Category Archives: Gardens

The magic of mushrooms: how they connect the plant world

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After years in the wilderness, fungi are finally getting the attention they deserve from gardeners, scientists, designers and doctors

Joe Perkins, like most gardeners, has typically been more animated by what’s going on above the ground than below it. The quality of the soil was important, no question, but what was really going on down there felt mysterious and impenetrable. As for fungi, it usually meant one thing in a garden, and that wasn’t good news.

“On a domestic level, our relationship and understanding of fungi in the past has very much been that it’s something about decay, it’s about disease, and it’s something that we don’t particularly want in our gardens,” says Perkins, a 45-year-old landscape architect based in Sussex, who won three awards at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2019. “It’s fair to say that, as gardeners, we’ve not always fully understood – and I still don’t – the importance of these systems.”

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Muscle strengthening lowers risk of death from all causes, study shows

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Half an hour a week of activities such as gardening, sit-ups or yoga could help reduce the risk of dying from any cause by a fifth

Half an hour of muscle strengthening activity such as lifting weights, push-ups or heavy gardening each week could help reduce the risk of dying from any cause by as much as a fifth, according to a new global analysis of studies conducted over three decades.

Health guidelines recommend muscle strengthening activities, primarily because of the benefits for musculoskeletal health. Previous research has indicated a link to a lower risk of death, but until now experts did not know what the optimal “dose” might be.

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Roots to knowledge: the best gardeners to follow on social media

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There is a wealth of exciting growers, collectives and designers whose posts aim to broaden know-how and help the would-be green-fingered to cultivate their passions

Alessandro Vitale has become an Instagram and TikTok guru for urban gardeners growing their own food. The Italian tattoo studio manager films his experiments in vertical farming and organic gardening for fun- and information-packed posts. If you’re wondering about the username, it’s a reference to his chilli obsession – he has seeds for more than 600 varieties.

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Taming the Garden review – fascinating study of a billionaire’s destructive folly

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Salomé Jashi’s film follows the journey of hundreds of mature trees as they are uprooted across Georgia to populate a rich man’s garden

Like a sad, greedy king in some fairytale or parable, the Georgian billionaire and former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili set out, six years ago, to buy and uproot hundreds of magnificent mature trees and transport them at colossal expense and difficulty across Georgia to be transplanted in his own huge private garden. It sometimes involves taking a tree by water, along the Black Sea coast – a truly surreal image.

Salomé Jashi’s fascinating and deadpan film shows, in a series of tableau-type shots, the effect that these purchases are having up and down the land. Local workers squabble among themselves at the dangerous, strenuous, but nonetheless lucrative job of digging them up. The landowners and communities brood on the sizeable sums of money they are getting paid and Ivanishvili’s promises that roads will also be built. But at the moment of truth, they are desolate when the Faustian bargain must be settled and the huge, ugly haulage trucks come to take their trees away in giant “pots” of earth, as if part of their natural soul is being confiscated. (Surely at least some of these trees will have died en route, although this is not revealed.)

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New rose named after one of UK’s first documented black gardeners

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John Ystumllyn was abducted from west Africa in 1746 and taken to Gwynedd, north Wales

One of Britain’s first known black gardeners has been honoured with a rose named after him in celebration of his life.

John Ystumllyn, whose original name is unknown, was abducted as an eight-year-old boy in west Africa around 1746 and taken to Gwynedd, north Wales. There he became a servant in the household of the Wynn family of Ystumllyn, whose estate he was named after, and learned horticulture in the gardens.

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A garden at Ground Zero: what I learned growing an oasis in the shadow of 9/11

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Soon after 9/11, I moved into an old building by Ground Zero. First step? Plant an unlikely patch of green

If you listen, I mean really listen, you will hear your garden speaking to you. Mine, which sits on a 10th-floor Manhattan terrace, a stone’s throw from where the World Trade Center stood, first spoke to me on a crisp September morning 20 years ago. I had jury duty that day and decided to walk the two miles south from my home in Greenwich Village down to the courthouse in the financial district.

But when I turned south on to 6th Avenue, I looked up to see see an orange hole flaming at the centre of the tower ahead of me. A woman nearby fell to the pavement, screaming something about a plane. It didn’t seem like a good day to go downtown; yet something compelled me to continue south. When I arrived at a gas station on Canal Street, a boom sounded and a puff of smoke issued from just behind the tower. “What was that?” I asked a taxi driver, filling his tank nearby. “Well, see those two buildings are connected with pipes,” he said with the unquestionable authority endemic to New York cabbies. “When you get a fire in one it spreads and you get a fire in the other.” Makes sense, I thought, and pushed southwards.

