Defra's ambivalent and contested study assessing the carbon footprint of horticultural peat against alternatives, is likely only to perpetuate a long-running divide in the industry.

So many arguments have been batted back and forth that it's hard for the neutral to establish who has the stronger case. But I always thought a weakness on the "anti" side was one I have often heard from those who favour the use of peat. "Look are Ireland," they say. "They've got so much of the stuff, they burn it in power stations!"

Indeed I saw earlier this month that Ireland faces an energy price hike of up to five per cent from October, a charge which

is expected to raise up to €157 million and will be used to offset the costs faced by electricity producers who are obliged to buy a certain proportion of renewable and peat-generated electricity.

Yes, you read that right. The poor Irish electricity consumer has to subsidise both renewable energy - in order to help meet the country's greenhouse gas reduction commitments - and the massively GHG-contributing peat-powered sector.

This has partly arisen from the fact that peat extraction and energy generation have historically been in the hands of Bord na Mona and the Electricity Supply Board respectively - both essentially state-run monopolies.

(I'll be interested to hear what the Bord na Mona chaps have to say about this - I see they're at Horti Fair in October.)

Will sanity some day prevail? Don't hold your breath. According to the ESB, nuclear power is "unlikely to be on the agenda for at least another 25 years". For now, nuclear power generation is illegal in the republic - even though it is happy to import UK-generated electricity, inevitably part-nuclear.

Back with a bumper helping!

1.

These look like mock-ups for some long-lost Star Wars prequel, but are in fact Russian peat harvesters.


2. Groundsmanship-related weirdness over in Greece where Dundee United's Europa League clash tonight with AEK Athens has had to be moved - twice.
First, when the AEK ground's sprinklers failed, the tie was moved to the ground of local rivals Panionios. But Panionios fans wouldn't countenance an AEK match on their sacred turf - which they promptly dug up. So it's at the ground of a third side, Olympiacos - for now.


3. Never let it be said the (ex-)Royals don't muck in. Here is Edward, Duke of Windsor tending his estate near Paris in the mid-1950s, as captured by Life magazine:

Don't expect a tie, tweed jacket, slacks and Oxfords to feature in Hort Week's upcoming workwear market report however.


4. Last year I mused whether the American "urban fruit foraging" trend might catch on here.

And indeed it has, thanks to the redoubtable Karen Liebreich, founder of Chiswick House's educational kitchen garden, who has set up Abundance London, allowing the public to submit details of (and I guess, subsequently scrump from) fruit trees in their area.


5. Remember the Kiwi contractors trimming hedges with a crane-mounted ride-on mower?
Well when it comes to mowing hedges, World's Strongest Redneck Steve McGranahan don't need no crane - just a stick:

6. Regular readers (come on, there must be some) may also be wondering what happened to my Poundland potager. Well but for the occasional pea and tomato, it all fell victim to slugs, snails and drought (slugs, snails and drought? Yes!)
All, that is, apart from the apples, which I can only assume were pinched by the squirrels (we've ruled out "urban fruit foragers").
But hey, you learn from your mistakes, not your successes, so I'll back next year armed with yards of copper tape (though controlling squirrels just got a whole lot more problematic).

1. Bizarre plant of the month is, believe it or not a citrus - the buddha's hand citron (Citrus medica var. sarcodactylis), native to China.

There isn't much flesh on the fingers, but the fruits are harvested for their aromatic zest, or candied.

2. What if money really did grow on trees? Australian bank RaboDirect conducted a publicity stunt social experiment (embedded video) to see how people would respond to a tree in a busy public area bearing real AU$5 bills.

The result (scroll down) is an intriguing example of group behaviour - not at all the stampede you might expect.

3. US designer Sarah Tamala Kang has come up with an outdoor mirror that at first glance looks like an opening through a solid surface.
 

4. Still with mirrors, Dutch architects DUS created a small pavilion in an Amsterdam square earlier this summer, which inside gives the illusion of being in an endless, regular woodland - quite a crowded one too, once several visitors stepped inside.


All for now. I'm off for a bit as Mrs M is about to give birth.

1. With parks budgets under strain, could this, from Berlin-based designer Fabian Brunsing, provide some much-needed revenue?


2. The Australian-designed Wunda Weeder "enables planting, thining, weeding, transplanting or harvesting of row crop vegetables, herbs or flowers", while the operator lies comfortably, borne along by a solar-powered motor. Price: "Under AU$9,000" (£5,200).

