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The Gardening World Cup- The Angel of Peace

30/9/2010

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“This is without doubt the most difficult assignment I’ve ever undertaken” were Alan Ward’s words when he showed me the finished Angel. Alan and his partner Chris have been working flat out since they arrived at Huis Ten Bosch, but it wasn’t simply the amount of work which made this job hard- the difficulty arose from the fact that Alan usually works with stone, but this time he had to use plaster. 

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Six Tuscan Columns

29/9/2010

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Six Tuscan columns are an essential feature in the design of my garden for the Gardening World Cup. Two sets of double columns frame the statue in the centre of the loggia and a column at each end adds balance. The columns are identical, each 7ft in height and for that extra touch of elegance they should taper slightly from the base to the top. 

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Slow Is Beautiful

28/9/2010

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I was excited to come across a booked, published four years ago, which extolls the Slow Life. The author is an American academic, Cecile Andrews and the book is called “Slow is Beautiful”. Her theme is that we should encourage joie de vivre, an enjoyment of life and that we should take more leisure time and use it constructively. But for all her good ideas and her emphasis on humour and light heartedness it is evident that the author herself is consumed by anger, bitterness and sometimes downright hatred. Her anger is directed at corporations, the capitalist system, even the idea of competition itself and, most of all, George Bush, for whom she reserves her most potent venom. 

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Ground Breaking ceremony for The Gardening World Cup

27/9/2010

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Before any major building operation begins in Japan a ceremony is performed under the Shinto religion in which the participants pray for the successful completion of the project. It is known as a Ground Breaking ceremony and this morning all the gardeners who are participating in The Gardening World Cup, together with representatives of the contractors and the organisers, got together in the Royal Palace at Huis Ten Bosch for such a ceremony. 

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The Gardening World Cup- On Site

26/9/2010

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My flight was diverted because of a storm.  At Tokyo airport flights were being cancelled because of typhoons.  This isn’t a surprise- we were warned that the first ever Gardening World Cup was being staged in the typhoon season.  Here at Huis Ten Bosch conditions are relatively calm, although the rain is fierce and the humidity high.  These aren’t ideal conditions for building a show garden but the workers are nothing daunted and show complete confidence that they will get the job done on time. This photo shows work underway on building the foundations for the loggia in my show garden.
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Rinco’s Restaurant

25/9/2010

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At long last there’s a film to rival Babette’s Feast in the foodie stakes.  The film in its native Japan is called Shokudo Katatsumurai, but the version with English sub-titles is known as ‘Rinco’s Restaurant’.  Rinco lives in a small rural village with her louche mother and a pig. The pig, Hermes, is the mother’s pet, is kept indoors, hogs the sofa and even shares the mother’s bed.  Rinco sets up a restaurant in a glorified shed in the garden. There is only one table in the restaurant and no menu and the food which Rinco cooks has the magical ability to transform people’s lives. In one scene, a widow dressed in black and borne down with misery,  is served course after course during which she is gradually transported out of her misery.  The scene lasts about ten minutes without any dialogue, during which all you see is Rinco preparing each course and the widow eating them. It is utterly charming.
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I’m indebted to Mark Schilling of the Japan Times for the information that there’s a thriving sub-culture in Japan of films about women in crisis who find redemption through food.  They include Seagull Restaurant, Flavour of Happiness and Nonchan Noriben.  After enjoying Rinco’s restaurant to much, I can’t wait to get hold of them.
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Alan Ward’s Angel

23/9/2010

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Alan Ward arrived in Japan only a week ago.  His mission is to construct an Angel, which will be the centre-piece for my garden at the “Gardening World Cup”. The original idea was that it would be carved from a single piece of white alabaster, but the stone wasn’t available in Nagasaki, so Alan has constructed a frame from raw bamboo and the outer surface will be made from powdered alabaster. 