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Get off my lettuce! Three quick ways to deter snails without poison

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Copper, coffee and beer come together in a cumulative effort to keep pests out of your patch

Anyone who has ever had a tree get in the way of a breathtaking view or pending development approval will know the consequence of a copper coin – come on, we’re all aware of this nasty poisoning tactic! But did you know that copper can be used to kill other stuff too, like pesky snails and slugs?

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‘Not in this town’: artwork about Britain’s ‘nuclear colonialism’ removed

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Tory councillors are accused of censorship over installation on atom bomb tests in Australia in a Southend park

An Australian artist has accused a group of Conservative councillors of using “bullying strategies” to silence and censor her work after an installation she created to highlight Britain’s “identity as a colonial nuclear state” was removed from a park in Essex.

The councillors threatened to “take action against the work” if it was not removed, according to Metal, the arts organisation that commissioned and then removed the installation from Gunners Park in Southend.

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‘Six chickens somehow turned into 60!’ Meet the families trying to live the Good Life in the pandemic

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Many people yearn to grow their own food and live a simpler life – but, when coronavirus hit, some decided it was now or never. Have their dreams of burgeoning veg patches and frolicking livestock come true?

On their one-acre plot of Hertfordshire countryside, Sarah Apps and Liam Armstrong live with three chickens, 59 tomato plants and – until this morning – three pigs. “It’s been an emotional day,” says Apps. They plan to get more pigs later in the summer, and next week more chickens are arriving; then ducks and a goat, a couple of turkeys for Christmas and, maybe next year, bees. Living on their own land, and becoming more self-sufficient, had been a bit of a dream for the couple, but it took the Covid pandemic to make it happen. “You just didn’t know what was going to happen,” says Apps. “Young people were dying, older people were dying … I think you really need to live for the days that you’ve got.”

When they spotted a run-down bungalow that came with an acre of land, they went for it. They had been living in Romford, East London. “We could hear the roar of the M25 and I could barely be bothered to mow the small patch of lawn we had,” says Apps. They moved in November and spent the winter creating raised vegetable beds, putting in fencing and making animal enclosures. It has been gruelling physical work – they have done it mostly by hand – moving around 30 tonnes of soil. “It was our fitness thing through lockdown,” says Apps. But now they have growing just about every type of vegetable you’d find in a well-stocked supermarket, eggs every day, and in a few days the pigs will return for the freezer. She breaks off to check on a chicken who is in their kitchen. “She’s just had a bath. She’s not very well.”

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‘It has the feel of a little local pub!’: Guardian readers on their extraordinary DIY sheds

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From an allotment shelter built out of old doors to a storage shack turned into a chapel, here are some of the best of our readers’ creations

This is my pandemic project: a garden pub shed, called the Doghouse. It is custom-built from timber with a Firestone rubber roof. Lockdown finally gave me the time to build it and I tried to reuse or recycle materials where I could. The doors and windows were from a friend’s old conservatory. The timber herringbone and boards, plus the back bar shelving, are pallet wood, which I burnished with a chainmail pad, and oiled to give it a nice worn look. I built the bar and canopy from scratch using leftover framing timber. The bench was built from a recycled bed headboard and I used a mattress for the seat. The table and chairs were a local Gumtree find, and the bar memorabilia and pumps were from eBay. I’m probably proudest of the bar. It has the feel and character of a little local pub – we often eat dinner there for a change of scenery. Our two children love it. But we will, of course, still support our local pub whenever we can. Gavin Thomasson, 42, design manager, Ipswich

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David Hockney on joy, longing and spring light: ‘I’m teaching the French how to paint Normandy!’

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While enjoying an idyllic lockdown in France, the 83-year-old artist has created perhaps his most important exhibition ever – offering hope to an injured world

‘I think it looks terrific,” says David Hockney. “It’s all on one theme, isn’t it? And there’s not many exhibitions like that, really, a show all about the spring.” The 83-year-old artist is taking a look around his new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London for the first time. He seems happy with it – and rightly so, for it is hypnotic and ravishing. But while I am getting a sneak preview in person, Hockney is here only virtually, his face appearing on two screens, one a giant TV, the other a small laptop.

