys lanata backed by grasses and hot perennials such as bold clumps of Crocosmia and Halenium. I have never seen anything like it and I think it will be viewed as a modern Scottish classic. On the other side of the tennis court is a more traditional double herbaceous border with an eyecatching marble ring suspended from a metal frame designed by Emily Young. Around the house and lawns behind it a series of themed plantings, a blue and white summer border with Salvias and other tender bedding, a grass terrace with formal standard trees and a skirt of golden grasses and the French terrace behind the house of lavender and other herbs under standard limes. Amazingly the herbs survived the 2010 winter. The drainage must be good. The only jarring areas were the eccentrically selected shrubs cut into holes in the lawn and the so called 'Spring Garden' with box balls and cherries. Neither looked very attractive and both would have been better planted in beds I think. Open Under SGS 1 day per year.
Obituary Geoffrey Dutton
Geoffrey Dutton, who died on June 1 aged 85, made his name as a bimolecular scientist in the 1950s but also became known as a mountaineer, poet, wild water swimmer, and as the creator and chronicler of a remarkable garden in Scotland.
 As a scientist, Dutton's area of expertise was glucuronides, specifically how humans and animals excrete toxins, drugs and other substances. He spent most of his career at Dundee University, where his team became internationally known for studies which changed the way pharmaceuticals were used in veterinary medicine.
His work also changed the manner in which drugs are prescribed in human medicine, through the discovery that a baby's body metabolises drugs in a different way to adults; as a result, the lives of many newborn children and infants have been saved.
He studied Biochemistry at Edinburgh University, and after graduating in 1948 came under the influence of GF Marrian, a steroid biochemist who helped to establish biochemical pharmacology in Britain. Marrian employed Dutton as a demonstrator in biochemistry, which allowed him to work part-time for a PhD, under the supervision of Ian Storey, which described a method of synthesising glucuronic acid.
On moving to Dundee as a lecturer in biochemistry, Dutton concentrated on the enzymic basis of glucuronide formation, which was to preoccupy him until his retirement in 1984. He was editor of Glucuronic Acid Free and Combined (1966) and Glucuronidation of Drugs and Other Compounds (1980), which are still consulted by scientists today.
While at Dundee, in the early 1970s Dutton came into contact with the poet Anne Stevenson, then the university's writer-in-residence. Dutton was already the author of concise, often austere poetry which drew on his love of Scotland, its landscape and its people. She liked what he had written, and persuaded him to publish. The result was the collections 31 Poems (1977); Camp One (1978); Squaring the Waves (1986); The Concrete Garden (1991); and The Bare Abundance: Selected Poems 1975-2001 (2002).
Dutton saw no conflict between science and poetry. In 2004, referring to one of his poems, The Miraculous Issue, about a small spring, he said: "[The spring] was regarded by local people – and this happens all over the world, of course – as a blessed spring because in winter it is warm to the hands and in the summer it is cool and refreshing. Of course, along comes a scientist with a thermometer and puts it in and finds it's 4ºC all year round. So the scientist is rather down on this notion of blessedness in regard to the spring: it's all superstition, all ignorance.
"But you can't alter the fact that when you put your hand into this spring in the winter, it's warm; and when you put it in the summer, it's cool. Now, warm and cool are the parameters which you go by as a human being. You cannot alter that. This is just as important evidence to note as is 4ºC. These two are not opposed, they are complementary. You cannot understand humanity unless you take both these into consideration."
In the late 1950s, Dutton and his wife Elizabeth acquired a house and eight acres of land in Perthshire, north of Blairgowrie. It was a piece of steep, rugged hillside, down which tumbled a burn through a deep gorge; and there he created what he called a "marginal" garden.
The garden was certainly on the edge of what was cultivable. In winter the temperature could drop to as low as -23ºC, with snow lying for about 80 days a year. But the ground had, for Dutton, some distinct advantages: the thinness of the soil ("An infertile soil is a gift of nature – keep it as such," he wrote) meant that native plants were not overwhelmed by weeds; there was a natural swimming pool at the top of the gorge; and there were several distinct ecosystems to study, foster, and "adorn" with exotics like rhododendrons.
Dutton managed this garden single-handedly. And between 1988 and 1994 he wrote a succession of scholarly, but highly readable, articles about it in The Garden, the journal of the Royal Horticultural Society.
