At the end of May this year, my colleague Nicola Rathbone (aka Froggie) and I together with Maisie Brett, a demonstrator from the School of Biological Sciences who has an expertise in the lives of pollinators, went to visit HMP Eastwood Park. We were to meet someone called Gary Stone who, since 1996, has been running horticultural activities with prisoners. In recent years Gary and his group have developed an interest in attracting pollinators and working with nature rather than against it. The visit was inspiring; what they’ve done there was wonderful, and nature was responding. (more…)
May is monstrous, in a good way. An unstoppable surge of green enveloping everything, gunnera leaves fighting their way from the earth like zombies and the croziers of tree ferns unwinding like the kraken from sea water. This beast like energy is on our side, scaring away spring and winter back to the past where it now belongs, the power of nature is never felt more intensely. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “there is potent blood in modest May”. (more…)
For Bristol, this is extreme weather; usually we hardly go a week without rain, it’s been over a month. The plants in the Garden are taking it all in different ways; the aromatic Mediterranean plants look at home and are producing wonderful fragrant oils whose scents drift up as you brush past them. Tree ferns on the other hand need their trunks watered daily to stop them from drying out; native to wet forests they have adapted roots on their trunks to soak up all the rain. (more…)
