Well, my prediction that climate change was bubbling under nicely while we suffered the nonsense of a Covi- driven government has turned out even more extreme than expected. As Covid started to fade from the front pages climate change leapt into the gap with announcements of doom and calamity at a rate even the virus pronouncements would have been proud of.
So we have gone from millions dying from the virus to billions dying from climate change. This, remember, is the area of predictions that makes Professor Ferguson’s models seem almost believable, not a single prediction in the last sixty plus years has come to fruition.
The problem the climate change advocates have is showing how much man has contributed to any changes in the atmosphere. Merely saying it is so doesn’t cut the mustard, see the increase in CO2 emissions as an example:
“Over the last 250 years, the CO2 level in the atmosphere has risen from 280 to 411 ppm. It sounds like a big increase, but ppm stands for parts per million. In two and a half centuries, the amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere has thus risen 0.00013%”
I find it hard to accept this amount is really having an effect in the way it is promoted.
From the Daily Telegraph, 17 August:
“Billions of pounds of householders' money is to be funnelled into hydrogen production as Britain battles to create a market in the clean-burning gas.
Manufacturers are in line to be guaranteed a price for their hydrogen by the Government so they do not have to sell to consumers at a loss, under plans unveiled in consultation papers on Tuesday.
The subsidy is expected to be funded through either higher bills or with money from the public purse.”
James Max on TalkRadio, 10-Aug-21
Solar panels instead of coal:
Coal mine owner sounds alarm on Biden's latest 'devastating' policy
All of this is relentlessly being exploited and the MSN is more and more buying into the ‘settled science’ as with Covid; when the truth of the enormous scam being imposed on the population by government and the small but powerful lobby groups is exposed, it will be too late. Covid and the way it has been handled was untouchable when it came to debate, yet now we are in serious debt and the virus is no longer any more of a threat than any other of a myriad of diseases. The chinks in the argument are beginning to appear; for the first time that I can remember the BBC have actually questioned the need for teens to be jabbed - three months ago that would have been seen as heresy.
This piece is not about the whys and wherefores of Climate Change, you can fill pages every week with the latest information and rebuttals; this is about the ongoing hypocrisy of governments and individuals in positions of power and influence. The internet if nothing else shows them for what they are, charlatans of the first degree. Some are so brazen as to make us wonder why they bother to try and cover up their duplicity at all; maybe actually they don’t, as there are never any consequences for what they do.
One of those little tit-bits came to light last week when our waste of space Mayor of London whose little (or not so little) fiefdom grows like Topsy and who advocates banning anything on wheels powered by an internal combustion engine, was seen taking his dog for a walk four miles from his home and using a motorcade to get there.
He recently said this…
‘time is running out to stop a climate catastrophe – and London’s road to recovery from the pandemic cannot be clogged by cars’
This despite living within walking distance of Tooting Common!
A little known fact was revealed when the Speaker in the US Senate, one Nancy Pelosi was found to be commandeering a jet to take her home at weekends; naturally as with all such cases, they refuse to discuss these aberrations in this world of climate change measures, or wave the matter off on a technicality.
As with all these things it depends on the source as to how much or how little abuse there has been in her flight arrangements; either way it is not exactly running to a 'net zero' script.
John Kerry, that well known advocate of all things green and sanctimonious saviour of the planet, has a lot of baggage to answer for, but he doesn’t and never has; only the little people have to knuckle down to having their travel curtailed or remodelled to suit the current agenda.
Kerry, who attends climate conferences and spouts his learned thought on eco matters world-wide, has a very dubious background for one so eco-minded.
Naturally the defence for Kerry is that his wife, a member of the Heinz family, owns many of the vehicles etc., but as he uses them all he is still a hypocrite of the first degree and anyway if he believed in all he spouts he would have convinced his wife to ditch all the extra assets.
They are all the same; you either believe in all the guff you spout and act accordingly or you are a hypocrite; none of them suit their actions to their words.
Caroline Lucas leader of the Greens has compared those that fly to a holiday destination, as comparable to knife wielding criminals, yet of course when questioned on her flights to see family in the States, that is apart from other flights for conferences of dubious value, she back-tracks and claims we are not the problem but big corporations are!
