The City Gardener

Every year in late July, a sleepy and pastoral corner of Cheshire plays host to an explosion of plant life. I'm not talking about the blue-green algae on the local pond. I'm talking about one the best spectacles in the North for plant lovers: the RHS Tatton Flower Show.  It's become a real mecca, providing an annual boost of inspiration and imagination for die-hard gardenistas - and a great day out for people who just love the stunning variety, the atmosphere of the fair, and the opportunity to get their hands on the latest in gardening fashion. Like everything, garden fashions do change, and Tatton provides an insight into what's hot and what's not in the world of horticulture this year. So I've tried to capture some of the movers and shakers for 2018. So, what's hot? Sanguisorba minor If there's one plant that stood out this year, it would be this rather unassuming herbaceous perennial, commonly known as  Salad Burnet. Providing gr...

It's hard to conceive of Winter in the height of Summer. As the earth bakes hard under an unforgiving sun, cold and frosty days - only 6 months ago - couldn't be further away. But try to imagine for a minute those short, hurried afternoons, where numb fingers and runny noses are only a prelude to cosy nights! Because this is a story that starts in the depths of Winter.  For Christmas, we got the best present two boys could have wished for. It wasn't the sort of present that could fit on the sleigh or down the chimney. It was an email, letting us know that (after some wrangling) we'd got our festive mitts on an allotment, a patch of ground we could call our own. So it was that, in the dying hours of 2017, we ventured with anxious anticipation into one of Manchester's hoods of questionable reputation to see what awaited us. Colin (who we've since learned is a champion pea grower and authority not to be reckoned with) showed us our plot. A whopping 17 metr...

Winter is a challenging time for the green-fingered. At times, we're filled with warm Hygge feelings of snugness. As T. S. Eliot wrote in  The Waste Land : Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers . At other times Winter takes its toll, with long nights, biting winds, and the daily 'thwoosh' as a jet of dirty water shoots up your leg from one of the city's many uneven paving slabs. (When T. S. wrote that  April is the cruellest month , he had clearly not been to Manchester in January). However, while Winter rages on and nature hibernates, there is a chink of light for the urban gardener. Around this time of year, tons of gardening catalogues land in the post and my inbox is cluttered with tens of emails advertising 20% off hoes and gnomes. At my most cynical, I could see this as pure capitalist opportunism. But it's also a wake-up call: a call to plan . I love planning. A couple of months a...

As the sun slips below that blue grid of sky between tall city blocks and trees cling to their remaining leaves, one thing is sure: autumn is well and truly upon us. It's been a busy summer for the City Gardener, particularly on the growbox. Over the past five months, the raised bed I signed up for in the green oasis between grubby surface level car parks has really come into its own. With a little TLC, peas sprawled up a tidy cane framework and I enjoyed harvest after harvest of succulent mangetout. (Nothing quite beats steaming freshly picked veg you've grown yourself!). I had a good haul of runner beans (from the communal growbox) and a modest collection of radishes too... But the real stars of the show were the flowers. Though difficult to tame, the dahlia I inherited from the growbox's previous 'tenant' has been a stunner, holding aloft profusions of scarlet fireworks and giving good height (if not stature!).  I also packed the side...

Manchester is a great city. Industrial heritage, urban grit and recent regeneration have combined to make it a hip 'n happening place to be. But there are no two ways about it: it's not a city known for its green spaces. The closest thing to resemble a park within half a mile of Ancoats is actually a canal basin. Step outside, and you're on the dusty inner ring road. Step a little further, and you're onto a patchwork of surface level car parks on the footprint of long-gone factories, extending nearly to the foot of Piccadilly. And yet, amidst the urban decay, there is a real green treasure. Bordered by trees on one side and rubbly car park on another are NQ Growboxes. Some planted with neatly dotted veggies, others almost hidden under sprawling lavender and sage, these dozen or so metre high raised beds are a little haven in the city. They've been on my radar since I moved to Manchester, and I immediately asked to sign up for one. Typically, there was a...

May is, by a long chalk, my favourite month. After the cool days of March, and April's particular 'but you'll still need a jumper' brand of warmth, May comes a-rollicking, bringing sunshine and lush verdant growth. The city comes to life with the sights and scents of summer: shop planters hang with geraniums and ivy, deciduous street trees again give dappled shade, and the world seems a little brighter, a little kinder. And yet, while temperatures soared, the country was plunged into winter on Monday night following the devastating bombing here in Manchester. Words can't express the feeling in the city. And yet, despite everything, the week has seen people come together, holding vigils, offering free hugs - and laying a carpet of flowers stretching across St Ann's Square, their beauty and heady scent helping heal the city. While the city heals, summer continues apace. The tentative seedlings of spring become established, and for me, the wind...

As far as landscapes go, the city has an unusual terrain. On the horizontal, there are vast man-made plains - roads and pavements, car parks, and paved public spaces. Perpendicular, rising densely from the savannah, are great table-rock edifices - from town houses, to blocks of flats, to skyscrapers. With its human-scale infrastructure, the city is a great place to be for, well, a human.  However, when you put yourself in the shoes of a plant, the chic modern city isn't the kind of place you'd naturally hang out. It's not just high levels of pollution and the likelihood of being trampled; the very fabric of the urban jungle - glass, concrete, tarmac, and metal - give cold, hard, and often non-porous surfaces which just aren't that friendly to vegetation unless it's in a designated planter. And yet, when human activity ceases, it never takes long for a place to be reclaimed by nature. The fishing village of Houtouwan in China was abandoned in the 1990s and r...