He is at home, at what he calls his “seven dwarves house” in Normandy, wearing a red, black and white check jacket, a checkerboard tie, a blue-green pullover and round, gold-framed glasses. His kaleidoscopic choice of clothing, challenging the very limits of the video call’s bandwidth, is as vibrant and beguiling as the canvases hanging around us. Hockney has not just painted spring; he has come dressed as it.

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Bees bounce back after Australia’s black summer: ‘Any life is good life’

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Australia’s bushfires were devastating for bee populations. But steady rain and community efforts are seeing the return of the pollinators

You could say that Adrian Iodice is something of a stickybeak neighbour. On Iodice’s once-lush bushland property, nestled within the Bega Valley of New South Wales, there stands a majestic rough-barked apple tree that the beekeeper used to, every now and then, jam his head into.

In the hollow of the trunk lived a flourishing wild colony of European honeybees that Iodice had been keeping an eye on for years. “I’d have a chat with them,” he laughs. “Stick my head in and see how they’re getting on in life. They were very gentle bees; they never had a go at me.”

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From garden streets to bike highways: four ideas for post-Covid cities – visualised

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As the pandemic wreaks havoc on existing structures, we look at some visions for post-Covid cities – and how they hold up

There is a huge, looming, unanswerable question that overshadows our cities, like an elephant squatting in the central square. Will a Covid-19 vaccine or herd immunity return us to “normal”, or will we need to redesign our cities to accommodate a world in which close proximity to other people can kill you?

After an anxious summer in the northern hemisphere, during which those of us who were able to safely do so mimicked a kind of normality with limited socialising on patios and in gardens, winter is coming – and it will test the limits of our urban design. Regardless of whether we “solve” this latest coronavirus, humanity now knows how vulnerable we are to pandemics.

Can we mitigate the effects of the next great disease before it happens? And has the colossal disruption to the way we work and travel created a renewed impetus to organise cities in a more sustainable, more pleasant way?

We asked four architecture firms to share their visions of what cities should do, now, to better design everything from offices to streets to transport – and we have analysed each one – to help inoculate our cities against a disease that is proving so difficult to inoculate against in our bodies.

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Trouble in store as Covid canning craze leads to empty shelves and price gouging

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Americans turning to gardening during Covid crisis find themselves in a pickle when it comes to finding the right jars, seals and lids

It’s the time of year when gardeners are turning their ripe tomatoes into sauces and salsas and cucumbers into pickles. But a boom in gardening and preparing food at home during the coronavirus pandemic has led to a scarcity of supplies with which to preserve them.

From Maine and Vermont to Louisiana and West Virginia, gardeners have reported being in a pickle when it comes to finding the right size glass jars, the special lids to safely seal them, or the bands with which to screw them on. They’ve gone from store to store and some have given in to paying higher prices online.

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Beyond sourdough: the hobbies that helped readers cope with lockdown

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As lockdown restrictions continue to ease, Guardian readers tell us what pastimes and skills they’ve discovered – and rediscovered – during the pandemic

During lockdown, my husband and I have taken daily walks in the countryside that have kept us sane and given us a break from the monotony of confinement. Along the way, I have collected stones to paint. Looking for ways to engage the five-year-olds in my class (and missing them a bit too), I painted each stone to look like them and used them to make videos, games and to tell stories. The children loved them and it made some of their lessons a little more meaningful in what has been a challenging time. Anna Clow, 52, early years teacher, Lyon, France

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Doorstep delights: why front gardens matter

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A place to socialise, an oasis for wildlife, a gift to our neighbours – a front garden can be all of these things. Isn’t it about time we showed them some love,asks Clare Coulson

Last month, with more time at home than usual, Charlotte Harris, one half of the landscape design duo Harris Bugg, decided to dig up her paved front garden in Newham, east London. “It was a discussion we’d been having for a while,” says Harris, who gardens with her girlfriend Catriona Knox. They’d already removed the paving from the back garden of their house, which is in a densely populated area of the city undergoing vast amounts of regeneration. “Around here every bit of green space feels precious,” she says. “Obviously there are parks, but I think each of us has to take responsibility for any space we have.”

As you’d expect in a city, the new front garden needs to work hard to accommodate bins, bikes and a composting hot bin, but Harris is determined to plant as much as possible in the rest of the space, including a small tree (on the shortlist are a Sichuan pepper tree, hawthorn or a Chinese fringe tree) underplanted with perennials and bulbs.

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