I went off on my usual walk with the dogs this morning and, as I always do, I ran my eye up and down the Field Maple trees I had lifted from the woods a year ago.

Temperatures had been higher recently so I was keen to see if the buds were swelling.

To my horror and irritation, sometime during the night, a deer had used two of the trees to rub its antlers on; one small tree had been completely ring-barked while another - one of the largest - had been stripped from approximately two three quarters of its girth.

I had only recently gloated that deer, whilst we see them often, had not been a problem to us - I'll keep my mouth shut in future.

I had hoped to keep the view down the track as simple and natural as possible but I had little choice but to go to the garden centre this afternoon and buy some nylon meshed wraps to protect the tree trunks - it made it worse that they only had black and no green.

All trees are now protected right up to the crown - I just hope the deer don't start chewing the branches instead.

Interesting .PDF: Forestry Commission - managing deer in the countryside

The images were taken in fading light - click on each image to see greater detail.

I always dread making snowballs because my hands freeze after a couple...gloves don't make it easy either.

Look at this this clever little snow ball maker a bit like an ice cream scoop to make the job a little easier - and faster.

The Open Spaces Society has partnered with TruGreen Professional Lawn Care and the Sunday Telegraph to find Britain’s “Liveliest Village Green”.

What a great idea - it's about time kids of today learnt about physical social interaction face-to-face: we should promote these open spaces more.

Deadline for entries is 7 March 2010 and the overall winner will be announced in the Sunday Telegraph on 18 April 2010.

The ban focusses on the lawn and turf uses of combined fertiliser-pesticide products - the areas of grass that have been defined are:

• Lawn turf planted in or around residences, as well as public and commercial buildings including schools and cemeteries


• Sports and recreational turf such as turf in parks, playgrounds, golf courses, zoos, botanical gardens and athletic playing fields

Collectively, these are known as fine turf - maintained by either home owners or by professional lawn care practitioners.

The ban does not include agricultural uses of fertiliser-pesticide combination products - for example, commercial turf companies producing turf for domestic or commercial use.

Interestingly, the decision doesn't seem to have been brought about by any perceived dangers concerning the active ingredients, but more about horticultural 'best practices'.

Combination products have been purchased for their convenience and ease of use as a two-in-one product to address separate lawn maintenance issues (for example, nutrient deficiency and various pest infestations) with a single application. However, these products are unsuitable as a delivery mechanism because they support broadcast application of the pesticide when this might not be warranted.

Ultimately, fertilizer and pesticide applications should be based on need. Fertilizer should only be used if the turf will benefit from additional nutrients, and pesticide should only be used as a broadcast treatment if the pest densities are sufficiently high across the area to be treated. Targeted, well-timed liquid formulations of pesticides minimize pesticide use on the lawn and turf sites.

Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency has set the last date of sale as 31st December 2012.

Comment: Would this ban be workable in the UK?

The product was launched at 'The Garden Press Event' on the 4th February....and I've got three of them to giveaway here on Landscape Juice.

To be in with a chance of winning one, all you have to do, it leave your name* and email address in the box below - it could not be simpler. (closes midnight 19th February 2010).

More on the Polanter system...

Polanter is a unique innovative vertical modular planting system for adding columns of colour to walls and fences around the garden.

Features and Benefits:

• Unique modular design – Allows flexibility of use.
• Easy to Install & Maintain – Adds Instant Colour.
• Integrated Watering System – Easy to Water, using minimum water.
• Connect to a water supply via integrated standard hose connector.
• Use all-year-round to provide colour for your garden.
• Plant summer or winter bedding, alpines, herbs, vegetables or salad etc.
• Suitable for any garden, patio or balcony area.
• Ideal for even the most novice of gardeners.
• UK manufactured product.
• Recyclable

Choice of eight colours: blue, bright green, pink, lavender, black, white, terracotta and dark green.

The Polanter system being given away is Kit 2.

Website: www.polanter.co.uk

*UK residence only

The warning comes following an outbreak in the Boskoop area of the Netherlands.

HTA Director of Business Development Tim Briercliffe said “Beetles of the Anoplophora family are a serious invasive pest and pose a real threat to the horticultural industry and the wider environment. They can infest a very wide range of broad-leaved trees.

There are no known outbreaks in the UK at present and it is vital that we keep the beetles out of the UK. The HTA urges any growers suspecting symptoms to report them to their Plant Health Inspector as soon as possible. Details of symptoms and the beetles can be found on the Food and Environment Agency website”.

“Emergency control measures have been imposed around the area in the Netherlands, including destruction orders and restrictions on movements of plants within 2km of the site, pending inspections on nurseries.”

