Not far from Archway tube station, just off the Holloway Road is a street named St. John’s Villas lined with imposing early Victorian houses on one side and a later, more run-of-the-mill terrace on the other. The street is a cut off Holloway Road heading towards Hornsey Road and like many 19th century city streets […]
Author: paulitzer
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Sycamores in the British landscape
Soon after I first became interested in plants and conservation I became aware of the concept of native and non-native species. I grew up in Dover, a port town where xenophobic attitudes are paradoxically ingrained in a population who perceive themselves to be on the frontline of an unfinished European war and are ever ready […]
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Upper Teesdale adventure
I have been on a sojourn to the North and spent several days in The North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Sandwiched between the Yorkshire Dales and Northumberland National Parks, it attracts far fewer visitors than its glamorous neighbours. That said, the Glorious 12th having just passed, the area was thrumming with Land Rovers […]
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Persian Silk in Globe Street
I was transfixed by the charms of a Persian Silk Tree (Albizia julibrissin) in Southwark today. A most majestic and unusual (for England) street tree, in fact a rarely-planted tree anywhere in the UK, street or otherwise. This is perhaps a cautious test planting to see what happens – the tree has a reputation for […]
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A Tree Grows in Bermondsey
The Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) is a common tree of street plantings, parks and gardens, in fact it pops up everywhere. It has a curious habit (in London at least) of blending in, it has a passing resemblence to the Ash (Fraxinus excelsior) or the Walnut (Juglans regia) and seems inoffensive when it first […]
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Field Maple’s urban resilience
I admire this gawky and unloved Field Maple – acer campestre – on the Hornsey Road in north London. It couldn’t be further away from the bucolic landscape implied by it’s name. This one fills a space on a busy main road by a row of local shops soaking up traffic fumes and witnessing round […]
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Bedford Row Robinias
Bedford Row is a very handsome eighteenth century London street, in some ways more handsome than it’s Bloomsbury neighbours north of the Theobald’s Road divide. It is wider than Great James Street and softer than Doughty Street, it is lined largely by fine Georgian terraces, (the exception being a post-war infill half way up on […]
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North Americans surround City Hall
More London is the could-do-better new development of the usual eateries, open spaces and largely unremarkable office buildings on the southbank just west of City Hall. It does try hard though and has some interesting bits like the water feature running the length of the dramatic diagonal pedestrian conduit between Tooley Street and the river. […]
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Barnsbury’s golden tree
I cycle past this very fine Robinia Pseudoacacia var. Frisia in Barnsbury on my way to work. It always gladdens the heart with its magnificent golden foliage. Not strictly a street tree this one as it is in a private garden, but it is most definitely part of the urban landscape rather than a garden […]
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Helleborines at Yockletts Bank
I love the downland landscape around Canterbury, there is a maze of ancient hollow ways overhung with coppice and hedgerows traversing steep banks and hidden valleys occasionally allowing a peek at a lovely English landscape which in my imagination has been unchanged for millenia. This was the scene as we turned off Stone Street (the […]