David Williams on ‘The Greening Of London’, September's meeting

Our speaker at our September meeting was David Williams on ‘The Greening Of London’. David is a registered City of London guide and lecturer who specialises in themed walks and talks about London’s history.

David started the talk with some facts and statistics on how green London is. It has the reputation of being a very green city. In fact 47% of London is green which includes parks, formal gardens, allotments, cemeteries, our house gardens and window boxes. Apparently, there are 741 allotment sites across London. The City of London (the square mile) is very affluent and funds lots of sites in other London Boroughs and the surrounding area including St James and Hyde Parks, Epping Forest and the Olympic Park.

Victoria Park in Hackney is believed to be the first public park. There are 7 large cemeteries around London including Highgate, which were created to accommodate the growth in the population of London.

We were also given lots of information about historical people and organisations that had an influence on London and it’s green spaces. The Worshipful Company of Gardeners is one of the livery companies of the City of London a philanthropic organisation which provides charitable work. Christopher Wren designed a plan to build a park all along the Embankment by the river Thames. It took 200 years to come to pass. Humphrey Repton, a famous landscape garden designer lived in Romford, Essex. He famously recorded his designs in little red books. Octavia Hill was one of the founders of the National Trust.

Professor Abrecrombie was a town planner was also a strong advocate for implementing ‘green belts’ to safeguard agricultural land from growing urbanisation which is very relevant to us today. Together with the architect JH Forshaw, they identified key problems such as overcrowding and poor housing in deprived neighbourhoods, traffic congestion and the inadequate provision of open space. Abercrombie and Forshaw’s recommendations included the separation of industry and housing, the enhancement of historical centres, an increase in open space and the creation of three ring roads to ensure the city’s functionality.

The talk gave us all food for thought on issues about the environment, our access to open spaces and the local planning processes.

 

Professor Abrecrombrie 

 

The Worshipful Company of Gardeners 

 

Growing soft fruit, Mike Able August's meeing

Our speaker for our August meeting was Mike Abel on the topic of Growing Soft Fruit. Mike
had been a horticulturalist and taught Soft Fruit growing at college during his career.
Mike explained that all soft fruit is self-fertile meaning it doesn’t need another variety of fruit
to cross pollinate unlike for example apples. But the flowers will still need to be pollinated if it
is to produce fruit. As we have heard from several of our speakers, bumblebees rather than
honeybees are actually the best pollinators for a number of reasons. Their large fluffy bodies
catch a lot of pollen, they fly in colder weather meaning they are out earlier and later in the
day and they will even fly when the weather is wet. They are also willing to pollinate in
polytunnels. So, bumble bees are an important resource.
Soft fruit includes things like strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries,
gooseberries, and currants. They are propagated from plants (e.g. cuttings or rootstock) not
from seeds. Some useful tips about the various fruits were:
· Strawberries can be summer fruiting where the crop comes just once each year, or
continuous, but you get less quantity – so maybe not enough to fill your bowl! They form
runners after fruiting and you should peg these down so they root and create new plants.
‘Malling Centenary’ is recommended for good flavour.
· In raspberries you can get summer fruiting or autumn fruiting. The advantage of autumn
fruiting varieties is they are more self-supporting and don’t need to be tied up. You cut them
to the ground once they have fruited and they will fruit on the new wood they grow next year.
Whereas with summer ones you only cut out the stems that produced fruit this year and any
new stems will produce next year’s fruit. ‘Malling Minerva’ is a good summer variety and
‘Polka’ a good autumn one. All raspberries are very thirsty and need good watering.
· Blackberries – prune out the old wood once it has fruited but leave the new branches for
next year.
· Blueberries need acid soil (Ericaceous compost) and preferably rainwater.
· Gooseberries fruit on the old wood. A major pest is the sawfly whose eggs hatch into a
small green caterpillar and eat all the leaves before you even notice them.
· Blackcurrants fruit best on new wood. It is recommended that you cut out one third of the
branches each year. Birds are the major pest eating all your currants.
Mike brought samples of the plants so that we could identify them, and also brought a
selection of things for sale including fly traps and honeycomb.