Some stuff about gardening.

Today is the first Saturday in May, which I am told - I am not sure how reliably - is World Wide Naked Gardening Day. I won’t be participating but I now have an image in my head of naked gardeners of all shapes and sizes busily planting and pruning, mowing lawns and weeding! 

I was reading about “guerrilla gardening”, essentially planting stuff in patches of what is more or less common land, and allowing anyone who fancies any of it to harvest stuff as they need it. It’s part of a general feeling that we need to get back in touch with nature. Quite a lot of people did so during lockdown, growing stuff in their gardens. Our next door neighbours did it. Their sage was so successful  - an enormous patch of it - that they have invited all the neighbours to help themselves. 

But It seems that we have largely lost touch with the outside world and for decades children have been able to name more video game characters than wildlife species. In 2017, polls suggested that a third of young children thought cheese came from plants. I can understand that last one. After all, people have cheese plants. We’re doing our bit. Even the 21/2 year old can name a range of animals and plants. He does, however, argue with me about forget-me-nots, insisting that they are bluebells. 

But guerrilla gardening is rather more public than planting herbs and lettuce in your own garden. It adds colour and interest to public places. We have colour and interest around here but it’s mostly flowers. 

The idea is not completely new:

“More than a decade ago Incredible Edible began growing food on pockets of neglected public land in Todmorden, Yorkshire. The council was supportive, providing lists of possible sites. Corn sprouted in front of police stations and an apothecary garden flowered at the health centre. The movement spread quickly across the town and was so successful that tourists began to arrive. “Propaganda gardening” they called it; more than 170 Incredible Edible cells have now taken root across Britain and 1,000 around the world. Gardening, say the founders, makes for a kinder, more connected community.”

I’m not at all surprised that Todmorden was in the vanguard: always a bit poetic and artistic and rather hippy.

You can take it even further back. In April 1649, Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers (or True Levellers) responded to high prices and food shortages by cultivating vegetables on common land at St George’s Hill, near Weybridge in Surrey. 

Now, that would make a wonderful name for a pop or folk group: Gerrard Winstanley and The Diggers! 

Which reminds me, Carly Simon has been inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Everything comes to those who wait. Recognition at last. She has a lovely home, I hear, in Martha’s Vineyard. I wonder if she grows stuff out there.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!