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Real Hospitality at Holbeck Ghyll

22/9/2010

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We paid a return visit to Holbeck Ghyll today for a Lakes Hospitality lunch.  The hotel gave us a very good price and of course it was a sell-out- who could resist the chance to have a Michelin starred meal at half price?  Now, the usual format when we get these excellent deals from posh places is that the chefs get their revenge by giving us a pale imitation of the usual fare- something like their “take” on shepherds pie, for instance.

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Our Sweetcorn Crop Failure

21/9/2010

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Two thirds of my sweetcorn crop has failed. The extent of the disaster can be seen from this photo. The ones that came good were those which we grew from seed and which we planted out in good time. But I felt we didn’t have enough and I bought a large batch of small plants from Mammoth Onion on 16th June. They were planted out a week later, just at the time when the warm dry weather ended and the rains began. Or to put it another way, the time when a hose-pipe ban was imposed. The plants never really took hold and the result is corns like the ones on the right of the photo, which are good enough for Henry, our guinea pig, but not for anything else
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The curious tale of Lord Tonypandy’s Damson Tree

20/9/2010

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In the centre of the lawn at the Damson Dene Hotel is a lovely Damson Tree, under which is a plaque which reads:

‘This Damson Tree was planted by Viscount Tonypandy on the 8th July 1993′
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Lord Tonypandy was the Speaker of the House of Commons at the time when proceedings were first televised (he was then known as George Thomas), whose Welsh-accented cries of “Order, Order” were so well known. 

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Marrow Day at Far Sawrey

18/9/2010

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When we bought the Sawrey Hotel in July we had no idea that the village of Far Sawrey was the centre of the marrow growing universe. Well, if not exactly the centre, then very close to it, as it turns out that there are marrow competitions all over Cumbria.  Today is Marrow Day in Far Sawrey and most of the regulars of the Sawrey Hotel are taking part.  

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Damson Pie- Grounds for Divorce

17/9/2010

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Margaret has made two damson pies which are on the menu at the Damson Dene Hotel- and guests are being warned to look out for stones.
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Wayne offered the menu to a lady who was dining with her daughter . “Of course I’ll have the damson pie” she said, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. You know, my husband divorced me because of my damson pie.

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The Killer Badgers

16/9/2010

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The first thing we did when we began to garden here was to put a deer fence around the garden with a cattle grid at the entrance. Without that the garden simply wouldn’t have got going. But while the cattle grid kept out the deer it was useless with badgers, who just waddled over it, and we quite often saw them doing just that when we returned home late at night. 

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The Gardening World Cup- Japan

15/9/2010

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In just three weeks judging will take place and we will know who has won the Gardening World Cup in Japan. I’m in daily contact with the organisers in Nagasaki. Alan Ward, who is sculpting the Angel which will form the centre-piece of my garden is already there and hard at work. He hadn’t expected such intense heat and high humidity, but he’s immensely impressed by the professionalism of the team who are organising the event.

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Maurice Saatchi’s Secret Garden

15/9/2010

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The Saatchi Gallery, in the Kings Road, London, is without a doubt one of the best galleries in the world and is dedicated to showing off the collection of Charles Saatchi. His collection is so vast that the exhibits change every few months. It is his life’s work. Now, his brother Maurice has revealed in an interview with Elizabeth Grice that his life’s work is a garden. This is what the article said:

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Surprising Survivors Part 10- The Fascist Pineapple

13/9/2010

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This plant is a bromeliad, a member of the pineapple family. Most bromeliads come from tropical rainforests and are epiphytic, which means that they grow on the branches of trees. But this bromeliad comes from the coastal forests of Chile and unusually grows in soil like most other plants. 

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Death by Killer Potato

12/9/2010

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I’m taken with the idea of someone meeting their fate in a manner which is appropriate to their lifestyle as in Tom Stoppard’s falling bookcase or Mike Edwards’ bale of hay (see September 10th). I nearly fulfilled my destiny today in a manner which was entirely appropriate to me.

