Author: andy.winfield

There’s something about May. It’s an incredibly uplifting month, particularly when there’s been a longer than usual winter; a very wet march and an icy easterly wind has kept the dregs of winter sloshing around up until the end of April. The sun’s position in the sky meant that the usual spring triggers applied for the likes of primroses, daffodils and tulips, but the temperature and wet weather meant that pollinators were out in dribs and drabs, a day on and a day off. Even my usually optimistic approach wavered and my bottom lip stuck out. But now the temperature is higher, Bristol is bright green again and plants are assertively growing from everywhere. (more…)

Winter has had its grip on us for a what seems like ten months here in Bristol. The temperature has stayed low for the West Country and we’re all looking forward to those early Spring sunshine days and the first warmth on our faces; winter dissolves into the past when that happens. Winter is not without its beauty, but leaving the thermals at home is a marker for warm days ahead. In the Garden plants are keeping to the spring timetable, the light levels prompting early flower. (more…)

In early November this year, myself and my wife went to the Welsh National Coal Museum also known as the Big Pit. It’s a great visit, looking at the working practices over the years of digging up this material that’s been locked underground since the Carboniferous period. Part of the experience is to go down into the mines, down in the lift, and look at the coal seams. The walls of glittery blackness were shimmering under the light of our head torches. We learned how coal is hard to get to, it requires a lot of ingenuity and effort to get it back to the surface; a surface that it hasn’t seen for many millions of years. Due to its importance in feeding the insatiable monster called progress, coal was a huge industry for many years; an industry we now know with certainty was a driver in changing the planet’s climate. But what is coal, and why is it so bad? (more…)

This month an extraordinary thing happened; a man called Joerma Biernath and his team sailed a World War 2 training boat containing a tree (and a barrel of gin, naturally) 600 miles from Hannover in Saxony to the UK. This tree now has pride of place here in the Botanic Garden, planted by the sailors themselves, North Sea salt in their hair and now Bristol soil under their fingernails.

The tree is Cornus mas or Cornelian Cherry, a rare plant in Lower Saxony; the sailors have planted it outside our Welcome Lodge where it will live as a symbol of the bond between cities. In early spring it produces small bright yellow flowers at a time when flashes of brightness are such a welcome sight after a long dark winter. (more…)