She also hit out at ‘binge flying’ and people who have second homes abroad. LOL! She and her husband own five homes, two in Brussels which I am sure she does not cycle to.
Extinction Rebellion's co-founder Gail Bradbrook is another who preaches one thing and does the opposite. She drives a diesel car; when called out she said she could not afford an electric car - nor can most people but the irony would pass her by. She also claims an 11,000 mile trip for a holiday she took (obviously she can obviously afford that!) was for medical reasons; of course it was.
There are several ER activists who qualify for the top rung of hypocrisy. There's no better example of these middle class lefties who believe all they say is only for the little people and not themselves than Jem Bendell. His Tweet here tells it all, none of them can have any conscience about what they say:
Lewis Hamilton who seems to have lost the plot on many fronts is going vegan to save the planet. It is difficult not to laugh at someone who drives F1 cars for a living, has a private jet, numerous expensive gas-guzzling sports cars and flies all over the world to race.
He claims he will use electric vehicles to go to and from the airport and for personal transport from now on. All that was rather blown away as just a publicity stunt for Mercedes Benz who like all manufacturers are being forced to produce EV vehicles in the near future.
Going vegan and trying to convince everyone else to do the same to save the planet doesn’t really cut the mustard, does it?
There is a whole list of eco-luvvies who want everyone else to give up flying, driving, home-owning, farting, eating meat etc., who never abide by their utterings, e.g. Emma Thompson seen flying across the Atlantic to attend an ER rally. When approached she claimed, ‘It’s very difficult to do my job without occasionally flying.’ True but then that applies to millions of people; naturally though, that is different.
Prince Harry - yes, he is still a prince - attended a Google sponsored eco event held every year on the island of Sicily. Naturally he flew by private jet and helicopter to attend along with a total of 114 other private jets owned or hired by the likes of similarly-minded 'save the planet' advocates such as Leo DiCaprio, another total hypocrite. Harry delivered his speech barefoot; not sure how that affects global warming, but hey, each to his own. This was a true gathering of the believers in restrictions for everyone else but themselves, though I doubt bubble dwellers like that ever see it that way.
There has been much said also about the need to reduce population expansion worldwide as the ever burgeoning population needs ever increasing resources and the only way is to reduce those numbers by birth control restrictions. Our own Boris Johnson is a keen climate change advocate as is his latest partner, but the one thing you don’t hear from Bojo is anything about population control which is hardly surprising with at least seven kids accounted for.
Chris Boardman is, having been a racing cyclist albeit in another era, one of those great sportsmen that broke through when we won very little in the sport, certainly one of the greatest pursuit riders ever. He has been very successful off the bike and is outspoken in his belief that we should all use bikes if we can. He claims to have given up ICE cars and has a small EV and encourages his offspring to ride bikes as well as his wife; all very admirable and nothing wrong with that as far as it goes.
But when he talks about the emissions of cars and their impact on the planet in the way they are built he conveniently forgets about his carbon fibre bikes which are not recyclable, and when he does his TDF commentaries does he cycle to France and then to all the start and finish points? Somehow I doubt it. He claims not to be an evangelical over CC but will not hear anything to the contrary, which is typical of this viewpoint; and oh, he has six kids, which rather dampens his credentials. As with them all, you cannot be on both sides of the fence when you take such a rigid stance on the matter. In fairness to him, unlike many others he comes across well with his viewpoint despite the flaws.
One of the flaws being that cycling can be dangerous on today's roads. Well yes, but turning the roads over to cyclists won't change anything as they don’t pay any fuel tax or anything towards road upkeep so everyone would be loaded with extra taxes to take up the slack. His claim that car users are subsidised is totally disingenuous; and how would his bikes be delivered to his outlets? Ah, he has sold that business and now is a millionaire so problems with transport is now something again for the little people; and if you are old or infirm or both.. tough!
Stephen Fry announced his support for ER a couple of weeks back. This video is quite cringe-making, but much of what Fry says about a lot of things is cringe-making. Naturally he's fully on board with the CC agenda, and has no doubts as to our part in all this and the little people will be persuaded. Oh, Stephen has homes here and in Los Angeles, and to my knowledge he doesn’t ride a bike! So he must fly... sold your LA property yet, Stephen?