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Our Wagyu Cattle- Looking Magnificent

11/9/2010

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The last time I saw Wagyu cattle looking this magnificent was in Kobe, Japan, on a very hot summer’s day. They were in a large barn in temperatures approaching 100 fahrenheit, being cooled by enormous fans, which had the dual purpose of controlling the powerful stench of ammonia. In Japan, this is how Wagyu cattle are kept year round- it is in effect factory farming. 

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A Good Way to Go

10/9/2010

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On the day that Tom Stoppard is quoted as saying: “I have a spasm of envy for the person who was killed by a falling bookcase- it would be a good way to go. You went when you were in a good frame of mind and you were doing something pleasant and interesting”, the news has come in that Mike Edwards, a founder member of ELO, has been killed by a one ton bale of hay, which fell on his head, killing him instantly. 

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Surprising Survivors Part 9 – The Tree Echium-Giant Viper’s Bugloss

9/9/2010

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Strictly speaking the Tree Echium (Giant Viper’s Bugloss- real name Echium Pininana) shouldn’t be included in the “Surprising Survivors” series as all of mine were wiped out last winter. The photo above was taken two years ago. But the seeds of these magnificent flowers survived in the ground and, without any help from me, have sprung into life. 

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Jasper Aykroyd

8/9/2010

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Jasper is back and he’s on the warpath.  That evil institution known as the EU is proposing to ban the use of saltpetre in the preparation of organic cured products, thus ending 3,000 years of traditional food preparation.  Jasper is campaigning to stop the ban taking place and has come armed with letters to Catherine Gazzoli, the head of Slow Food, and HRH The Prince of Wales.  Jasper came to see us at the Damson Dene Hotel where, at a Slow Food dinner,  we tasted the cured meats which he had prepared using one our our Saddleback pigs three weeks before.  All the preparations used saltpetre, which is an essential part of the curing process of meats.  If saltpetre is banned in the curing of organic meat, that will be the end of organic bacon- which will leave us with products such as “Danepack”, which aren’t really bacon at all.
Jasper has been an inspiration to us all and has our full support in his campaign.  
The picture below is of an apple and blackberry pie, which Margaret prepared for our dinner, with a pastry “snail”, made by our daughter Joanna.
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The Great North Swim Fiasco

8/9/2010

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This weekend 28 competitors swam the length of Lake Windermere- more than ten miles. Some of our guests at the Newby Bridge Hotel also swam in the Lake, along with hundreds of others who had travelled to the Lakes to take part in the Great North Swim event. The only problem was that they weren’t able to take part in the event itself as it had been cancelled at the last minute by the organisers who had had the fear of God put into them by the presence of blue-green algae close the the starting point.

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Georgeous Gladdies

7/9/2010

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Gladioli have been out of fashion for as long as I can remember. They got a reputation for being too showy and Dame Edna put paid to any hopes of a revival. But I love them and in January I ordered a large batch for a show garden at Tatton which, in the end, didn’t happen. So at short notice I needed to find a home for 400 gladioli. I planted about half of them here at Yewbarrow House, putting some among the large leaved Canna Musifolia (musifolia means “banana-leaved, so they are huge). 

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English Apples – Supermarket Shame

6/9/2010

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Anthony Davison is a fifth generation farmer, whose website, Big Barn, promotes farmer’s markets and local suppliers. He has pointed out that English apples are available in 1,050 of his outlets, but haven’t yet made their way into any of the big three supermarkets. Of course, those supermarkets are busy selling apples by the lorry-load, but they are all imported, all absolutely uniform and all suffering the deleterious effects of being stored for far too long. 

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National Gardens Scheme Open Day

5/9/2010

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At our last Open Day, in August, we were over-run with visitors, which caused traffic congestion, leading to rows with exasperated motorists and, after an old gentleman had collapsed in our kitchen garden, a prolonged drama involving three “First Responders” who arrived in separate cars and an ambulance which couldn’t get through. 

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    ​About Slow Life

    The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

    Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

    This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.

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