The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Breathe a bit of life into ‘green lungs’
Municipal Parks and open spaces which enhance our towns and cities have long been described as green lungs! In times past, the intensely industrial areas where factories belched out noxious fumes, and the houses were heated with coal fires, the atmosphere, aided by our climate, became quite unhealthy. Do you remember smog? The smelly factories have all but disappeared, meantime human populations have grown and vehicle fumes have taken the place of the industrial pollution. We read stories of busy streets in some towns being polluted with levels of fumes that are dangerous to human health. So, we still need these green lungs as much as ever!
The sad fact is, however, they have become a soft target for money-saving councils and in some reported instances where authorities are finding it difficult to look after them, indeed, there are grave rumours that some will be used for building purposes! One alternative is to maintain the open spaces but seriously reduce the maintenance levels. Stop cutting the grass, create wild flower meadows and just think of the benefits to the wildlife. Haud on a minute, the open spaces are maintained in the first place for the health benefits of the human population! Get the balance right and the wildlife will flourish too.
That little rant brings me to the subject of Wild Flower meadows. A number of plant scientists have successfully developed techniques for creating such environments, Nigel Dunnet and James Hitchmough at Sheffield University immediately come to mind. Magazines and newspapers have taken to illustrating this idyllic style. Time is devoted to the subject on television programmes. All of them will illustrate idealistic wild flower meadows BUT what about the failures? Don’t get me wrong, when they get it right these schemes really are stunning in the right setting, but they are quite difficult to manage and when they do go wrong they can be very unattractive.
By all means reduce the wide open areas (slightly) but leave plenty of empty spaces just covered in grass for picnicking and for children to run around on these green acres, play ball, fly kites etc. I suggest that great swathes of metre high foliage becomes inaccessible for youngsters, unattractive in wet conditions and even dangerous in our present society.
Apologies, I just had to get that off my chest!
Scaling down this rather negative theme to our own properties, we hear of front gardens being converted in to car park spaces, which can be rented out. No green lung philosophy there then! All of which elevates the importance of these patches of lawn which many of us still cherish. A little bit of the space devoted to naturalised spring bulb flowers is acceptable in my book but I have to say a good lawn, well maintained in itself sets off the areas of foliage and flower, in island borders set in the lawn and surrounding it. I have at times compared it with the dining table set for a family meal. You wouldn’t lay out a dirty table cloth for the occasion, would you?
As friends and colleagues know, I wraxed my back a month ago and with the aid of painkillers I await the muscles returning to normal. I did manage to mow the lawn but I needed help in the shape of daughter Jennifer to clip and pook the edges. In other words after clipping the edge, the grass has to be picked up and any grass growing out of the side has to be pooked (plucked out) to attain a definitive, clean cut and attractive finish. It isn’t quite like the table cloth yet, I’m still battling the moss!
From time to time in the Beechgrove postbag we are asked questions about house plants and as I have commented before, this type of gardening has dropped off somewhat in recent years. That said, there are signs that some of the more common species are coming back in to favour and so my colleague Carole Baxter will be featuring a few of them after a trip round some of the multiples to see just what is available.
One of the stars of our porch display at the moment is the Easter Cactus (loosely speaking) which I knew years ago as Zygocactus but it has another name nowadays – let me just call it a White Easter Cactus called ‘Sirius’. It is very easy to look after and thrives in its east facing environment – see for yourself . . .