Briercliffe continued “These measures, which are thought to be impacting on around 550 nurseries, will clearly have an impact on plant trade from the Netherlands over the coming weeks while Dutch inspectors inspect nurseries for signs of the beetles.”

Hozelock, Stewarts, Fiskars, Sankeys and Spear & Jackson had already thrown their hat in the ring.

It promises to be a pivotal year for garden exhibitions; Glee meets Garden Expo head-on as another industry newcomer, the Hard Landscaping Show, moves in to try and steal a march with their first exhibition, ahead of the others.

Clarion Events Garden Expo organiser Sarah Porter commented: "The commitment of these major suppliers sends out a strong message to the industry. This impressive array of industry stalwarts has, in itself, given a further boost to Garden Expo 2010 resulting in a surge in stand space bookings. Suppliers and manufacturers see this focused and clearly defined event as a fresh and viable option for the coming year.”

Garden Expo will also run in conjunction with the HTA’s inaugural National Plant Show, which will take place from the 29 - 30 June at Stoneleigh Park.

President of the HTA, Caroline Owen said, “We recognise the enormous significance of landscaping within the garden industry and this new appointment will help to strengthen the representation of the sector on the HTA Board. Mark is a highly respected and successful landscaper and I and my colleagues welcome him to the Board.”

The APL had come under criticism in recent months as land-based businesses became disenfranchised by the polarisation of the landscape industry.

I have to admit that I am little disappointed and I see this tie-up more of a backward or side-ways step.

It is my view that the APL should be a full-time, stand-alone organisation with a CEO, permanently working on members' behalf, there at every moment to answer queries and lend support to APL members, at any time during the working week.

There is not problem with partnerships but it could be perceived that the HTA acts more like a life support machine for the APL.

HTA: Press Release

The Gator Grabber will be retailed by Radius to the UK domestic consumer market - the original Grab-O-Saurus will continue to be sold in the UK as a trade/commercial product.

Those short-listed will be pitching for a place in the APL hall of fame.

Last years APL Supreme Winners were Dave Sewell and Tim Mawle of The Gardenmakers with a garden designed Sally Hopkinson.

The concept of a show might be good but it still bothers me that 'grow your own' is a passing fad for many that won't be around in such a big way next year.

Am I wrong here; are there enough 'real' vegetable gardeners to sustain this segment of the gardening market - perhaps all this grow your own is not just talk on blogs?

To my mind, if this self sufficiency format is a good one, then launching in a recession is exactly the right time as family strive to grow their own produce and reduce ourgoings.

Are exhibiting prices too high or maybe it's the sponsorship prices? £15,000 to sponsor the bar and catering?

The show is now scheduled to debut March 18-20, 2011 at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire.

Barbed wire and baseball bats might not seem obvious topics to pepper a chat over a cuppa about kitchen gardening, but they’re signposts that conversations with a food gardening friend seem to be following more and more. Ever since our first confab took the ‘barbed wire route’ a few years ago, our uplifting chinwags about how delicious the first earlies were, or how well the toms are doing, have been accompanied by a gathering sense of gloom. It’s not what you’d expect of folk that get such a high out of growing things – we’re not used to cultivating despondency.

The roots of all this ‘barbed wire’ talk reach back to the autumn of 2000, and the fuel protests, when lorry drivers, farmers and others blockaded UK oil refineries. For a few weeks it sent the country into topsy-turvy mode, as the growing threat to fuel supplies triggered panic buying at garage forecourts. The effect soon rippled out to shops and supermarkets, with several of the big stores cautioning that panic buying coupled with fuel shortages meant that there might only be enough food for a few days’ supply. Supermarkets rationed staples like milk and bread. For a few bizarre days, civilisation started to dysfunction. Remember?

This shock to the country’s infrastructure also threatened serious consequences for our health services, postal deliveries, manufacturing, national security, the transport network... but it was those images of supermarket shelves being cleared, amid a primeval feeding frenzy, that started to haunt our chinwags on the veg plot. All of what ocurred in 2000 was symptomatic of what happens when you start, even gently, to pull the plug on an infrastructure that’s almost totally reliant on an uninterrupted supply of the black stuff – oil. By choking off the supply of fossil fuels like petrol and diesel, a few otherwise upstanding citizens sent shockwaves through a way of life we take, increasingly at our peril, for granted.

You could almost feel the heat drain from our cups of tea on the day, during one natter on the plot, that we stepped over the line. We asked ourselves: what would have happened if the fuel protests had gone on for weeks, or even months? It makes my palms clammy just to write it.