3. Pennsylvania-based designer Bill McHugh takes sustainable energy a step further with his range of squirrel-powered kinetic garden sculptures. The nut-induced activity kicks in around 2:20.


4. St Andrews, where the British Open tees off today, has many environmentally friendly features. But at Pennsylvania's Aronimink Golf Club, which hosted the previous big-ticket event in the golfing calendar, the AT&T National, pest control is left largely to swallows, bluebirds and a border collie called Charlie. Downside? Paw-prints in the bunkers.



5. I wonder how well this would go down with the Dragons. It's a classic Chesterfield sofa, but made entirely out of concrete. Looks comfy, isn't.

The RHS Gardening in Schools report (pdf downloadable here) got plenty positive coverage on its publication this week, but it's an oddly insubstantial piece of work.

It claims to be based on a survey of 1,300 teachers, and 10 in-depth school studies, conducted by something called the National Foundation for Educational Research, who sound like they ought to know what they're up to. But the final document is so anecdotal, not to say banal, that I can't help wondering if the survey came up with the "wrong" findings which have simply been papered over.

The report starts by listing the original aims of the RHS Campaign for School Gardening, launched in 2007. These are what you might expect - "enrich the curriculum", "life skills", "emotional and physical health", "active citizens of the future". It then takes about half-a-dozen pages to say, "yes, it does those things".

For example, "Children develop into more skilled, creative thinkers better able to adapt to the changing needs of society." Really? Do the report authors think that, or do they know that? If they know that, how do they know that? Because I can't think of any way of substantiating that claim.

Under "things that helped improve children's sense of self worth", we learn that "Waiting for crops to grow taught the value of patience". Again, measurable how?

It also claims gardening "promoted responsible behaviour in dangerous situations". If gardening is a dangerous situation promoting responsible behaviour, then just about anything is.

Note what it doesn't say. It doesn't say: "X per cent of the Y number of teachers who responded to our survey said it enriched the curriculum". It certainly doesn't say: "X1 per cent thought it was all a waste of time and effort". Aside from the cheery case studies of individual schools, it just blithely asserts things that could have been claimed before the first seed was sown.

For the record, I think gardening in schools is a great idea. Only this week I saw a very positive example of it in Southend (see next week's HW). I'm sure I would have loved it myself back in the day, and as a soon-to-be parent, I hope McEwan Jr will benefit from it. But let's not kid ourselves that it has been "proved" to produce pedagogical outcomes just because a lavish but flimsy report claims it does.

See what I've done with the title there? Made it topical. The search engines are bound to pick it up.


1. Appropriately a South African one first, and next in our weird plants theme is the umbrella thorn tree (Acacia tortilis) - widespread (and wide-spreading) trees, but did you know they emit chemical signals to other trees, warning of approaching browsers?


According to New Scientist:

The ethylene warns other trees of the impending danger, which then step up their own production of leaf tannin within just five to ten minutes.

According to this blog:

The whole place challenges an assumption long held about wildness.  Generally people think of dense forestation when they think of wildness.  In other words when you leave a place to its own devices it will naturally turn to forest.. [but] the Oostvaardersplassen proves that if left alone to roam large mammals will produce a very different ecosystem to the one we might expect.

Some of the land necessary for this project is still not obtained. The farmers do not (easily) want to sell their land, as it has very rich soil. A huge sum of money is needed to buy them out, relocate them and convert the land into ‘nature’.

It was traditional when constructing a vinery in Victorian times to bury a large animal, even a carthorse if available, in the bed where the vines were to be planted. In later times when planting a new vine a pig or sheep was buried in the bed.

In the part of rural Somerset where I grew up, nobody would dream of planting an asparagus patch without first inserting a dead donkey into the underlying soil.

It seemed a quieter year for celeb-spotting at today's Chelsea's press day. But I did snap a few.

1. After Ben's post on other-worldly plants, I came across an article on the jabuticaba, or Brazilian grape tree, whose flowers and edible fruits grow directly out of the trunk and branches - an example of Cauliflory. They're not just stuck on!


2. The Cairngorms National Park's Wildcat Project, which this year includes catching the elusive predators on camera traps, has been a huge hit with the public, according to coordinator David Hetherington .

