Abbey Home Farm

We drove from home to Cirencester yesterday evening, a double rainbow in the sky as we left at 6.30. GOGG had arranged a garden visit - to what might be the largest organic operation in Gloucestershire.

I am ashamed to say I had never before been to The Organic Farm Shop before: I was impressed, not only by its shortbread, with pieces of which we were welcomed by Hilary Chester-Master, but by the integrity of the operation as a whole: Al (photographed above) was describing it all well to our group - before the cold of the evening became too much for us. (How the weather has changed since last week!)

Trench Hill

With difficulty, we found our way to the garden which was open for members of the Gloucestershire Organic Gardening Group tonight. It was worth persisting in our search. A magnificent evening, and a garden filled with colour and interest! Celia Hargrave must work all the hours that God gives to keep on top of it. The view down towards Stroud alone should sell it for anyone looking for a garden to visit in the NGS list. In the foreground just out of this photograph there are wild orchids, as big as any I have seen in Gloucestershire.

"Being and remaining authentic"

This is the expressed objective of Commercial Ltd., the in-many-ways-admirable office supplies firm based here in Cheltenham. I went - rather at the last minute - to their CSR Day today, at the Racecourse.

I posted a bit about the 2011 event, the last one I attended, and came away with much the same misgivings today as then: enough is enough.

The attraction today was hearing what a psychologist from Unilever had to say: Dr. Richard Wright, comes with the wondrous title of Director of Sustainable Behaviour. "To achieve sustainability," he told us, "it's critical to change behaviour - and industry has a key role; so we try to change the behaviour of our consumers." He used as an example the health benefits in the Third World from the use of Unilever's Lifebuoy soap. "And from eating Wall's ice cream?" chirped Steve McDonnell, Gloucester City Council's Environmental Coordinator. "Well," came the response. "We still need to have a bit of fun in life."

My photograph shows one of the other speakers, the passionate-about-organics Tim Westwell, founder of Pukka Herbs (one of his colleagues alongside): to the question, what if your competitors mimic your environmental/ethical trajectory? he said he'd be delighted - and the Unilever man went further, saying effectively that if other companies didn't, we were sunk.

The only note of hesitation came from the "fiercely competitive" Simone Hindmarch-Bye of Commercial itself, so I became not the first person to ask whether the word “authentic” has lost its authenticity.

The killer question remains, How do we consume less? Yes, half the world lives on $3 a day or less, but what future for Planet Earth if their standard of living rises to the level of ours?

Well Close

I acted for the Community of St Peter when it purchased Well Close some three decades ago: the house turned out to be riddled with dry rot, which the nuns' surveyor somehow overlooked - leading to more work for my firm in the shape of a negligence claim.

The Anglican Benedictine community had run a large house near Stonehouse for some years as a home for vulnerable girls: I remember a large aviary there, the pride and joy of the solitary nun who was still actively involved, the characterful Sister Pauline Mary.

Until fairly recently, the front garden of Well Close, large considering it's in a fairly central location, was unproductive. Thanks however to the efforts of Miggi Lorraine, Peter Clegg and others, it now hosts a community composting area, and plans have been hatched to increase its usefulness further. It was in this connection that Peter asked me to bring my camera along to today's hedge planting. The local paper sent their photographer, but my angle  - see my website - would have been different.

Some 60 of us were there: besides the Mayor, Wendy Flynn, there were various Councillors and other nobs, staff and children from Christ Church Primary school and residents of Well Close itself. Between us, we planted 150 saplings (mainly donated by the Woodland Trust and Chris Evans' Butterfly Project) in less than an hour - a happy occasion, and proof that many hands make light work.

The overall aim is to increase local biodiversity, the garden becoming available for the residents, local school children and people with learning and/or physical disabilities to grow their own organically produced fruit and vegetables.

Scarey gardening

We were asked to lunch in Great Milton today. Not at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, but we made a detour through its vegetable garden on our way back from a post-prandial walk. And what a garden it is!

