Jennifer Owen's amazing bug studies.

In 1980, in an average sized garden in suburban Leicester (my home town), Jennifer Owen began cataloguing the wildlife found there. Over the next 30 years, she found 2,673 species of wildlife living there, including several insects previously unknown to science. A lecturer and amateur entomologist, she created a scientific study of amazing depth and value, all without any funding.

Jennifer Owen's regular suburban garden

recommended reading: One of Jennifer Owen's two books on her garden.

read a bit more about her incredible work here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/me-and-my-garden-how-jennifer-owen-became-an-unlikely-champion-of-british-wildlife-2131712.html

Inspired by her work, Ken Thompson from the University of Sheffield headed up some valuable studies himself, and wrote this excellent book about it:

again, highly recommended for anyone with any interest in helping the birdies and beasties and generally saving the planet.

Pop-Up Parklets

A kind of urban intervention, 'parklets' have been popping up in cities around the world, including Sao Paulo, Vancouver, Copenhagen, San Francisco and Dublin. Taking over parking spaces normally reserved for cars, these temporary, pedestrian friendly little patches of garden make a point about the amount of green space disappearing under tarmac.

Flowers to the people!

Grow Wild are distributing wild flower meadow packs; with seeds and more, for free to people across the UK ready for sowing in Spring 2015. Organisations can apply for them here: https://www.growwilduk.com/

Upcoming gardening events at Hauser and Wirth Somerset

The Hauser & Wirth gallery in Somerset has a rather fine new Piet Oudolf designed garden, and a series of interesting looking garden themed events coming up:
http://www.hauserwirthsomerset.com/events

Bruce Munroe

 Dan Pearson: design for London bridge garden

Karen Guthrie

8th Feb: ART OF THE GARDEN: BRUCE MUNRO, LIGHT AND LANDSCAPE

"Bruce Munro is noted for his immersive site-specific installations that employ light to 
evoke emotional response, often in an outdoor context and on a monumental scale."

19th Feb: ART OF THE GARDEN: TOM STUART-SMITH ON GARDENS AND THE IMAGINATION

"Whether it is a musical motif, molecular cell structure or perhaps a painting that has inspired him, Tom Stuart-Smith – winner of eight gold medals and three times Best in Show at the Chelsea Flower Show – explores the many influences that go into the creation of his gardens"

25th Oct: KAREN GUTHRIE: SOIL CULTURE RESIDENCY TALK

"The aim of Soil Culture is to use the arts to inspire a deeper public understanding of the importance of soil"

22nd Jan: ART OF THE GARDEN: DAN PEARSON, THE GARDEN AS VISION

"Art of the Garden is a celebratory programme that will explore the relationship between gardening, art and the landscape."

San Telmo Museum

An new extension to the historical museum building is designed to reference the landscape it is embedded into. At the foot of a rocky cliff, the architects, Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, have created planting spaces to allow greenery to colonise the surface of the new building. These same cut-outs create beautiful patterns of light and shade in the interior too.

Radical Gardening!

Is growing something a revolutionary act?
(In a very gentle way) it can be!

Stickers from Breakfast and Jess

From growing your own food to reduce your reliance on supermarkets, look after your health or take cash away from the capitalist fat cats; to communal growing to bolster your community and help address a myriad of social problems. You can care for the land, create a habitat for nature; or do a spot of guerrilla gardening to reclaim the concrete wasteland. You can starting your own one person recycling scheme by making your own compost, or save seed and propagate & give away to spread the gardening love... gardening can be way to stand up against wastefulness, want & the general decline of western civilisation into a greed-driven consumerist slump. Literally grassroots and from the ground up, constructive instead of destructive, gardeners make places that are often productive and beautiful in a myriad of different ways.

Not a filthy commie dissenter? No problem! Gardening is fun for capitalists & rightwingers too! In fact, one of the major joys of gardening is the way it can bring people together. No matter what your political persuasion, you can have a good old chinwag about how to get rid of peony blight or your new favourite potato variety.

So is gardening revolutionary?
This man:

Ron Findlay
certainly believes it can be. Watch his TED talk (follow the link) and be persuaded.