Chris Packham (for it is he, one of the most sanctimonious of the green movement and a perfect fit for the BBC) promotes ER and said this:
“need to act fast to prevent climate change causing irreversible damage”.
This same Mr Packham promotes and accompanies long haul holidays to places like Botswana, Peru, Papua New Guinea and the Falkland Islands; all out of range for cyclists I believe. To the company he promotes he is a ‘Travel Hero’; I would love to know how he explains this all away. I am sure he has a perfectly valid excuse lined up.
Harrison Ford: what can one say about someone who makes a Biden-like speech on saving rain forests and needs umpteen prompt cards to do it; an actor who cannot remember his lines. Don’t ever forget Ford is passionate about flying and owns numerous planes cars and motor cycles, and very nice too, but not exactly bankable when talking about what we must all do to save the planet; the hypocrisy runs deep with these people. His Bidenesque speech here:
Paul McCartney: some years ago he had a Lexus delivered, and when he found out that the hybrid limousine was delivered by air freight he was said to be ‘horrified’ as the emissions for that delivery were the equivalent of driving the car six times round the world. Paul, who is known for not splashing the cash was questioned as to why he would need such a big vehicle in the first place but it appears it was a gift from Lexus who also sponsored his world tour at the time; horrified, indeed!
He also owns so many houses I could not pin it down to a number; they are described here. Again if I had his money and wanted to escape taxes I would do the same, but with that sort of footprint I would not be ‘horrified’ about having a car delivered by air; visiting all those properties in the States must be more horrific on the carbon-emission scale.
Richard Branson has always been a hypocrite from the days when he said failing airlines should be allowed to collapse and then accepted a bail-out for his own airline.
But the brass neck of a man who slams Australia for using coal to produce energy while he flies to his island home, and owns an airline whilst launching a cruise ship line at the same time! It really takes the biscuit. Plus his space adventures use God knows how much fuel for what is just a bucket list item in his vainglorious life.
There are of course many others who qualify as hypocrites, including many politicians who are used to being two-faced about almost anything. Barack Obama is up there with the best but it would be unfair to single him out; or would it?
To finish, my favourite - or at least equal first because of her status on all things climate-related - is the doom goblin herself, Greta Thunberg. Her publicity-seeking jaunt across the Atlantic in a yacht to attend a climate conference really was in a class of its own, when it was discovered a crew had flown over to take the yacht back to Europe. She continued her journey to South America by train to prove how right on with it all she was but then to get home had to sneak onto an airliner, which in any sane person's mind defeated the whole point of the trip. It still ranks as one of the greatest acts of hypocrisy in the eco movement ever to be enacted.
Amazingly at the time the press and politicians were so enthralled with what they heard her say that it was hardly reported at the time, proving a good story should remain just that regardless of the truth; so they were all hypocrites too, which makes this still my number one act of eco lunacy.
Greta also managed to slip on a rather large banana skin, for at the same time that she tweeted this...
... she appeared on the cover of Vogue wearing high fashion.* As with so much today, you could not make it up:
"I contacted Vogue Scandinavia’s press office for more information, asking who made the clothes, and all that was shared was that ‘a Swedish and a Danish designer’ were involved. .."
More 'Americana', this time from The Staple Singers featuring Mavis Staples, the best soul/gospel singer since Mahalia Jackson.
"The Staple Singers’ place in music history was set in stone more than 40 years ago with two of soul’s greatest singles, “Respect Yourself” and the even more powerful, “I’ll Take You There.”But the family group – patriarch Roebuck “Pops” Staples, lead singer Mavis and siblings Pervis, Cleotha and Yvonne - had been, by then, a major force in American music, culture and politics for more than a decade. Their downhome Mississippi-rooted gospel helped put the cross in “crossover,” taking the group from success in the sacred field to headlining status at the Newport Folk Festival and a frontline position in the battle for civil rights alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King. Their rural roots even caught the ear of Roebuck’s fellow Mississippian, the self-styled King of Hillbilly Rock, Marty Stuart, who performed and recorded with the Staples and who, along with GRAMMY-winning producer/guitarists T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller, helps keep the Pops Staples guitar sound alive today as one of the keystones of Americana."