My friend’s organic kitchen garden is an extensive one, and is an integral part of her smallholding, with cattle, sheep, chickens and geese in the mix – as well as her family. She is a powerhouse of self-reliance, and with much hard work she makes self-sufficiency look attainable. Pondering the breakdown of everything we take for granted, and amid such abundance, I well remember getting to the killer thought before she did: where will people go if the shops ever do run out of food?

Although we laughed at the time, the answer to my question – that they’d come up the lane in a mob, bash my friend, if she tried to stop them, over the head with a baseball bat, and take what vegetables, fruit and livestock they wanted – has since lost any comedic quality. Whether such a ravenous posse would actually know what to do with (or how to kill and prepare) what they’d looted is another story. Autumn 2000 showed that it only takes days for normal and generally rational people to succumb to those base survival instincts that lie deep in us all. Pushing and shoving in the supermarket aisles is one thing, but what would our psyches be like after weeks or months, stoked by that most powerful motivator, hunger?

The truth is that we live in a society that depends on an oil-addicted infrastructure that’s as critical to the smooth running of everyday life as it is fragile and vulnerable to ‘attack’. The frenzy of 2000 was triggered by a small number of disgruntled, determined citizens – not by a targeted terrorist attack on our country’s ‘normal life’ support system.

It’s comforting to think that those of us with decent-sized kitchen gardens or allotments might fare pretty well if ‘normal life’ took a dip for a while and our food shops temporarily locked their doors. With a bit of planning and forethought, we could get by without luxuries and even cut back on staples, making the most, depending on the season, of what could be picked either fresh from the garden, or got from the freezer or from store. But it’s also fanciful thinking. Survival instincts are eventually going to trump any amount of barbed wire fencing, even if you’ve acquired your own baseball bat to defend your veggies, and allotments will offer rich pickings for insatiable mobs, making vandalism seem pale by comparison. My garden’s sweet chestnut fencing is designed to keep out sheep and rabbits, but it would be no match for hordes driven by empty stomachs.

Some of these ‘survival instincts’ are already kicking in; the recession has sown the seeds of endless stories of how produce is being stolen, mostly from allotments, all over the country. This isn’t wanton destruction, it’s the spiriting away of entire crops, almost certainly fuelled by the felonious desperation of those struggling to keep pace with ever-escalating food prices. Is the kind of fencing designed to deter wanton vandalism really going to deter those intent on eating what lies behind it once the shops have run dry?

The deep irony is that these real-life pilferers (as well as my fictional, bat-wielding mob) will probably be feasting on some of the most locally grown, chemical-free food they have ever eaten. Although changes are afoot in the way we feed ourselves as a nation, it’s still a fact that for most people, food comes from a long way away, and is conveyed to them via a thundering, oil-dependent transport network that gets it there ‘just in time’.

With climate change upon us, and the age of cheap, abundant oil drawing to a close (expert opinion is converging on the consensus that we’ve already hit, or are about to reach, ‘peak oil’, after which supplies will gradually diminish), we face profound changes to the way our oil-soaked lives are shaped.

For kitchen gardeners, ‘food supply chains’ are non-existent. It’s food feet (metres if you must) for us – but it’s the long, global supply chains, powered by oil, that are the weak links in civilisation as we know it. Luckily, we’re waking up to the realisation that the best way to stave off my bat-wielding mob is to drastically reduce the length (and vulnerability) of those supply chains.

That’s what all the ‘relocalisation’ buzz is about. Bringing food production as close as possible to where it’s consumed is one of the guiding tenets of the work being done by the Transition movement – a global network working to build resilience into communities as we face up to the twin threats of climate change and peak oil, as well as future economic uncertainty. Much Transition work is focused on trying to rebuild the local food networks that used to exist around most towns and cities (when ‘local food’ meant local food) in preparation for life in a post-oil, low-carbon world.

Organic gardeners are pretty low-oil gardeners by default. We’re well placed to play our part in rethinking and reshaping our nation’s foodscape, so it can both withstand and quickly bounce back from whatever future shocks or traumas it might encounter. Quite simply, the more of us there are growing as much food as we possibly can, the less likely it is that I’ll wake up from nightmares about baseball bats.

Our gardens and allotments, whatever their size, are making a priceless contribution, not just by cultivating a growing sense of self-reliance in us as we tend them, but also by cultivating resilience itself.

This slightly amended article was first published in Kitchen Garden magazine, February 2010. Text and images copyright John Walker.

Nick Henley-Welch of Ilex, Terram Landscape's Emma Gould, Karl Harrison at Exterior Decking, Graeme Mann at Fake Lawns - your support and feedback has been enormous.

A big welcome to Tim and Andy at Cedar Nursery for joining us and welcome back Henchman, who have agreed a twelve month campaign.

