Shades of green

40 came round our garden in the six hours for which we were open today as part of Cheltenham Green Doors. Five were children, but all seemed more or less committed to the quest for the shortest distance from land to mouth.

At four, we shut up shop and jumped into the car to drive up to Cranham, to see one of the other properties: it was open till six. That was quite a show-stopper: a green oak new build on the site of the TB Sanatorium where George Orwell had once been a patient. It's 1,000 feet up and thus with a fabulous view, over first open fields and then Buckholt Wood, sunny from breakfast to dinner.

My photograph shows the North side, where you drive in past a new lake and bund dividing the property from Cranham Sawmill. The facing here is a wall of Cotswold stone, the other side all glass, with sedum roof and both PV and solar thermal panels.

The owner indicated a line through the pond dividing Cotswold District from Stroud: the two Councils agreed, he said, that Stroud should deal with the planning application, which they were happy to approve, being "top eco".

Are such houses a sign of hope or of contradiction? I suppose the hope is that they can be the F1 racing cars of their time, justifiable on the grounds that they pave the way for more energy efficient roadsters. Because what we need of course is not just top eco, but middle and bargain basement eco too. Otherwise top eco will end up as unjust as Richard ("Eco") Branson's dream of Martian emigration.

Little Malcolm and the struggle against indifference

I biked to St Mark's this afternoon, to look at Malcolm's garden (and buy some of his excellent cakes). It's a picture of Autumn colour, the pair of pheasants he keeps in a cage at the end just adding to the scene.

Here he is standing by some of his collection of nascent Nerines: he's Treasurer of the Nerines and Amaryllid Society.

Malcolm attracted more punters than did the Chaplain of the University of Gloucestershire: I was the only member of the audience for his talk on Faith and Sustainability at the Greener Gloucestershire Festival this afternoon. Ah well, it was the first one of its kind.

Open "Doors"

The launch party for Cheltenham Green Doors took place at the Gardens Gallery last evening. Our local MP made a good speech: the chain gang were amongst the nobs present. Then off we biked for the first Film Society offering, an Indian film, "The Lunchbox". Not many green doors programmes in India I guess.

Green Gardens

Our sign has just gone up, for the opening on Sunday - the garden only this year: solar thermal panels - you can just see ours - are two a penny.

Green Doors 2014

My friend Peter Clegg has been working very hard to promote this year's open houses and gardens weekend, coming up. We had a "briefing" yesterday afternoon. All very organised. 

More than half a dozen local properties can be visited next weekend, a good many more than last year. It remains to be seen whether we attract more members of the public - or whether the same number will be spread more thinly, so we shall be twiddling our thumbs for long periods.

Green Doors '14

Tonight, a dozen of us have been discussing another weekend of open houses and gardens next year, to promote energy efficiency and conservation generally. This will be Cheltenham's third, and is fixed for 20th/21st September. What we need are more people to come forward, to allow their improvements etc. to go on show.

I took the photograph at the exquisite Young Dürer exhibition in Somerset House: I visited it yesterday afternoon. It features the 23-year-old Dürer's wife, "My Agnes" as he called her, a drawing on loan from the Albertina.

Cheltenham Green Doors

Last year and the year before we called it Eco Open Homes or ECOHAB: this year, we were Cheltenham Green Doors, to chime in with the Bristol model. And we brought forward the openings to June, rather than September, as they were previewed by an event in the Cheltenham Science Festival earlier in the month.

So I had an enjoyable time this weekend cycling around the fifteen venues - houses, a shop and gardens demonstrating a more sustainable way of life - and took some photographs. In most places, there were visitors at the time I called in, and they were eager to know what was on offer and to engage in conversation: our increased efforts at publicity seem to have reaped some dividend. We shall see what others, more closely involved, have to say at the meeting that's fixed for 2nd July: it's a lot of work, but is it worth going on with it year in, year out?