I caught a talk at the Linnean Society earlier this year by the Scottish Wildlife Trust's head of policy Tony King who suggested that, given the public interest in the beaver reintroductions on the west of Scotland, the critically endangered European lynx might be a good candidate for reintroduction too. Clearly that would be popular with the public - but how would they get on with our native cat?

3. Anish Kapoor's plans for a £19million sculpture in the Olympic Park got a pretty cool reception when it was unveiled a couple of months ago - though there was some relief that London didn't get a 390ft naked Antony Gormley instead.
The British have not, with a few notable exceptions, ever been that keen on monumental public art. Foreign Policy's roundup of the World’s Ugliest Statues suggests maybe that's no bad thing.


4. Traditional British town planning has been getting a controversial rethink with the eco-towns proposals - though it will be interesting to see how much of those remain standing after the election. But authorities in Shanghai, China, have decided that what they need for their growing urban population is an Authentic British-style town.

Though "Thames Town" boasts an English-Style Retail District and even a Bridal Services Specialty Zone, the All-Night Drinking, Fighting and Vomiting Zone appears not to have made the final blueprint.

1. It's often said that the boom in grow-your-own is in some way down to the recession - but there are a hundred better ways of cutting your household bills than swapping supermarket produce for a few home-grown strawbs and carrots.
Nevertheless, further to Jack's post, I'm going to see how much value I can add to bargain garden products, giveaways and random finds, in the limited space I have available, in what I've decided to call my Poundland Potager. Not everything in it will be from the eponymous discounter, but the rule is that no single input can cost more than a pound.
So far I've spent £15 planting up around a dozen crops. As the season progresses I'll value my produce against the prices in my local supermarket and we'll see if I'm up over all. If I'm not, I think we can lay to rest the notion that it's a money-saver.

2. I'm sure Alys would approve. I nicked from her show the idea of growing pea tops from surplus peas - though she used Whitworth's Leo Dried Peas because she liked the retro packaging.
I'm enjoying the series, but I'm not sure what's odder -Alys  naming her hens after famous literary lesbians or giving one of them, effectively, her own name - like me calling my cat (if I had one) "Gavin".

3. Meanwhile back on my old manor, the "community garden" has a new hazard to contend with:

When I walked past the Community gardens aroun 1pm today I noticed a group of drunks/winos (or should I call them alfresco drinkers?) - they were being noisy and aggresive to each other and when I walked past again around 2pm they were still there and a bit louder.

I do not presently garden here, but if I did I would feel threatened and the sense of peace I get when gardening would have been ruined.

4. On a quick trip to Holland earlier this week I was struck how there's no getting away from the fields of tulips at this time of year, even on the plane:

Looks a bit Paul Klee, dontchathink?

 
Every announcement on the never-ending changes to further education carries the soothing assurance that it is being done to meet the needs of employers. Yet if I were an employer I'd be reeling from the relentless torrent of government initiatives, "frameworks" and acronyms in FE, most of it couched in a strange kind of eduspeak which not even Google can translate.

For example, did you know that some quite major changes are under way with National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) - arguably the bedrock of vocational horticulture training in this country?

Once part of the National Qualifications Framework (NQF - come on, you must remember the good old NQF), NVQs are being shifted over by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), doubtless for very fine reasons, to the equally seductive-sounding Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF).

All clear so far I hope. Edexcel, one of the many awarding bodies in hort, does point out a slight complication:

There will be a transition period during which awarding organisations and their centres, operating in both the QCF and the NQF, are required to work with two sets of regulatory requirements - one for QCF qualifications that include 'NVQ' in their title and one for NVQs in the NQF.

But hey, they're still basically NVQs, right? Well, yes and no. According to sector skills council Lantra:

Existing titles, such as NVQ, will no longer appear on the QCF or on certificates issued by awarding organisations... However, providers and awarding organisations may continue to use NVQ in their marketing and communication materials to help with this transfer.

And don't imagine you've got a handle on the whole QCF thing until you can trot out the Rules of Combination and a working definition of a Spiky Profile.

It can't be easy for training providers either. NPTC, another awarding body, has published handbooks for the new QCF awards, which at 441 pages (Level 2) and 410 pages (Level 3), should make for soothing bedtime reading.

It's not like things were simple to begin with. The National Database of Accredited Qualifications currently lists 48 qualifications, from five different awarding bodies, with the word "horticulture" in the title - and that's without getting started on specialist topics like arboriculture or turf.

