BTCV

MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR

I’m getting onto a bus with 11 other volunteers who have turned out at eight in the morning for voluntary duties with the British Trust For Conservation Volunteers (BTCV).

The BTCV are large well established group and work with up to 300,000 volunteers a year throughout the UK and Ireland. One of BTCV’s guiding principles is to improve the environment positively and sustainably, and at the same time increase ecological awareness and motivate the long term unemployed back to work.

OSIER BEDS
We were told to bring sturdy boots, a waterproof jacket and a packed lunch for the day, as we will be out for a while. It’s a bit of a magical mystery tour as no-one has been told where we are going. The bus has picked us up from the centre of Nottingham and headed out into the countryside where the mystery was revealed. We were to do some maintenance work on an osier bed 14 miles away. Osier beds are traditionally areas of very wet ground that have been set aside to grow willows for basket making. I know exactly where we are heading because it’s on the outskirts of the town where I grew up and spent most of my summers when I was an irritating teenager.

Cue the wobbly images and music as I float back to my childhood again and have a flashback within a flashback…….

The osier beds are an area of about 5 acres and are a ten-minute walk from the main road and civilisation. My friends and I had a spot in there where we would pitch our tents at the beginning of the summer holidays and keep them up for weeks, using them as our second homes. It was a very handy place, as I could still get home everyday for my tea and have a bath. It might have felt like living wild but the home comforts were never far away.

SIMPLE PLEASURES
We had haystacks to sit on and regularly had a campfire and occasionally did a bit of cooking. A friend of mine tried to heat up a tin of soup one day…. without opening the tin. The results were very dramatic as it blew up in his face spraying him with molten minestrone. When his parents asked what the injury was, embarrassingly he told them he fell off of his bike and scraped his face across the tarmac, as if that would make the parents feel better. They didn’t question it and lessons were learned.

Camping out gave us an ideal opportunity to get up to late night mischief too. For some reason we thought it was hilarious to get ten of us into a phone box then set off a smoke bomb. They weren’t actually smoke bombs as such; they were fumigation tablets for killing pests in greenhouses. How we survived I don’t know. I realise now that the police cleared us out of the small metal booths because we were poisoning ourselves, not because we were being public nuisances…another lesson learned.

BACK TO THE BEDS
The osier beds were a haven for us and if you kept to certain areas, you didn’t sink. The closest place I can think of that reminds me of the woodland is Enagh Loch in Derry near Strathfoyle. There’s an area there where a World War 2 plane crashed and was never found as it sunk into the water and mud.

Well coming back as a volunteer, we start to empty the van of slash hooks and sandwiches. Our job for the day is to clear the brambles. I couldn’t believe the difference in the area. It was dry, very dry. There was a road going to the edge of the osier wood, put in by the Boots Company that had built a factory next to it as it was a good area logistically to the motorway system. The factory had no windows as it was used for developing film so the workers there were in darkness all day. The designers probably thought that the staff needed something pretty to look at in their break times so a small lake, complete with fountain, had been dug near the main doors. To feed the lake, the water had been redirected from the osier bed, and not surprisingly, the marshy area had turned into a regular woodland.

The BTCV organisers were well aware of the situation, but that made no difference to their enthusiasm in up keeping the area maintained. I think they knew that the Boots factory would come and go, and when it did the osier bed would get it’s water back.

At the end of a long day I carried the slashooks back to the van and in my enthusiasm I had far too many of them in my arms “You are an accident waiting to happen” one of the leaders told me as I struggled to keep the sharp blades away from my legs. “Take your time, it’s not a race. Carry less and make more trips.” They advised. Another lesson learned…..


GETTING INVOLVED
The BTCV organisation has quietly been helping to re-establish a lot of neglected corners of the country. Starting in 1959, they are celebrating 50 years of environmental work. The closest group to us are in Derry on Hawkin St. Because of the economic climate, voluntary work is on the increase and hopefully groups such as the BTCV will benefit from people having more time on their hands. If you fancy getting involved and taking part in voluntary environmental work, you can ring them on +44 28 71262664 or e-mail I.Black@btcv.org.uk

Zen

THE ART OF ZEN

“Junk is something you’ve kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.” I’m at Alan’s house in Dublin. Alan is a friend of mine who has, up until recently, been a bit of a high flier in the pharmaceutical industry and has now retired. He is taking things easy and being middle aged and single seems to have adapted to it very well. His flat is very uncluttered, or you could say it was minimalist in design. “I got rid of most of my things when I finished work” he tells me. “I always aspired to Percy Shaw (the man that invented the cat’s eyes on the road). He made his millions with a simple invention and lived in an empty house with a tea chest for a chair and a telly, which has always sounded good to me.” He laughs.