He also wrote a book based on these articles, Some Branch Against the Sky: the practice and principles of marginal gardening (1997). The garden was featured on BBC Television's Gardeners' World, but was not open to the public – indeed, in his writings Dutton never revealed its name or location.
Everything he wrote on the subject was informed by close observation, scientific rigour, an open mind and a highly-developed sensibility. These virtues, combined with an attractive prose style, made him one of the finest of all writers on gardening.
His style was often lyrical: "I remember one morning in Coille Dubh' [a part of the garden] when a great number of trees had been shattered [by snow], and others were here and there exploding with sharp reports in the stillness (for trees burst under stress). The air was acrid with birch-juice. Huge hanging chandeliers of ice, dizzy glaciers rotating far above your head, menaced progress. Light slanted through strange new spaces and snow-hung wreckage."
Although his reputation was extremely high among thoughtful gardeners, his brand of ecological cultivation did not appeal to the wider public, and his "gardening" books did not sell well. Unsurprisingly, the garden was an inspiration for his poetry, as in Harvesting the Edge (1994).
Since his days as an undergraduate, Dutton had enjoyed climbing. He was for many years editor of the journal of the Scottish Mountaineering Club and author of The Ridiculous Mountains and Nothing So Simple As Climbing.
"In climbing," he once said, "I disliked the competitive business. You don't climb a hill to conquer it, nor to be better than your companions... It is generally similar in science. The majority of good scientists are uncomplicated people, simply enthusiastic about their work."
He also enjoyed long-distance wild-water swimming, which he celebrated in Swimming Free (1972). Dutton scorned to wear a wetsuit even in the icy waters of Scotland, "because the hairs on your body are a tremendous source of information about the currents around you, and when you're in water like this you don't have any sensory deprivation at all, you have an immense sensory amplification and you can feel everything."
Geoffrey Dutton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society Of Edinburgh in 1973.
He is survived by his wife and by their two sons and one daughter.
Culzean, Lancashire Garden Centres and Gresgarth Hall
I returned last week from a 4 day roadtrip, all horticulture related. Tuesday and Wednesday was the NTS Gardens and Planned Landscapes panel meeting at Greenbank, in the south of Glasgow and Culzean in Ayrshire. This panel has been together for 18 months now and we know eachother well. The range of skills, knoweldge and creativity of the members when all in full flight is really interesting. Everyone has their own specialities and there is little overlap. George Anderson brings a lifetime of experience and education. Chair Dave Mitchell keeps the loquatious in check and makes sure that we cover the ground. Jasmine Cann brings the designer's eye, Christopher Dingwall the historical perspective, Scott Wilson the forestry angle and myself, the Garden critic and woodland garden knowledge. I think we provide some useful input and we learn a lot from oneanother. Culzean was looking in good shape despite staff cuts. I enjoyed seeing the maturing vines in the beautifully restored greenhouses. Surely they could house a little more in the way of plants though. Just vines, leaves them looking a little bare. The walled garden contains lots of intersting planting: the longest monocot border in Britain, foliage combinations of ferns, hostas, bananas, cordylines, and some fine specimen trees such as a Cedar. The herbaceous and the vegetables are in the other half of the garden. All looked in very good order.
Then a mad dash south for the Choice garden centre AGM. Glendoick are a member of the Choice buying and marketing group of 26 garden centres. One the way back, I visited as many garden centres as I could, looking for inspiration for Glendoick's next expansion. By far the best garden centres I have seen in the UK were two I visited. best of all was Bents noth of Manchester. A family-owned centre with spectacular buildings. The plant area's opening roof cost millions to build. A cathedral of glass. Many of their plants are grown on site and the garden centre was not over stocked. Plants were healthy and very well displayed. Such a contrast to the overstocked and cluttered Trentham (Stoke) and Grovensor (Chester) sites which just did not inspire me. Barton Grange was the other really great centre, again family owned and again backed by their own nursery, it did bring home to me that the best garden centres are stil run by plantsmen and not bean crunchers. Good though Dobbies are, I dont think Tesco will make them better garden centres. Their plant offering is already in decline and they no longer support small local suppliers. If a nursery cannot supply nationally, Tesco/Dobbies really are not interested, Many more small nurseries will go to the wall due to the voracious appetite of the Dobbies and Wyvales strategies to elbow out the small and family owned nurseries. But even the big nurseries such as Hilliers Brantford, John Wood and Darbys as walking a tightrope with fuel costs and demands for rebates from the big players threatening their survival. The future looks bleak if we end up having to import from Holland. Dutch stock tends to be underpotted and there are disease issues with soil phythoptothoras with the banning of soil sterilants and other pesticides in the Boskoop area.
