Channel Hopping

I have a guest post over at the BBC Gardening Blog today, so do press the Red Button to see what I have to say on the subject of colour :)

If any of you have hopped channels to here from the BBC, then hello and welcome!

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Look Out Flingers, We're Coming to Seattle!

I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions anymore, but I did make a couple of promises to myself at the beginning of the year which started to come together last week. The first of these was to go to the Seattle Fling in July.

That sounds a pretty easy promise, but I gave myself a couple of hurdles to make it a tad more tricky. I didn't feel I could go all that way without NAH coming along and I couldn't really justify splurging out on a mega holiday from our savings without getting some paid work beforehand.

It's time for our Census this year, so our going to Seattle hinged on me getting one of the 35,000 temporary jobs on offer. We'll draw a veil over the frustrating and long winded process this has been: suffice to say at last a provisional job offer came through last Monday, subject to the necessary security checks, references, training etc. etc. all being satisfactory.

In the meantime I've been emailing NAH with links to various things we could do and see in and around Seattle entitled Persuasion. Lots of engineery type things; boat trips; spectacular coastal and mountain scenery; Mount St. Helen's; whale watching; a hop, skip and a jump to Canada. Lots of exciting things to make it a wonderful time for us both, with not one mention of gardening or blogging ;)

You see, I'd assumed NAH would join me for a holiday after the Fling...

Then our friends in Oz got in touch to say they'll be in the UK in July and could they stay with us on July 22nd -arrrrgggghhhhh! Much frantic emailing ensued and they're now staying with us on the 21st July - phew!

Then NAH announced not only is a trip to Seattle most tempting after all my Persuasion emails, he's also found out one of his classmates at university now lives in Seattle. So yes, let's both go and let's go there at the same time.

So the flights are booked and we'll be arriving on the 22nd :) Treat him gently eh guys?

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How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook

If the name Susan Tomlinson is familiar to you, it might be because you read her great blog, The Bike Garden. Susan arranged for me to have a review copy of her fab book last year and I'm feeling a little guilty it's taken me so long to write my review.

I wish I'd had a copy of this a few years back when I started my Designing with Plants course with KLC. The course requires quite a bit of drawing, particularly for the 50 plant profiles element, showing how each chosen plant plus 3 selected companions fit together. I bought a couple of botanical illustration books at the time as I haven't done much in the way of artwork since I was 14, but found them to be way above the level I needed and gave up the course soon after.

Whilst Susan's book is aimed at nature journaling, the guidance within is equally suited to someone wanting to keep a visual diary of their garden, garden visits, wildflowers or whatever takes a gardener's fancy. We all take many photos to accompany our blog posts, but there's something about sitting down with a notebook, a pencil and either paint or crayons (or even those wonderful watercolour crayons) which really helps you to see.

Susan has plenty of sound advice on the kind of kit to put together and I've found it useful to have added a hand lens to my bag, so I can really look at plant details. There then follows a chapter on basic drawing skills, which looks at the shapes found in nature, putting these together, then adding shade, tone and colour to the drawing.

I was familiar with these principles from my previous purchases, but what elevates this book above those is that Susan then shows how these basic skills are actually applied in the field notebook context. This is much better for quickly gaining an impression of a place or a plant than a polished botanical drawing achieves. For anyone who still aspires to botanical artistry, this is also a useful step to master and is missing from the books I have in my collection. It's also much more achievable!

I also like the many step-by-step practical exercises Susan has devised for the reader to gain confidence and the many real examples shown from her students' field notebooks. Some of these also show Susan's comments to her students, so it feels like she's there guiding you through the whole process.

All in all this book has a much more practical and achievable feel to it, than the others I've tried. I've even used the skills I've acquired during some of the talks I've attended (such as Nigel Dunnett's Rain Gardens course recently) to quickly sketch a slide or photograph shown. However, I'm keeping my notebook to myself for a little while longer - I still need to practice a bit more ;)

How to Keep a Naturalist's Notebook has 'translated' well to this side of the pond and I'm pleased to see it's now available here in the UK ;)

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Garden Bloggers Under the Microscope

Here's some evidence that garden bloggers are being taken very seriously by the garden industry these days in the shape of the 68 page Global Garden Report, a study commissioned by Husqvarna and Gardena. These are two of our major garden tools and sundries providers, whose range of products is substantial.

Mr BrownThumb had a look at this report over at GardenBloggers.com a few days ago, which prompted me to go and see for myself. Over 1.4 million blog posts from 2009 were analysed from garden bloggers in 13 countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, UK and USA.

Naturally a lot of automation was used to analyse that many posts (plus internet searches), but a manual analysis of blogs and forums, plus a questionnaire were also used to compile the results. In general they found garden bloggers to be non-competitive, who strive for personal fulfilment through the creation of their own personal 'Eden'.

Each gardener has their own vision of what this 'Eden' might be, divided into 10 main types:

1. Kitchen Gardening
2. The Organic Garden
3. The Feel-Good Garden
4. The Designed and Artistic Garden
5. Re-Creating Wilderness
6. The Social Garden
7. Urban Farming
8. The Lush Garden
9. Container Gardening
10. Greenhouse Gardening

Each country had its own favourite categories: in the UK these were Kitchen Gardening, The Feel-Good Garden ('a soothing experience') and the Designed and Artistic Garden (self expression through style and 'making the garden into a personal piece of art').

I struggled with the latter category: there's quite a few UK garden designers who blog and I wondered if this might have skewed the analysis, and I felt the very similar Lush Garden category ('planned, designed, well-organised' and 'requires a lot of work') might fit us a bit better.

There were general observations about us not saying that much about the tools we use. I can understand this: tools are part of the work side of gardening which don't get bought or replaced that often, plus if we're focusing more on the end result in the form our own personal Eden takes, the humble spade or trowel we use isn't really going to get much of a look in.

Lawns aren't discussed much either: but then according to the report the core group of bloggers in the UK is middle-aged women and if I and my (non-blogging) friends are anything to go by we're not usually the person looking after the lawn anyway.

As we don't talk tools or lawns, it's going to be a harder job for Husqvarna and Gardena to use this information to bring us the products we want. However, I'm sure they'll work hard to interpret what's needed for each of the 10 categories and which ones are best suited for marketing in each of the 13 countries.

I have some reservations about how the study has been conducted, particularly as there's an implied assumption the garden blogging community is a (albeit very large) representative sample of all gardeners. It's also interesting to see that we're perceived as the garden trend setters or 'shapers': we talk about issues, techniques, styles and products well ahead of what books and magazines have to say.

I wonder how all of this will translate into what we find at our local garden centres over the next year or so.

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