Alan doesn’t think much to domesticity either. “I have so little clutter in the house that the only type of housework I need do is to sweep the room with a glance.” He’s not joking as following in Percy’s footsteps Alan has just a couple of chairs, TV and stereo in the room with a scattering of magazines and a coffee table. “The table keeps things off of the floor and I don’t have to bend too much to pick things up.”

RELAXING
Alan’s job was stressful so he certainly makes the most of any time to relax. “I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t have enough to do when I stopped working” he continues “I decided to clear out the garden and it’s turned out to be the best alternative therapy I could ever wish for.” Alan opens the double patio doors into the garden and proudly shows me his work…a simple Zen Garden.

Alan’s garden is about 100 square metres and surrounded by a high wooden fence, which helps to create a feeling of privacy. Gone is the lawn and in its place are four very simple raised beds, which have been dissected by straight paths. “Here’s it is,” Alan says proudly as we walk into his outside room. “It is only when you start a garden like this that you realise something important happens every day.” He says philosophically.




AS INDIVIDUAL AS YOU
“They are really easy to make, you don’t need any woodworking skills as the wood yard cuts all the planks for you, all I did was nail them together.” Alan goes into a bit more detail. “There are several types of Zen gardens, the most prominent being the dry rock type, called karesansui, literally meaning dry-mountain-and-water gardens. Gravel and rocks have been used to denote sacred areas of Japan since time immemorial, so I thought that’s what I’d use.” Alan’s raised beds have been filled with sand, fine gravel and larger rocks, which have been placed off centre in each bed and a few choice statues.

The only greenery to be seen are three small bamboo’s in pots, which help to break up the paths straight edges. “Water is often represented with sand or pebbles; mountains with stone; and islands with masses of moss or rock material” He says, “All I need to do is rake it every day.”.

“I spend at least an hour a day raking the garden.” Alan confesses. “As part of the Zen daily ritual, the sand and gravel is raked in the pattern of a flowing river.” “It’s very neat and tidy” I say, “You can tell you don’t have any pets”.
“Or children.” Alan agrees with a shudder which makes me glad I left my two at home.

I look around, soaking in the tranquillity.

“The power of the garden is its silence and ability to still the mind; it’s a very peaceful place to be, even if the neighbours cats use it as a loo sometimes.” Alan shrugs matter of factly.

HUMBLE SIMPLICITY
I am very much impressed with this little oasis. Alan gives me a little bit of background. “Zen rock gardens can express humble simplicity and the passage of time, Zen priests often used distant mountains and views as design elements in their tiny gardens, a principle called shakkei (borrowed scenery). Zen gardens can create the illusion of a long journey within a limited space. Each turn or bend of my little garden offers an opportunity to look at a special object or symbol. The idea of this is to keep the stroller’s mind on spiritual matters.” I suggest that he has found enlightenment. “Enlightenment is just another word for feeling comfortable being a completely ordinary person, which I do.” He says without thinking and continues. “Strolling in gardens goes back to India, where walking around a temple symbolised walking around the spiritual centre of the universe. India’s so-called “stroll gardens” were adapted by the Chinese, who decorated their gardens with symbols of the Buddhist universe, purifying the mind with each encounter.”

COST
I change the mood by talking about money. “I used very good materials” Alan answered, “so it cost me a few thousand euro to put together, the lighting alone cost the price of a holiday.” The lighting was so discreet that I hadn’t even noticed it was there. “The lights are disguised as stones and they highlight the statues.” He tells me and continues. “You could put something like this together for a few euro though if you were inventive with the materials. Go for what you like the look and feel of. You can make the garden any size too. I have totally filled my garden with the design; other people might just want to put aside a small area for contemplation and meditation or to just be a talking point. There’s really no limit, but remember that simplicity and tidiness are key factors; the design won’t work if there are a lot of weeds about.

PRESENT
“Here’s something for you.” Alan steers me back into the house “It’s your own mini Zen garden, the scale is smaller but the principles are the same.” Alan passes me a small bag and a rectangular pot container. “ You can play with this in your quieter moments. “ I have a peep in the bag; there are a few small stones, a larger piece of sandstone and some sand. “Change the design every day and make patterns that please you, there are no hard and fast rules.” I nod and thank him for the present.