 
Lastly I had a chance for a tour of Arabella Lenox Boyd's magnificent garden to the East of Lancaster. We have supplied plants to several of Arabella's garden design projects and so it was interesting to see how she used Glendoick plants and 1000s of others in he own garden. head gardener David Sayer has a heroic task looking after so many different part of this garden from the two part of the woodland, the walled garden with its trained fruit, the ponds and terraces around the house and the pleached limes on curved paths. I saw lots of Arabella's favourite plant combinations: scented, white and pink azaleas, purple and pink shrub roses, Iris, geraniums and lots of plants which a connoisseur would appreciate. A dark flowered Sinocalycanthus for example. And everywhere the designer's eye comes into play. The little terrace and matching bridge over the river, a strking focal point from many parts of the garden. The clipped hedges and curves and lines leading the eye this way and that. Anyone interested in design could learn a lot here. The gardens are open 1 day per month in Spring and summer. Do go.
Germany Bremen and Ammerland Rhododendron Conference May 2010
One of the perks of this job is that I get invited to many rhododendron and plant conferences in various parts of the world. Just back from giving and lecture and workshop at the Rhododendron conference in Bremen, Germany, which celebrated the 75th anniversary of the German Rhododendron Society. Other speakers included the American Don Hyatt, famous for his amusing and dense presentations on azaleas and George Argent on hunting for Vireyas in Borneo and Papua New Guinea. Delegates were from as far as Australia and New Zealand and from all over Europe.
Bremen Rhododendron park has continental Europe’s largest collection of rhododendrons in the popular public park. Under mature pines and beech are acres of large old hybrid rhododendrons, evergreen and deciduous azaleas. Another section contains a huge range of hybrid rhododendrons planted in alphabetical order, as only Germans would think of doing! To hell with aesthetics, lets plant in order…. Yet another section displays recent German hybrid rhododendrons, a mixture of the excellent (Many by Bolkhen) and the horrible....
At the heart of the park is the Botanika complex, a bold and expensive paying attraction  (unlike the rest of the park which is free) which houses an excellent interactive display on the history of and ecology of rhododendrons. This follows the curved wall of the New York Guggenheim inspired spiral building. The fact that all the displays are only in German, shows a rather disappointing short-sightedness on the part of the planners towards what should be a more international attraction. Adjoining this is a giant square greenhouse in which are housed a collection of Indica (houseplant) azaleas, and tender rhododendrons, large-leaved, Maddenia and best of all the vireyas from Indonesia, planted on artificial walls and cliffs with Tibetan and Chinese motifs in the design. Botanika is an impressive achievement and it has matured considerably since I last visited 6 years ago. Bremen park takes a whole day to see it all and the 2nd half of May is probably when it reaches its peak.
 An hour west of Bremen in lower Saxony lies a series of small towns: Bad Zwishenhahn, Oldenberg etc around which is the largest concentration of German nurseries. The peaty soil here means that it is a perfect growing area for acid-loving plants. There are more rhododendrons produced here than in the rest of the world combined and the scale is staggering. These family-owned firms, usually 2-3 generations old, impressed me most with the investment that they are prepared to put in, with gantry irrigation, water recycling, computer controlled potting and grading and greenhouses whose rooves lift as the temperatures rise. Almost all rhododendrons are grafted on ‘Cunningham’s White’, and the trend is to have this done by specialist young plant nurseries, the biggest of which, Schroeder produce 1.5 million young plants per year. Every 4 years, the ‘Rhodo’ is held, a mini Chelsea flower show where all the many growers show off their rhododendrons and azaleas in a gaudy but spectacular temporary city centre display. By lunchtime it was as crowded as Chelsea. The one disappointment was that there was almost no opportunity to purchase the rhododendrons which were on display. A wonderful opportunity lost.
Bruns is probably Europe’s largest nursery and their specimen trees and topiary in perfect lines are an amazing sight. The Bruns rhododendron park in dense woodland I remember from 1982 and I don’t really admire it. Too much shade, a featureless flat site without water and monotonous planting of hulking hybrid rhododendrons do not a great aesthetic experience make, not to my mind anyway. With Bruns resources, a much better park/garden could be made than this. Not far away is the Hobbie park, now run by Deitrich Hobbie’s grandson as a tourist attraction. The famous so-called dwarf hybrids of R. williamsianum and R.forrestii are now towering specimens, 3-5m high. Sadly most of the labels are gone. This park is at least planted with some aesthetic considerations and the ponds give some fine vistas but it is all too overgrown and packed with substandard plants which need to be culled.