"Uncloudy Day" was an early influence on Bob Dylan, who said of it in 2015, "It was the most mysterious thing I'd ever heard... I'd think about them even at my school desk...Mavis looked to be about the same age as me in her picture (on the cover of "Uncloudy Day")...Her singing just knocked me out...And Mavis was a great singer—deep and mysterious. And even at the young age, I felt that life itself was a mystery."
29 August: Six people in an aerial tramway car in the Alps fall to their deaths when a jet fighter accidentally strikes and severs the cable. 81 other tourists are stranded for hours until rescued.
30 August: racial segregation in schools in Atlanta, Georgia ends with the admission of nine African-American to four formerly all-white Atlanta high schools.
31 August: amid rising tensions between the West and the USSR during the Berlin crisis, the Soviet Union announces the end of a three-year worldwide moratorium on nuclear testing, and begins by detonating an atom bomb the next day - a 16-kiloton airburst over Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
There are three different levels
or arenas of freedom. Much of the heat in a debate arises from shifting the ground
of argument.
1. Collective freedom
A group of people having some
common identity feels oppressed by or insufficiently involved in the power
structures that govern it, e.g. national sovereignty vs the EU, the suffragette
movement, the abolition of slavery. Sometimes, as in the last two examples,
there is significant support from outsiders in their struggle. This debate is generally about
fairness. Factually, it will be argued that this group suffers more, or
benefits less, than another, in terms of personal income and wealth, longevity,
health etc. Morally, it will be said that the others enjoy unearned privilege
because of luck, or by seizing and maintaining it with the exercise of power
and influence A counter-argument is that the
privileged compensate for the differential by protecting and succouring their
inferiors (e.g. treating servants kindly, providing for them in sickness or
age, educating their children, giving to charity, leaving bequests in wills,
administering justice in peacetime, leading in time of war). Another
compensation is to accept additional restraints on their personal conduct, or
voluntarily to risk misfortune, suffering and death in war, exploration etc. In
some cases, there is an appeal to false identification: the privileged allow
the less fortunate to live through them in imagination. The riposte is that the difference
is never quite paid for in full. Should the oppressed group (or its
leaders) win, it tends to consolidate its position by limiting the freedom of communication
and action of its opponents. 2. Individual freedom Some individuals may want more personal
licence (e.g. completely free speech, easy divorce, casual sex, illicit drugs.) The attempted justification here
is that the desired additional liberties are relatively harmless. Opponents will refer to the physical,
emotional and financial effects on others: family, neighbours, the public at
large, and various community expenses. There are also potential negative consequences
for their children’s development and future lives. Some will wonder whether society should
bother trying to do more than prevent or mitigate immediate and significant harm
to third parties. Is it worth the expense of police, courts, social workers,
rehab etc? Let the libertine destroy himself. Others may appeal to social or
religious norms, saying that the individual must accept certain behavioural
restrictions for the sake of societal cohesion. Stress will be laid on setting
a good personal example, or not setting a bad one (this has implications for e.g.