The website tells me it extends to two acres, and supplies 90 types of salad and vegetable. All organic. And surrounded by espalier apple and pear trees. The bronze scarecrow is apparently modelled on Raymond Blanc himself (and reminds me of the violinist sculpture presiding over the wild flower garden at Long Newnton, which was modelled on Edmund - wearing my hat).

Kilcot

We drove to Kilcot on a garden visit this evening by the scenic route - Tirley, Hartpury, Kent's Green, Clifford's Mesne. It all looked very beautiful in the very warm late afternoon sunshine: you wouldn't want to rush. (Even on our way home much later, it was 22 degrees outside.)

We ate our picnic above Aston Ingham, just North of May Hill: our host at the nearby garden to which GOGG were invited had today received a load of wood from the trees being felled on its top. "What they should replace them with," he reflected, "is 100 wind turbines: it would become the most famous windfarm in the world."

Ken ran a successful garden centre business for many years: on selling it, like many in the same position, his emphasis switched from commerce to the environment. Besides making their own garden into a model of resilience, he and Ann, his wife, are powers behind Transition Newent. They are in the process of building an outside bread/pizza oven, intended to become a focus for weekly local community gatherings.

The pond is a bit small for a boat, but Ann recently made a coracle: it's covered with cowhide (and the cow's tail is preserved intact - like a bendy rudder).

Though he confessed to a sinful greenhouse full of non-organically grown tomatoes, Ken more than balances  things out with his composting, coppicing and comfrey: there's water harvesting, a willow temple and a meditation garden (with suitably restrained colour pallet). The wildflower meadow contains 57 species to the square metre. Onions and potatoes are on a four-year rotation - "no dig" in the larger section of the vegetable garden.

The last, Ken shares with the lovely Clare, a biodiversity expert with Natural England: her house lies adjacent.

An inspiring evening.

JRI + GM

The John Ray Initiative Environment Conference today held my attention for only half its length, I'm afraid to say. "Progress or Problem? Responding to Genetically Modified Food and Crops" was the title.  "Some question whether this is even a debatable subject," its introducer warned. The first speaker, scientist Joe Perry of the EFSA, made out a good case for us to be there: a Christian and a risk assessor, he holds the firm view that GM is not productive of consequences of necessity outside God's will. And there is plenty to object in modern agriculture apart from GM. Organic farming is rarely enough. However, there was a sharp intake of breath around me when he asked, "Why shouldn't GM be integrated into organic agriculture?"

I hadn't really grasped the reason why GM product approval was so much quicker to obtain in North America than Europe: across the Atlantic there simply isn't the pattern of hedgerows and copses, the intermingling of villages with farmsteads. So what noisy local opposition is there likely to be to blanket spraying?

The JRI's Chair, John Weaver, spoke next, concentrating more on ethical and theological considerations. For a Baptist minister, he gave a surprising amount of credence to Catholic Social Teaching, especially its emphasis on nature as gift: it's not a reality to be left alone, but humanity is entrusted to evaluate and use it for the common good. The Catholic Church's overemphasis on the anthropocentric was let pass.

The supersize butterfly model in my photograph indicates perhaps which side some of the students of our hosts Redcliffe College, Gloucester were on in this GM debate.

Gloucestershire Organic Gardeners

We took our macs with us to Poulton this evening, for a garden visit organised by the Gloucestershire Organic Gardening Group (GOGG) of which I am a somewhat passive member. In fact, it turned out fine, and indeed there was a memorable sunset over the Vale as we returned via Leckhampton Hill. Mike and Stella's one-third of an acre back garden is only lacking in one thing: a lawn. For this there is absolutely no space. But it is crammed with cultivation of every other kind, raised beds jam packed with brassicas, carrots and leeks; a greenhouse full of tomatoes, peppers, grapes etc. and room for dozens of different clematis and even the odd sunflower (as shown here).