.JPG) The undoubted highlight of the whole trip were the stockplant blocks at Tino Schroeder’s nursery. I had heard about these but nothing can prepare you for the hectares of square block of colour. We drove around sitting on bales on trailers towed by tractors and I have never seen a rhododendrons give a group of people so much pleasure. This is as spectacular as the Keukenhof bulb displays in Holland and just as colourful. It could be a huge tourist attraction, but nursery owner Timo Shroeder shrugged his shoulders and admitted that he just did not have time to organise it. No one who sees these fields will ever forget it. While the 2 coaches went on, I spent the afternoon with Tino photographing hybrids in another part of his nursery where there are smaller blocks of almost 1000 hybrids. I’d love to see this from a helicopter. Most of these are not propagated it exists as a living museum of cultivars. The German genebank project is currently surveying and photographing all Germany’s rhododendron collections and the data will go on line in late 2010.
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 David Millais from Millais nurseries in Surrey kindly took me in his hired car up to Hachmann’s nursery north of Hamburg. Hans and his son Holger are the world’s leading rhododendron breeders and their breeding program is unmatched in its longevity and breadth of material. Their hybrids are displayed in a compact display garden at the nursery, with conifers and maples. The retail sales area is now quite sophisticated and the public come in flowering season to buy. Lots of impressive new hybrids caught my eye and I have a shopping list to collect. The trouble is that there are now far too many Hachmann hybrids, more than anyone could possibly want. How many fading pink ‘yak’ hybrids does a garden need? I’d plant ‘Fantastica’ and leave it at that. The Hachmann catalogue must weight almost half a kilo and is a fantastic tribute to the work of the firm but I really think that the range needs to be rationalised and only the best hybrids promoted. I think this range of choice is more offputting than useful for most prospective purchasers. Now that Hachmann is embracing EC plant breeders’ rights for 5 new varieties, perhaps a concentration on the best varieties is inevitable. I saw so many hybrids in Germany that I simply would not give garden room to. I’d like to see many of them removed from commercial production as they just disappoint. Some hybridisers seem to have a particular drive to name lots of near identical plants. Heine nursery are the worst offenders as most of their hybrids look identical to me. And I’m quite good at spotting differences.
I am pretty sure that you cannot get more spectacular displays of cultivated rhododendrons anywhere in the world than those of Northern Germany in May. Delegates came from Latvia, Finland, Denmark, And many from Australia and New Zealand. It is a great pity that the English RHS Rhododendron, Magnolia and Camellia group were not represented apart from David Millais. Ironically they were in Germany, touring the Dresden area and it is astonishingly short sighted not to have joined at least part of this event. Scotland faired a little better with 5 attendees, but again, it is sad that the Scottish Rhododendron Society went to Belgium the week before and then went home again. They all missed what was without doubt the best rhododendron conference I have ever been to. You might well wonder why Scotland and England need separate rhododendron societies. I wonder that myself. What started as a fit of pique by the easily piqued Ed Wright from Arduaine to start a breakaway society in Scotland now just looks a bit silly. I and many others would far prefer to see one rhododendron society with one seed exchange, one magazine and so on. Some people belong to both,and many English have joined the Scottish one for reasons I have found it hard to fathom. I'm sure eventually they'll merge. Until then I suppose we'll have to live with it.
If you want to see these German rhododendrons for yourself, then come around 20th May, train or fly to Bremen or Hamburg, hire a car and spend up to a week seeing all there is to offer. Don’t expect many species as these are in limited supply, mainly due to the climate. The hybrids from all over the world are magnificent. A little more than two hours drive will cover the longest distance from Hachmann to Oldenberg, with Bremen in the middle. There are lots of places to stay for almost any budget.
I would like to thank fellow plant hunter in Arunchal Pradesh Hartweg Schepker (Arunachal 2005) and Anna Dau for all the work that they put in, arranging a week of activities in Northern Germany, with precision planning, 150 or more delegates were carried round the country rarely more than 5 minutes off schedule. Amazing. And unforgettable.
