Flippin' deck

Hi to everyone coming to this blog via the piece I wrote for Guardian Unlimited today.

Please feel free to take a look around, add me to your bookmarks, and let me know what topics you'd like me to cover on this blog.

Just to whet your appetite, upcoming posts will be featuring (the horticultural gods willing):

• the art and science of composting
• best beetroot varieties and the finest beetroot soup recipe on the planet
• creating your own witches brew - making fertiliser out of garden plants and weeds

Comments

[Richard Noble]

The tragedy has indeed not been the deck itself... its been the bloody british climate... slippy wood and a few squelchy hours of sunshine are only the perennials of dear old blightey.

Over here in Toronto (whose lattitude is surprisingly closer to la costa del sol than London) we enjoy our expanse of fine pressure treated lumber occupying a full 20% of the garden space... indeed from this elevated perch we see better the fineries of our horticultural endeavours... and it dont half feel nice under the tootsies.

Hey, add the odd ornamental plant pots and hanging baskets and its glorious ofactorilly, sensually and visually.

My concern is... well the upside of global warming is your weather will be more like ours soon enough... so why tear down your deck??? No... keep the deck, deck it out and put some shrimp on the Barby.

(Now dont get me started on the English barbecue, the poverty of its 12 inch diameter dimension and all that effort with wet charcoal.)

Cheers,

Richard

[Neil]

Where can I find info on how to dig a wildlife pond for a tenner? Is it also possible on high ground, outside Prague?

[Jerry Coleby-Williams]

Totally agree about decking and the use of gardens as garden 'rooms'.

I'm enjoying swimming against the tide, creating a suburban garden in Brisbane that's both pretty and 'climate change ready' at the front and productive at the back. It'll be Brisbane city's first sustainable house and garden once completed - a different spin on integrated house and garden design. See: http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1124632.htm

Australian gardens are suffering from this TV makeover show driven fashion where plants are secondary to hard landscaping. And the plants that do get used are 'landscaper favourites', about 20 species used ad nauseum across Australia. Every garden a room, every room furnished by municipal plants.