Vibrator to be used in Westminster's Parks

Westminster's parks are due for a shake-up with the use of special equipment to break up heavily compacted areas of its parks. The council is awaiting delivery of a new anti-compaction machine that sends a shaking movement to the roots of plants.

Users of parks such as Victoria Embankment Gardens (pictured here) should see a greener landscape when the vibrating machine starts work. It will send slivers of steel underground, shake them at about 3,000 revs per minute and allow roots to breathe and flourish. Westminster's parks are due for a further shake-up with the appointment of more park-keepers. One of their duties will be to explain to park users why some of their favourite plants occasionally need to be replaced.

Have your say on Shepherds Bush Common facelift

£3.3 million worth of improvements to Shepherds Bush Common moved a step closer when Hammersmith and Fulham Council started a public consultation on the plans. Visit the consultation website. Cllr Paul Bristow, H&F Cabinet Member for Residents’ Services, said, “We believe these exciting proposals will transform the common and ensure that it remains as one of our great open spaces.” The plans include a multi-use games area, extensive children’s play facilities, a skateboard area and a café with new toilets. The design creates a boulevard effect on the outside of the common, including a new cycle path. Cllr Bristow continues, “As residents will see for themselves we are not seeking to radically alter the overall feel of the park. One of the great advantages of this design is that the common retains its big, open feel.” Under the proposal, the common would be divided by paths into three main grassed sections, with slightly raised areas and a section that can be used for entertainment. The historic war memorial will remain in its current location. H&F Council has been consulting on the proposals with a stakeholder group, consisting of local residents from Addison ward and Shepherd’s Bush Green, amenity groups and businesses. After a public exhibition the landscape designers will work up the designs in more detail for a further exhibition in March before any planning application is submitted. The aim is to start construction sometime in 2009. Cllr Bristow concludes, “The new games area and play facilities will boost the appeal of the common to families. I would like to encourage anyone with an interest in the future of Shepherds Bush Common to have a look at the proposals themselves and let us know what they think before a formal planning application is submitted later this year.”

Are you interested in research on historic gardens and open spaces?

The London Parks & Gardens Trust is looking for volunteers to expand the information in its Inventory of Historic Green Spaces. The Trust needs more volunteers to help with research on the sites included on its Inventory of Historic Green Spaces, which covers the whole Greater London area. Volunteers undertake historic research using various sources, and make site visits to record what can be seen on the ground. No previous experience of research is required, although some knowledge of garden history is useful. Training is offered in all aspects of the work: the use of libraries, the most appropriate books, maps and archives to consult, and how to record what is on the ground. There are visits to local history libraries, national libraries and record offices, talks from experienced historians and discussions of research in progress. Assistance and advice is available from the co-ordinator. Find out more.

AGT Plans Conference 'Far from the Madding Crowd'

The Dorset Gardens Trust looks forward to acting as hosts to yhe Association of Gardens Trusts for its 2008 Annual Conference (29th-31st August).

Leweston School, near Sherborne, is the venue for the conference.

The Trust have based the theme of the Conference on Far From the Madding Crowd (with apologies to Thomas Hardy). Dorset is relatively far from the rush and hubbub of modern life and they look forward to showing us their hidden treasures. They have long been a forgotten county, with few large estates and only two gardens by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, two gardens with Repton connections and one garden where Gertrude Jekyll supplied plans on which she worked with Thomas Mawson. However, Dorset's once grand houses have always kept their footprints in the landscape and mellowed over the years to leave us with tempting glimpses of our rich and diverse past. Many Elizabethan and Jacobean houses dropped down the social scale and became working farms until the early C20, when discerning awareness lead to their revival. Some of the best gardens date from this period. The exciting creation of new gardens promises well for the future and the continuation of Dorset's garden heritage. Dorset Gardens Trust loosk forward to revealing this to us. Further details from Dorset Gardens Trust

SW3 goes bananas

Founded in 1673, the Chelsea Physic Garden has been growing exotic plants for 330 years and its gardeners experiencing the strange, the abnormal and the eccentric in this horticultural oasis in the centre of London. Latest in a long line of unusual occurrences is the New Year flowering and fruiting of the hardy Japanese banana plant, Musa basjoo, which was originally planted in the Garden in 1995. Head Gardener, Mark Poswillo, said that, while the hardy banana had become popular as a garden plant, it was still extraordinary to see both the flowers and fruit on the same plant at the same time in January. Visitors to the garden will get the chance to see the banana when the Garden opens its doors on the first two weekends of February for its annual Snowdrop Days event. Garden's web site (in new window)

Crystal Palace

The first of the Trust's new Winter Lecture Series was held on 8th October at the Museum of Garden History, Lambeth, which proved to be an excellent venue, and was well attended. Helen Brown, a founder member of the London Parks and Gardens Trust who formerly worked for Bromley Council, the hapless inheritors of Crystal Palace Park following the abolition of the Greater London Council, delivered a thought-provoking and well-illustrated talk on the gardens of Crystal Palace.