Alan then gives me another good piece of advice before we sit on the two chairs in the front room to drink our herbal tea. “Your mind is a garden, your thoughts are the seeds, the harvest you get can be either flowers or weeds.”

House Plants

JUST PEEL AND REVEAL
I moved into my first parent free house when I was 18. It was a small 2 bedroomed terrace and hadn’t been modified since the early 1950’s. Details like multicoured carpets, a pink bathroom suite and dark brown vinyl wallpaper didn’t bother me much as I had more interesting issues to deal with like working and going out on the town.

There were two things I did in the house to brighten things up a bit. The first was to peel off the 25 year old wallpaper in the front room. It came off really easily and underneath there was some more brown paper from the 1940’s. It looked good to me, so that stayed on the walls for another four years until I moved out. The other improvement I made was to add houseplants. I had more than 50 different types around the house and sprayed them all regularly, which is probably the main reason the house also needed a damp course putting in.

FERNS
I particularly liked the ferns in the bathroom and had them hanging everywhere. They all enjoyed the shaded light and humidity that someone who had at least one bath a week could offer. I tried to get as many different types in there as I could without the pots slipping into the bath when I was having a soak and covering me with soil.

Here are a few you will find in the shops. They can all grow quite large in the wild, but will keep to a manageable size in a pot.
Boston Fern
Boston ferns (Nephrolepis exaltata) are long-lived plants and the most popular for the bathroom. They can live for years with little attention.
Lemon Button Fern
Lemon button fern (Nephrolepis cordifolia) produces cute, golden-green fronds with rounded edges (that give them their button like appearance). It's an easy-to-grow fern that fits in well with a lot of decorating styles.

Maidenhair Fern
Among the most loved ferns, maidenhairs (Adiantum raddianum) offer fine-textured fronds on black stalks. The arching fronds emerge light green and darken a bit as they age.
Rabbit's-Foot Fern
(Humata tyermanii) This slow-growing fern offers dark green, fine textured fronds and fuzzy stems that creep down over the pot or along the soil. These stems are what give the fern its delightful common name.

Staghorn Fern
(Platycerium bifurcatum) Among the most spectacular of ferns, staghorns don't need to be grown in soil so you often see them mounted and grown on walls or posts.
Bird's Nest Fern
I found my plant in the road when I was coming home from work one day. It had been run over a few times but soon picked up in my fern sanctuary. It’s another favourite ofthe bathroom and mine lasted years. Bird’s nest fern (Asplenium nidus) is a slow-growing plant with bright green fronds that radiate from the centre of the plant, creating a vase or bird's nest shape.
Silver Brake Fern
(Pteris cretica)The crested fronds are almost spidery and bear a bright silvery stripe down the centre.
Kangaroo Paw Fern
(Microsorium diversifolium) This interesting fern offers shiny, dark green fronds in an unkempt mound reminiscent of Medusa's hair. Like rabbit's-foot fern, it bears creeping stems that may grow down the side of its container.

FRESH AIR TOO
Plants are just the thing to brighten the house up and freshen air. Check out the more common ones you can get locally, from the Peace Lily, Philodendrons, Dracaena varieties, Spider Plants, English Ivy, Ficus varieties, Bamboo, Aloe and Umbrella plants. They all filter impurities. My house must have had the cleanest air in the street.

There are big steps in architecture to bring greenery into heavily built up areas for this reason, not only into buildings, but on the outside of them too. The new ideas have been coined Vegitecture.


VEGITECTURE

Vegitecture or Vegetated Architecture is the use of organic materials such as plants as an element in construction. If done well it is an environmentally friendly way to add life to a city or heavily built up area. The Council Offices in Letterkenny made steps towards Vegitecture with their fabulous sedum roof, but it can go beyond that with more elaborate designs.





The Musée du Quai Branly in Paris has an 8,600 square foot vertical garden featuring more than 170 different plant species. The walls use a combination of sunshades, solar panels, and ventilation to catch water, making them self-sustaining ecosystems. The benefits aren’t just aesthetic; the walls reduce noise and provide natural cooling for the surrounding buildings because they soak up noise and heat, whereas concrete just reflects these.

The Irish weather is ideal to have these designs on buildings as we wouldn’t have to water them much, in fact rainwater can be harvested and stored and the correct plants will purify the air. There is also talk of a “vertical farm” where tenants of tall buildings grow their own fruit and vegetables on the walls and roofs. Looking at the images of proposed buildings and cities that will incorporate these ideas, they do remind me a bit of my old living room, except it would be outside, which would give the tenant more room to move around indoors.