teachers, entertainers and sportspeople.) Certain behaviours are felt to have provocative
potential or the power to lead others astray, and so measures are instituted to
limit them (e.g. sumptuary laws, rules on what may be said and done in public -
or even in private.) The individualist may dispute the
facts, and also maintain that others must take sole responsibility for their
own responses. Norms will be represented as arbitrary and unnecessary for human
happiness; it will be claimed that society will hold together without them. To set oneself against others is
to make oneself vulnerable, so the individualist will attempt to form (often
uneasy) alliances, and so raise the debate or struggle to the level of a
collective-freedom issue. Alternatively, the individualist
may simply scorn society's permission. Firstly, changing its rules is an
uncertain and long-term project; secondly, to ask permission is to cede one's
personal power to others. At the extreme, a sociopath may
turn his dislike of others' power over him, into a mission to get power over
others; Mao, Stalin etc. On a lesser scale, we get what is said to be the
statistical over-representation of psychopaths in senior positions in politics
and business. 3. Psychological (or spiritual)
freedom This is about conflict within the
individual. Our desires are often contradictory; and sometimes there are demons
hiding in one's background. Many of us are a mass of scores trying to be
settled; patterns/scripts trying to complete themselves whatever the cost to ourselves
or others; the expectations of family, friends or society; or aspirations to a
kind of secular redemption, ideal life-moments that end the story with credits
and closing music. On the other hand, the fractured
individual is afraid to be healed. Change is a kind of death; identity trumps our
happiness. Who is this ‘I’ and why does it
want this thing? If the ‘I’ is enigmatic, self-contradictory, untrustworthy and
potentially destructive to self and others, by what shall we regulate our
lives? So we could get to another
contradiction: voluntary submission of the will. Prisoners used to tell ‘Theodore
Dalrymple’ that they preferred being ‘inside’, where they didn't have to make
decisions. To whom, or what, must we surrender? Round and round we go, like the
worm Ouroboros; but surely, here is where we begin.
The Government sets an annual inflation target of 2%,
meaning that £10,000-worth of goods and services today is planned to cost £200
more in a year’s time. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/
Our Halifax savings account pays interest
at 0.01%, so that a £10,000 deposit for the same period will earn one single
pound. The intentional debasement of the currency should be seen for what it
is: a royal assault on personal wealth.
Private property is the foundation of liberty and a defence
against tyrants such as King John. Needing additional money to prosecute his
wars, John levied taxes at will, fined and seized the estates of nobles who he
alleged had transgressed, and forced women to marry his cronies to get hold of
their dowries; Magna Carta aimed to correct these abuses and set up the Great
Council that would become known as Parliament. https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/british-parliament
To this day, all law, directly or indirectly, still flows from the monarch’s
will and assent but now the ruler, instead of simply grabbing our cash, must ask
nicely for it via our representatives.
Except there is a way round: rob the whole country by corrupting
the means of exchange.
That is something that even King John did not do, but in
1544 Henry VIII started to issue coinage with a lower content of precious
metals; by 1551 under Edward VI the silver in a penny, at a time when labourers
were paid pennies, had fallen by 83% (this was reversed by Elizabeth I in 1560.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230118249_4
Inflation continued anyway, at least partly because of the ongoing influx of
gold and silver from the New World treasure fleets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution
)
Even so, inflation was accidental rather than deliberate;
and in general, slow. For the three centuries from 1209 up to the accession of
Henry VIII, the BoE estimates that the average rate of inflation was only 0.1%
per year; for the next four centuries to 1909, 0.6% p.a. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator
The high inflation we regard as normal is really a twentieth
century phenomenon, and as in the earlier instances given they can be related
to war, not only the two World Wars but the 1970s oil price shock in the context
of the West’s involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Between 1914 and 2014
£100 would need to have grown to £10,306 to maintain its value.
‘… if
inflation is too low, or negative, then some people may put off spending
because they expect prices to fall. Although lower prices sounds like a good
thing, if everybody reduced their spending then companies could fail and people
might lose their jobs.’
That is all very well, but if the current situation of 2%
inflation and 0.01% savings interest continues indefinitely, then over the
average Briton’s lifetime a bank deposit of £10,000 will shrivel to c. £2,000
in real terms. Somebody is getting the benefit, and it’s not us, though we can
see some who are – ‘Private Eye’ reported this week (issue 1554, p.7) that
hundreds of bankers at HSBC ‘will trouser seven-figure sums’ in bonuses, thanks
to Chancellor Rishi’s pandemic lending boost.
It is not reasonable to force ordinary citizens to become speculators
in order to preserve the value of their savings. Enron shares, rogues like Bernie
Madoff and the halving of the FTSE – twice – since the year 2000 give us ample
reasons to be cautious. Some American financial commentators I read think the stock
markets are once again wildly overvalued.
There was a time when governments thought it their duty to
protect the consumer. International economies are more interlinked these days
but even so, in the midst of the OPEC oil shock Parliament noted the destruction
of retirees’ nest-eggs by inflation, and in 1975 the Government introduced
NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificates for them, later extending their
availability to others.