The Palace, the raison d'être of the park, was destroyed by fire in 1936. Although most of the bus routes of south London still seem to focus on Crystal Palace, as though the fire had never happened, without the Palace there is no focus to the park and no very good reason to go there at present. The sports facilities are outdated and badly sited, cutting the park in two and destroying any spatial or aesthetic unity. While the Extinct Animals have been carefully restored (although the effect is spoiled by the obtrusive safety fencing), the Terraces, of a Roman scale and grandeur, are derelict and all but abandoned. However, the London Development Agency has commissioned from Latz and Partners (designers of Landschaftspark Duisburg-nord in the Ruhr, which incorporates abandoned steel works) a new Master Plan, which was launched on 17th October, accompanied by an exhibition at Crystal Palace railway station from 18th to 31st October (see http://www.crystalpalacepark.net). The Conservation Management Plan has been written by two members of LPGT, Sarah Couch and Hazel Conway, who have also worked on the Master Plan.

Henry Moore at Kew

Kew Gardens are worth a visit at any time of the year, and can be as beautiful in the autumn and winter - especially if the weather is kind - as in the spring and summer. Until 30th March 2008 Kew offers the additional attraction of a major exhibition of 28 sculptures by Henry Moore displayed throughout the north- east sector of the gardens (www.kew.org/henry-moore). The last time I saw so many of Moore's works together was at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence in 1972, 14 years before the sculptor's death in 1986 at the age of 88. My memory is that many of the pieces then on display were in travertine or marble, materials fine outside in Italy but not suited to the English climate; all the pieces now on display at Kew, with one exception, are of bronze. The photographs in the catalogue and illustrating the background exhibition in the Nash Conservatory indicate how well Moore's art travels. Although his English, and more specifically Yorkshire, background fed his art there is nothing insular or parochial about his works: his Seated Woman looks as good and as timeless when seen against the background of a lake in Beijing as she does in a grassy clearing at Kew. The pieces on display are on loan from the Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, Herts, where, as at Kew, they are displayed against a background of grass and trees. Other copies are to be found in public and private locations all round the world. Moore drew on, and drew, natural organic forms, and the characteristics of his drawings, which have both a solid roundness and a scratchy and complex surface texture, are carried through into his sculptures and castings. They don't all work for me. The Wall: Background for Sculpture and the series called Upright Motive leave me uninvolved. The 9m-long Large Reclining Figure looks good in photographs and across the Palm House lake, but its smooth white fibreglass surface is rather unpleasant close up. But others are quite wonderful, especially the two-part sculptures, which are monumental, dynamic and intimate according to how one chooses to view them.

On Trees and Allotments

From skylines, down to earth again; the Daily Telegraph on 13th October reminded us that on 15th and 16th October 1987 19 people died, three million houses were hit, and 15 million trees were blown down in the south of England in the Great Storm.

At the time it seemed an unmitigated disaster, but 20 years on most of the landscape scars have healed, and the opening-up of over-mature wooded landscapes has allowed both assisted and natural regeneration, leading to a healthier age-spread of trees. Many trees that survived the literal shaking up flourished better than ever, leading to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew's investigations into the benefits of breaking up the compacted soil around trees roots to encourage mycorrhizal activity. Trees have been having a hard time over the last few decades, and no doubt it was always so, but this year's wet summer after several years of near-drought seems to have left most trees looking much healthier than they have appeared for a long time. Horse chestnuts, while again affected by the leaf miner moth, look better than they did at this time last year (i.e. mid-October), and after the wonderful frost-free spring, many fruit trees have produced record crops. Vegetables and other crops have had a more mixed success, and soft fruits were a disaster, but vegetable gardening has been promoted in several ways this year. Kew planted out the formal parterres in front of the Palm House over the summer with a dramatic display, both sculptural and colourful, of edible fruits and vegetables. The Royal Parks staged their "Dig for Victory" allotments and exhibition in St James's Park. The allotment holders of Manor Garden allotments, turfed out, or perhaps more literally asphalted over, for the 2012 Olympics, have been offered a new site after a fierce and high-profile battle: "Picture an area the size of three football pitches. Fill it with a patchwork of plots and families working, laughing, drinking, as braziers smoke at the fringe of their alfresco dining-rooms, cooking produce before dew has a chance to dry. This hard-scrabble Eden, populated by friendly Turks, Cypriots, Italians, West Indians, Kurds and East Enders, brought a taste of the exotic home" (Telegraph Magazine 13th October 2007). Could productive allotment gardens, or the sort of detached weekend gardens to be found on the outskirts of many continental cities, be a solution to the problem of uncared-for and underused ground in some publicly owned parks?