We're currently preparing our yearly Careers in Horticulture supplement, which is supposed to make horticulture seem like an appealing career choice for new entrants, and it's hard not to get bogged down in all this when explaining what's on offer.

Yet horticulture's future health depends on both them and their potential employers sharing an understanding of what qualifications really mean. Maybe I'm just being a bit thick, but that looks to me like an increasingly tall order.

And of course it could all change again after next month...

The Dutch Spring Pack Trials in four weeks' time aren't quite what they were, but they still offer the year's first opportunity to see the latest developments from several big international breeders.
 
And the nice thing is, as there's only six, you can probably get round them all in a day. That's what I hope to do anyway - with the help of this cunning map:
 

View 2010 Spring Pack Trials in a larger map

Matthew's article about the National Trust's inability to maintain its own central London allotment makes me wonder if the drive for more growing space in towns and cities hasn't missed an opportunity.

Workplace allotments, on the face of it, have a lot going for them. While spare land is hard to come by in most urban areas, there's a fair bit around many workplaces that is either a drain on resources - through the need to mow grass, prune shrubs etc - or which is neglected entirely. Forward-thinking designers are also including worker-friendly green space, including roof gardens, into new workplace designs.

I'm sceptical about "community gardens" in parks and public spaces - I see my local one hasn't exactly flourished since I posted this a year ago. But not only are workplace grounds more secure than parks, they would also allow effort, expertise and bounty to be shared among your work colleagues - good for "teambuilding", surely?

And unlike the Trust's allotments, which are often miles from centres of population, so requiring an extra and possibly fuel-hungry trip, you're at your workplace anyway.

The Trust's site could have a been a role model for this - a real chance missed, I'd say.

1. Canadian-based upmarket hotel chain Fairmont, owner of the Savoy in London, is perhaps an unlikely pioneer in sustainable local growing. But its Royal York Hotel in Toronto has been growing its own vegetables and herbs on its organic rooftop garden for the past 12 years.

And now in densely packed, import-dependent Singapore, a similar garden is yielding lemons, curry leaves, bell peppers, lemongrass and mint for the hotel's restaurants.
Even in Dallas, not a city often associated with sustainability, the chain's hotel now boasts a 280 sq m herb and vegetable garden.
But this is not as new as it seems. New York's alluringly hideous "residential hotel" The Ansonia had a rooftop garden over 100 years ago, featuring "about 500 chicken, many ducks, about six goats and a small bear".



2. Soon, west London's wistarias will be in bloom - they seem to be practically obligatory on houses along some stretches of the Thames. But they have nothing on this one in Sierra Madre, California, listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest flowering plant:

Thought to be 116 years old, it covers over an acre (4,000 sq m), has over 1.5 million blooms and is reckoned to weigh around 250 tonnes. It even serves as the focus for an entire annual festival, held most recently last weekend.


3. Speaking of records, my nephews would like to nominate this, encountered on a day trip to Dorset's Jurassic Coast, as Britain's Worst Playground:



4. Film-maker Mirko Faienza manages to find some rather more alluring images in his father's small garden in Bologna, Italy:

5. Finally, a Health & Safety at Work moment - demonstrating with immaculate timing why a good solid safety rope is absolutely essential:

 
Artificial turf, which we look at in next week's HW magazine, is finding its way into many parks and public spaces in the US - but the public response has been less than enthusiastic.

Now I have no problem with synthetic surfaces on public sports pitches, where twin pressures of low maintenance and high use throughout the year mitigate against the natural option.

But how eager would you be to go and sit out in an artificially turfed public park on a hot day? And when New York gets hot, it seems, the artificial turf in its parks gets even hotter.

It's not just the heat effect. the city is currently phasing out the use of rubber crumb infill, after significant amounts of lead were found in many of the sports and play areas where it was used.

(A 2008 study by the Centers for Disease Control appeared to confirm the risk, especially for older, worn pitches.)

Now a controversial New York riverside development proposes further use of artificial turf - with the novel justification that it is "less attractive to geese".
 
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The Daily Telegraph columnist and blogger George Pitcher can be relied upon to be wrong about most things, and boy is he wrong about Japanese knotweed.
 

"Its roots are really shallow and lightly spread and can be torn up easily, like varicose veins from a dusty corpse"
 

he writes, apparently unaware of its fantastically tenacious rhizomes.
 

But perhaps I’ve been putting spores into the breeze, to propogate on some innocent market-gardener’s rhubarb patch