Paper money is backed by nothing, most money is in the form
of electrons, and the State can invent as much of it as it likes, so in a sense
it doesn’t need to listen to the people any more. What price our liberty?
My house move has created a problem, not in the first rank of
things in this mad world, but for my own satisfaction and pleasure.
For many being involved in something that is their work means
they have no time for it at home - ‘coals to Newcastle’ is the phrase that comes
to mind; yet despite spending most of my working life in horticulture I have
always derived a lot of pleasure from my own patch. My very first garden was
attached to a typical prewar end of terrace house with a runway of a garden, in
the region of 170 ft long but very narrow; this was before I embarked into
horticulture but I immediately wanted to make something of it.
Looking back the idea was right: dividing into separate
‘rooms’ as is the trend today; but my execution was poor. Nonetheless it was
good training, not just in layout and design but in what plants grow and where. The failures taught me a lot and there were a lot of them.
The one thing that nearly always disappointed was moving so
often. It meant that in many cases gardens started never reached fruition; only
two actually reached what could be called any form of maturity. It is this
factor that is the problem for me now: time is running out.
We have been fortunate. During our life together we have had
gardens ranging in size from bugger-all upwards - this was a house we intended to stay
in a couple of years but because of the ‘89 crash we were held captive for six
years. That one I made into something one could use and enjoy but on a budget
because of the intent to move on.
Others have ranged from a quarter of an acre up to two and a
half acres. In fact I have had three over an acre in size, and my last house
had an acre of garden, I have enjoyed most of them but as I said most were
never completed or never matured.
Gardens are by their nature transient things. That living
breathing patch into which you have poured so much time and effort in an attempt to
create something in your mind, becomes nothing the day you leave it behind. I
have only seen two after the moving on when visiting old neighbours. The first
time this happened when living in Suffolk was returning to a garden I created
from scratch containing many rare collected over time shrubs trees and
perennials, and though I would have made changes if we had stayed I was quite
pleased with what I left behind.
When I visited, my old neighbour said, ‘Don’t look over the
fence’ and I had had no intention of doing so as once before what I saw made
one cry with anguish at what had been done to all that I had poured so much
time and effort into; but curiosity got the better of me and I did look, to be
greeted with such a sorry sight as to make one weep.
Of course the day you sell a house you give up any rights to
how the house and garden are looked after or not, it has nothing to do with you
any more. Your taste, your use of interior and exterior, your vision that you create for yourself is not going
to be that of someone else, whatever gushing phrases they may use when viewing. Hence the 'moment in time' aspect for gardens in particular, is they are created
and tended by man, and when that stops revert back to nature. Gardens are our
vision of how we want to see nature presented and much of what we put in them
is also a version of our creative mind not a true reflection of nature; even
the great ‘natural’ landscaped gardens of Capability Brown and others were a
man-made version of nature.
We are simply playing with the land around us and the plants
that are available, most of which are not native in the first place.
This move though is hopefully the end of the line; at our age
and with our moving horrors (see previous post) I don’t think we could
entertain another move at our age unless it was painless and it never has been.
So here we are with around a third of an acre, fields to the
back (for how long, one wonders), and a wood to one side; so private, and it gives
the impression of being bigger because of the empty field at the rear.
In the past it was well tended and the original owners had
planted quite a lot of desirable shrubs and trees. Unfortunately all had grown
into one another and the first task was to remove some of the overgrown
planting and decide what was to remain. Over twenty dumper loads have been
removed so far and there is more to come; some of the choicer plantings had
been so encroached on by their neighbours they had been ruined and had to come
out; others, a few, were salvageable.
None of this was easy for me, not because of my advancing
years but because of my impending hip replacement - which I have now had - so
almost everything came to a halt in the run up to the op and now during
recovery, but at least I am presented with that blank, or almost blank, canvas
to work on.
And now the real problems arise: what sort of garden do I
want, what sort can I manage now and primarily, will I ever see the fruits of my
efforts?
And there lies the rub: mortality. We have no
idea when the plug will be pulled on our life on earth. The only way to handle
that side of things is to carry on as normal, otherwise we might as well sit
there and await the Grim Reaper's entrance.