NOT NEW
The idea isn’t new though. I used to deliver papers to a wooden house with a grass roof, which always used to amaze me, especially when they put the goat up there to keep the grass down. The living architecture idea goes back even further than my paper round in the 1970’s. There’s a well known Irish building that blends into the countryside perfectly. It was built at a time when there was only stone, mud and grass and is 600 years older than the pyramids. It’s Newgrange in the Boyne Valley with it’s grass roof, built in 3200BC and it hasn’t moved an inch since….I think we’ll see more on Vegitecture over the coming years, lack of space will soon be no excuse for not growing your own food.

IT'S IN THE DETAIL

Photo: This fungi is growing in an area no larger than an egg box. Its proportions are perfect and an inspiration to any garden design.

My mower is still in for repair. I don’t mind so much as it’s given me an opportunity to just sit in the garden without thinking that I should be working (although the hedges do need trimming back).

I’ve decided to make good use of the sunshine and not content with the rather uncomfortable garden chairs, I have dragged a full sized mattress outside and plonked it down on decking and added a few large fluffy pillows. It’s being in bed and getting a suntan at the same time….bliss. Now I can look up into the sky watching the clouds roll by and totally ignore the hedges and anything else that is deciding to let it’s hair down and run wild.

RUNNING WILD
Talking of running wild, my lads break my blissful avoidance by jumping on top of me and letting me know of some bright red fungi that’s popped up overnight in the undergrowth. As comfortable as I am, I can’t miss an opportunity for taking a few pictures, so I drag myself up out of bed and grab the camera.

Children have a knack of finding things that as adults we are overlook. Children tend to know every inch of their garden and beyond. As a youngster I had a very exciting playground as our garden backed onto an old disused sand quarry. Everything was there to keep a lad interested all year. In summer we would build rafts on the small lakes that appeared in the hollows, one so deep that there was a rumour about it being bottomless. There were sheer sandstone cliff faces where you could climb, carve your name in and jump off and land on the soft slopes below. Hidden to most people was a disused train tunnel that stretched for half a mile underground and took you to another part of the quarry. This was magical when walking through the darkness to the distant light, you felt as though you were being taken to another world. It was our Narnia wardrobe. We didn’t notice the rats. I spent most of my spare time in the quarry and knew every square centimetre, from where the frogs were in the summer to the best places to sledge when the snow came in winter. Luckily for her, my mum knew nothing about my escapades.

FUNGI
We are at the fungi. It’s very impressive. I take a couple of snaps and look around for more; it’s the right time of year after all. In a dead tree base I see some really small white toadstools. They are tiny and the whole micro climate they are in is no bigger than an egg carton, but looking at it close up it could be a contender for the best designed garden at Chelsea or Bloom. Everything is perfect; all of the small plants have found their ideal growing places. I take the picture and put a red rowan berry in it to get a feeling of size and perspective. In doing so though I ruined the effect. I meddled with nature. All you can see is the berry out of proportion. I take it out and leave the perfect design as I found it.



DETAIL
Noticing small details like this is a real treat. When we have small children visiting and they are bored and restless, Julie will take them outside where they immediately drop all whining. Younglings (as my eldest son calls them) will always find something to fascinate them. A ladybird to look at, buttercups to hold under their chins to see if they like butter, making daisy chains or sucking the nectar out of fuchsia flowers. They can spot beetles at twenty paces and find all the best hiding places. It doesn’t take much to capture a child’s imagination; being outside is enough. There is so much drama and beauty in a garden. The spider’s webs have been so beautiful in these misty mornings. As I stop to admire one, I notice a spider spinning her web. A damselfly interrupts her work getting trapped in the sticky threads. An epic battle ensues and just when the spider defeats the fly, seemingly winning her breakfast, another spider from a nearby web, who had been biding her time, moves in and does battle ending up victorious.

SMALL TREASURES
A back yard can have as many treasures as a big garden. A window box with parsley to munch, dandelions coming up through a crack in the concrete, little red spiders running along a sunny wall. We often add a few playthings to a garden to encourage children out. A football is a standard for boys but again as an adult we don’t really know what will capture the imagination. Think of Christmas when a child would rather play with the box the present came in. A bucket full of water and a few sticks and stones or piece of chalk to mark out a hopscotch game is often enough for a child to lose themselves in play.

One thing’s for sure, whether the grass is long or short, whether the hedges are neat and tidy, children won’t see work to do; they will see adventure.