The Lawn Company and making their début is hard landscaping material company, Instarmac.

Thank you also to Platipus Tree Anchors for their support over the last three months ...Good luck Jessica - she has just left to start a new career - and welcome to Darren.

It's also worth mentioning - because it is very important - that there are a number of donations to Landscape Juice too - Network members who enjoy and benefit from using the site, pay directly using either Paypal or banks transfer.

So what do I spend the money on? Mostly living but also software, hosting and tools for the Landscape Juice Network - what do advertisers get in return I hear you ask?

...Well, apart from a very, very personal service from me, chief tea maker, bottle washer and blogger, yesterday, Landscape Juice enjoyed just over 10,000 page impressions.

Sorry, I've digressed here: I wanted to draw your attention to a clever bit of marketing by Henchman on the Landscape Juice Network. Many of you who have advertised or have sold advertising, will know that the reader needs to be drawn to an image and be suitably seduced to click out to the advertisers page.

Getting the image right is important and can literally mean the difference between none or a very few clicks to 5,10,20 or 30 a day. I don't personally sell flashing images because they cheapen a site.

Henchman have made up three images and uploaded them into the network and asked their target audience what image they think should be used for their advertising campaign. Not only will the process help Managing Director, Tom Kitching get the visual impact right, it also keeps the Henchman brand fresh and visible as new answers are added to the thread.

Of course, the way the Landscape Juice Network is structured, Tom could have carried out this exercise for free but, because he has identified LJN's unique place in the land-based industry, he knows that by supporting Landscape Juice, he is also supporting the men and women who work in the industry.

As for all shows, trade or public, they are only as successful as the stands that are there, writes Claudia de Yong.

There seemed to be an eclectic mix of stands this year. Trusted favourites like David Austen Roses were there with a range of new English Roses for the coming year.

Harrod Horticulture were promoting their Grow Your Own products as well as choice of pest controls which seemed to feature highly with other stands at the show. Indeed, Eco Charlie’s products have increased from the original caffeine waste alternative slug killer, to cat deterrents, bee attractant seeds and even lovely simple hessian sacks , all environmentally packaged.

New ideas were a garden on a roll. The idea here is to be supplied with plants to put in your beds on top of a pre-designed roll of paper which tells you where to put them acting as a template. There is a wide range of border styles and I suppose it may catch on for some people.

The allotment ladder company have taken an old idea and turned it into a new must have product for anyone who has limited space but wants to grow vegetables or flowers. They are made of wood and there is a freestanding or a fixed version. Tiered shelving which can be painted ,in different heights on which you can put your pots.

Access Garden products that only deal direct, had a new cold frame with sliding glass panels which sits on top of a raised wooden bed allowing soil to be added to the bed improving fertility.

Ryobi were featuring their new Garden Power tools, notably the pressure washer with HydroSurge technology and blower vacs with dual-action PowerMulching blades. All very technical!

Vectorworks had a stand displaying the product and a screen showing how to use the programme. Sutton Seeds had a selection of flower and vegetable plants to ‘ beat the Credit Crunch’.

Crocus, the online shop for plants , were highlighting their other range of products such as terracotta pots and furniture. I had an interesting talk to the founder Peter Clay who also told me how Crocus is buying from smaller nurseries helping to keep them going and also making it easier for the designer/landscaper to find more unusual plants under one roof.

Some of the other stands included those that promoted Plant Heritage, The National Garden Scheme, Beth Chatto Gardens who are celebrating 50 years this year and The HTA.

Overall, it was interesting to attend although a little on the thin side in terms of exciting new products. I perhaps should have stayed for lunch but with parking prices in Westminster, I made do with a Quality Street Toffee on the admissions desk as I left. Now I’m starving!

Website: Garden Press Event

Claudia de Yong Designs

The design will be traditionally themed of crescent shaped pathways leading to an oak summer house and a hidden sandstone-edged pool complimented with lush planting - including rambling roses, lavender, fox gloves and myrtle.

M&G's brief to Platts was for a garden that visitors really love - is a dig at last years lack lustre, recession ravished affair?

M&G's Jacqui Haskins said: “We want a garden that visitors will really love – a design that is quintessentially British yet containing one or two surprising features. Roger will use mostly locally-grown plants and locally-sourced materials to create a garden of the highest quality,”.

Roger said; “I am hugely excited to be back creating a big garden at Chelsea. I’ve had other offers to be at the show, but the time feels right and M&G’s brand, values and aspiration to bring something special to Chelsea for people who love gardening is a fantastic opportunity I couldn’t turn down.”

Image: Monty Don at Chelsea 2009