So the old drawing tools have been dug out and a start made. I don't need to make a detailed graph paper layout for this, it is really about
ideas being put on paper and then sifting through to find the best result.
Spring.
At heart I have always been a plants man. Plants have always
been the most important element in any garden of my own. For my own gardens I
have always looked at the plot, analysed the soils and site and then made a list
of suitable plants I want to see there. Only after that have I drawn design
plans to incorporate those plants; arse upwards to anything I have done
commercially but it was for me and the planting comes first.
The fruits of one's endeavours.
I have already drawn up a list of plants I need and
immediately hit a problem: although I retired only ten years ago the sources I
used for plants have changed dramatically. So many specialist nurseries have
either sold up and gone or been bought out and incorporated into bigger
enterprises or even turned into garden centres; in fifty years it has gone full
circle.
When I started out there were very few nurseries supplying
the rarer plants and shrubs. Hilliers in Winchester were the most famous and
even they had a waiting list for the more desirable items; Waterers were the go-to for rhododendrons, as were Sunningdale nurseries; and there were a few
scattered nurseries specialising in certain genus such as Kelways with peonies,
a rare old company still going strong.
There were also numerous well-known rose growers. In the Eighties a change happened: the boom years saw a demand for the exotic and, new
for this country, the mature plant. On the Continent mature shrub and tree
planting for municipal and private use was well established, but here there was virtually
nothing; now you saw nurseries starting up supplying mainly imported items in
almost any size your bank balance could stand.
Alongside this the likes of Beth Chatto and her ‘unusual’
plant nursery made a huge impact at the Chelsea flower show and many other
similar outfits started to appear. With a certain amount of diligence you could
purchase almost anything in any size.
Unfortunately/fortunately depending on your viewpoint, the
garden centre was also in its infancy and beginning to make inroads on
traditional plant-only nurseries. They became and still are extremely popular
and for those traditional nurseries that changed to the garden centre format it
was a way to increase profits and spread sales over the year rather than condensing sales into a few months as previously; the addition of the cafe made further profits year round more likely and they started to take over as
the go-to place, not just for plants but for so much else; now they even do
functions, the change has been enormous.
The garden centres became bigger and started to buy up
established nurseries and those famous names became just fronts for more garden
centres, so the net result was as today: we are back, certainly with trees and
shrubs, to those few specialists still surviving; with perennials the story is
not so bleak but making a living out of perennials is not as easy as trees and
shrubs or indeed a garden centre selling outdoor furniture and everything else
connected to the garden.
So yes, my search for certain shrubs in particular was a bit
blunted, but with a bit of patience, not something I am noted for, we are
getting there.
In some ways the enforced delay to proceedings is a good
thing: certain aspects of the plan didn’t really gel and changes have been made
before a spade has gone in the ground. It’s also given me time to source
planting material, so easy to get in the past but now disappearing as the anti-peat lobby gets its way and the companies such as nurseries that supply this material get gobbled up by conglomerates, leaving little choice.
A place to relax.
A shady corner.
I would love to incorporate a greenhouse in the garden
layout. I have grown a lot from seed in recent years besides the usual fruit
and veg, but growing from seed takes time and I have to ask myself again have I
got that time and of course I have no idea, so we will put the greenhouse, much
missed, on the back burner for now.
All of this is interwoven with getting the new house the way
we want it, and obviously that takes priority, but we have made good progress
in that area and only a couple of items of consequence remain. As with the garden,
getting workmen at this time is notoriously difficult with some trades because
of the housing boom, carpenters and brickies are exceptionally difficult to
find. The latter is needed for the water feature I have in mind; as it is
central to my overall plan I am going to have to keep phoning, asking and trying and pull in a favour or two; I can never remember it being this bad, a couple
of years back most of it I could have done myself but not any more.
One thing's for sure, I have never not had a garden to which I
have not been the major contributor. As with so many who are fortunate to
have a plot to play with in whatever size, I get great pleasure from it; it is a
wonderful escape from the lunatic world we live in today, and whether I
actually see this one through to conclusion is in reality immaterial, just
doing it is part of the satisfaction.