Cambo Tulip Festival May 1st 2010 
Just back from a great evening and morning at Cambo in Fife, at the first Cambo Tulip Festival. This is planned to be an annual event, created with the help of Bloms bulbs who supplied 7000 tulips for the garden and vases of cut tulips in the Cambo House courtyard cafe. The highlight, enjoyed by the cream of Scotland's horticultural talent, was Anna Pavord's lecture on her famous book The Tulip. Part history lesson and part simply a tulip enthusiast's favourite cultivars and species, this was a masterclass in brilliant horticultural lecturing. Without notes Anna gave a talk as if scripted for radio 4, with elegant turns of phrase and overwhelming love and enthusiam for what Anna clearly finds are 'the most seductive of plants.' Dinner afterwards with Anna and her husband and hosted by Catherine Erskine was another great pleasure as we discussed the contemporary snowdrop and tulip scene, the sex and sexual orientation of afficionados of different plant genera: snowdrops-gay, rhododendrons-male, iris -female and so on, as well as some of our favourite gardens. We discussed Charles Jencks, Veddw, Kerracher, Mount Stuart, woodland gardening, and how to propagate tulips as well as what reaction Scottish gardeners had given me to my book Scotland for Gardeners. On Saturday morning Catherine and I went to see how the walled gardens tulips had coped with the heavy downpours of the previous night. Some had shatterred, but most were fine and the colours brightened up the centre of the walled garden in the site where the potager goes later in the season. Lets hope that this great idea, one of the many from Cambo, becomes and annual event.
www.camboestate.com
USA 12th April 2010
From the sublime to the rediculous: Blodel Reserve and Chanticleer
-25.JPG) The Bloedel Reserve is 150 acres on Bainbridge Island Washington, across the Puget Sound from Seattle. I visited it last week with Steve Hootman, director of the Rhododendron Species Foundation, and toured with director of Horticulture at Bloedel Andy Navage. The Reserve was once the home of the Bloedel Family, who made a lumber fortune, and is now run by a well financed trust. This is an excellent example of a great deal of resounces creating and maintaining a world class garden. This is a garden of deliberate theatre on the grand scale. The visitor is first ushered along a path through a meadow toward and old barn and then into native woodland surrounding a wildlife pond. Next is a bridge and walkway over the stream and on to a native bog garden of skunk cabbage which is crossed by a stunning zig zagging wooden walkway. The simple and stylish human intervention into a tamed natural wilderness is so simple and effective. From here the path curves round and reveals Bloedel's iconic image, from wild to tamed and manicured pond, closely cut lawns, weeping willow and the attractive white homestead. There is a Japanese influcence here in the restaint, the proportions and the cherries, Magnolias and other plants. The planting surrounding the house itself is the weakest link, and will soon get a makeover. The woodland path then starts again and sweeps down into a grove of Betula jaquemontii, gleaming white trunks, underplanted with Epimedium omeiense and other recent chinese introductions. Out of the wood once more, the famous Japanese garden, is a model of simple lines checkboard grass and paving and no pastiche. A path lined with Ophiopogon nigrescens leads in turn past a magestic Katsura to Bloedel's minimalist masterpeice, the moss garden, which is all the more beautiful for the less-is-more approach to the landscape. Just moss. Time and time again you feel that in other hands, this garden would be stuffed with plants, too many rhododendrons, too much colour and ornament. But somehow this has been avoided and is all the more memorable. If ever you need a lesson in restrained garden design, this is the place to come. The journey ends with the reflecting pool, a rothcoesque monchrome which is not so much is contrast to all that has come before, but more an extension of it. Truly Bloedel is an North American classic with bold use of native plants, which is of its place and could not be anywhere else.
Bloedel Reserve Website Here
Chanticleer website here
Contrast this with one of the East Coast's most famous gardens, Chanticleer in Philadelphia which I visited last time I was lecturing in the USA. This is one of the most ostentacious and most tasteless garden I have ever seen. it looks like it was designed by a committee of footballers wives. Complete with ''plastic-like' fake ruins, doubtess built at vast expense, this high camp bombastic nonsense has almost nothing to recommend it, A series of pampered head gardeners squabble over their unrelated and mediocre plots while the local rich lunching ladies saunter around. I spoke to one gardener who was convinced that he ran the world's most impressive pond side planting. Probably not even the best one in the neighbourhood. There should be a law against this kind of gardening. I'd take the bloated endowment away and distribute it to the 10 most deserving East coast Arboreta and gardens, many of which are run on the fraction of the budget of Chanticleer with far better horticulture. The best thing were the spectacular dogwoods. I cant think of the 2nd best thing.