Part of the wailed gardens at Chiswick House is now successfully and enthusiastically cultivated by schoolchildren, and Brockwell Park in Lambeth has a small plot with a greenhouse where the Friends can grow vegetables and flowers, but parks such as Gunnersbury Park and Cranford Park have large neglected areas where, given the political will and the right management régime, local people could grow their own food, with all the benefits that that implies.

Fitzroy Square Makeover Stirs up a Debate

Residents of Fitzroy Square are at odds over plans to resurface the pavement in the Square using York stone flagstones.

The gardens of Fitzroy Square

Novelist and local resident Fay Weldon is pressing for the makeover to include removal of the benches on the perimeter which she says attract gangs who "hang around in a sinister way". Robert Bargey, secretary of the Georgian Group, which has offices overlooking the square, commented: "Fitzroy Square is one of the most complete Georgian squares in London. Judging by the number of local youths who gather there, they seem to like it too. They are not malevolent or malicious but in many ways they are a nuisance." André Schott, of Fitzrovia Youth in Action, believes removing the benches would not prevent youths from congregating in the square. "They need somewhere to meet and be with their friends. If you take away the benches they will sit on local doorsteps."

The Green City?

London, as we keep telling ourselves, is a very green city, and many of its residents have the advantage of a private garden as well as access to public parks, and so it is a shock to read a headline like "Gardens Are Disappearing In The Capital" (The London Paper, 9th October) over an article that starts "More than 1,000 gardens are torn up across London every year as developers replace leafy spaces with high-density flats..." Croydon scores worst in the league table of the 32 London Boroughs, having lost 358 gardens since 2004, Sutton is second worst with 266, and Lewisham and Richmond-upon-Thames are joint ninth from the bottom with 137 gardens built over in the last three years. When the loss of open space for building is compounded by the paving over of front gardens for car parking, the picture starts to look rather unattractive; comparisons of town streets now with photographs of the same streets 40 years ago make clear how much has been sacrificed for the sake of the motor car, encouraged by a sloppy planning system. Even more pernicious, because it is a result of the deliberate planning policy of the Mayor Ken Livingstone, who wants high buildings ail over London, whatever the cost might be to the historic environment, and of a Philistine central government that cares nothing for the past and has cut financial support to English Heritage, is the intrusion into the skyline along the River Thames and around the Royal Parks of tall commercial buildings. John Prescott has now gone, thank God, though not before authorising the construction of the Vauxhall Tower and other horrors; but the character and appearance of the Westminster World Heritage Site are now threatened by a 144m-high block of flats proposed to be built in Doon Street behind the National Theatre. The top of the building would obtrude into the view across Whitehall from the bridge in St James's Park, widely recognised as one of the finest and most magical urban views in the world.

St James's Park - before the Doon Street tower is built Lambeth Council justify the decision to grant planning permission on grounds of social gain - some affordable housing and a swimming pool - but what about the loss to Londoners and visitors to London and the rejection of civilized values? Would it be acceptable to deface a Canaletto if the graffiti were politically correct? The scheme has been called in for public inquiry.

ICOMOS and UNESCO have recently been looking askance at another World Heritage Site in the capital, the Tower of London WHS - and quite rightly too. The setting of the Tower is a bad joke and the buildings around it about as grotesque as could be found anywhere. The City of London becomes ever more an architectural zoo, its skyline like a badly kept bathroom windowsill writ large. Even the unlamented Tessa Jowell got a bit panicky when there appeared to be some chance that the Tower of London WHS would be declared "at risk", or even de-inscribed. Is Doon Street an indication that the Westminster World Heritage Site is to be the next lost cause?