Perhaps never in the history of gardening has so much been spent on so little.
This garden appears in lots of best gardens in the USA lists including Tim Richardson's otherwise excellent US gardens book. He should know better. I suspect he does, but dare not leave it out!
Film Review Food, Inc Ken Cox 17th February 2010
 Michael Pollan’s book An Omnivore’s Dilemma first came to my attention when I asked a friend in New York why a milk carton had ‘grass fed cows’ written on it. ‘What else are the going to eat?’ I naively asked. ‘You need to read this’, my friend Boyana said, handing me the book. I read it on holiday, could not put it down, and have recommended it to many others.
Micheal Pollan is one of the talking heads in Food Inc a Film for 2010 which might be as powerful as the 1980s Animals Film which turned 1000s of people into vegetarians overnight. Film Inc is the terrifying expose of the USA’s food industry, controlled by 4 or 5 colossal firms whose political muscle allows them to escape regulation, break health and safety and food hygene regulations and help contribute to a national epidemic of health problems such as obesity and diabetes. All the more frightening as Kraft Foods take over Cadburys in this country.
Amongst the things you’ll learn are that the FDA and USDA are no longer regulating the food industry properly. Inspections are down by 70% and they no longer have the power to shut down processing plants, even if there is an e coli outbreak. The horrifying sight of 1000 acre feed lots packed with dung-covered cows force fed corn like geese are when being made into fois gras is bad enough. But then you learn that the cows cannot properly digest the corn and it changes the acidity in their stomachs, which then start to make them ill, so requiring antibiotics… and so on in a spiral of business-led decisions of appalling consequences for animal welfare and for human welfare too.
Monsanto’s roundup resistant soya now accounts for more than 80% of the market. Their lawyers bully non conformers into submission and they virtually have a patented monopoly on one of the two largest US food crops. If Monsanto pollen contaminates your non GM crop, then you have to prove that it was an accident. (How?). Whereas clearly this should be the other way round and Monsanto should compensate you.
If it happens in America, generally it will happen here, a few years later. Only the EU are powerful enough to stop this, as they did with GM soya, to some extent. In Argentina, the grass fed cattle ranches are being faced with US pressure to turn to corn....
Winter Words 2010, Pitlochry. And thoughts on TV gardening. Saturday Feb 6th 2010
 Just back from the 2010 Winter Words Literary Festival at Pitlochry where I was was doing an event on Scotland for Gardeners. As usual, speaking at these events presents opportunities to catch up with other authors and attend their events. Headline act was Gyles Branderyth on Friday night. Yes that's the one: one time Tory MP, camp Radio 4 stalwart, raconteur, wit, panel show contestent, biographer, crime fiction writer... Here promoting his autobiography/diaries which he has kept for 40 years or more. Glyes reminds me of Peter Ustinof in the way he takes over the stage and just talks, tells stories, ribs the audience and entertains, but at the end of it, you are not quite sure what it amounts to. There is no doubt that he is supremely talented and he really does his research every time he is out in front of an audience. I was once at a Gardening industry award dinner where he presented the awards, after making a speech. Unlike his fellow 'personalities' who turn up, take their fee and do the minimum, Gyles had done his research on all the award nominees, the attending guests and the industry gossip and so the performance was masterful. So it was at Pitlochry. He bounded onto the stage and did a one-man comedy-biography show for at least 1.5 hours, full of innuendo, name dropping (when I was in a royal box with the Queen and Prince Philip......). I spoke to the stage crew this morning and they agreed what he pro he was.
 Today, Saturday I met Alys Fowler for the first time. The couple of times I have seen her on Gardener's  World, Alys did not strike me as being an exceptional talent, but seeing her on stage presenting her new book on the Edible Garden, I have changed my mind. For the first time, I see a garden presenter who might be able to inspire young people to get out and garden. Gardeners World is such a bland, cosy, safe, conservative warm wet comfort blanket, I simply cant see anyone under 40 or even under 50 wanting to watch it, let alone be inspired by it. These days it seems to be that the interesting, edgy, pity garden media people write blogs and are not on tv at all. I hate to see the bland leading the bland, but I've given up watching most gatdening tv as I simply dont hear anything memorable. Just a lot of nonsense about peat free compost and how to prick out radishes. I also realise that good writers dont often mak
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