“I can’t understand why anyone would want to buy a house on such an awful street.” These words, uttered by a passer-by 15 years ago, acted as a red rag to a bull for Wharfdale Road resident John Ashwell. A typically busy inner London street of multiple building styles and ages, Wharfdale Road connects York […]
How exciting – next week, Saturday 28 May – Sunday 5 June, is London Tree Week! I’m sure this fantastic initiative from the Mayor will prove to be a great success. There are a whole raft of activities organised by City Hall’s environment department to check out on the London Tree Week pages. Not to be outdone […]
Have you noticed how rare coniferous street trees are in London? Take it from me, there are very few of them. Evergreens seem outnumbered by deciduous species, although more do seem to be appearing (such as the Strawberry Tree). So what are the reasons for this coniferist state of affairs; are pine needles seen as […]
I wonder what they were thinking, planting Olive trees on the streets of de Beauvoir Town and Pentonville? I like to think it is a nod to the glory days of 1980s Islington when media types slurped their way through tankers of new world Chardonnay accompanied by mountains of juicy olives. Famed in tabloid imaginations […]
Marooned in the midst of a Victorian industrial landscape in an unlikely corner of Dover – the famous, unassuming town where I grew up – is an ancient European Yew tree (Taxus baccata). It lies in the valley of the river Dour (pronounced ‘doer’) from which the town takes its name. This name has a […]
The graveyard of Old St. Pancras church is full of interest: tucked away behind the station, it contains several things worth missing a train for, not least some venerable old trees. The churchyard has survived much as it must have appeared in the mid 19th century when the last significant alterations were made. Its architectural […]
I have just spent a very lovely warm and sunny week in Cornwall, a place thick with the Cabbage trees which have inspired this post. I love the Cabbage tree (Cordyline australis) because of its association with the seaside and the fantasies of palm fringed tropical beaches that it brings to mind. The ‘Cornish palm’ […]
It is exciting when you discover a new aspect to a place you think you know well. Recently I heard about an old orchard in my borough which has survived under the care of some London monks (a rare breed in themselves). An orchard, in Islington? It’s true! And it is the borough’s only one. […]
In a post about the North American Red Oak (Quercus rubra) I wrote in the balmy days of August, I rather flippantly stated that ”… the beauty of this tree in its native New World is surely its fiery autumn colours which in our damper and milder oceanic climate is watered down from a rich […]
In my recent post about the Wild Service tree and it’s elusive fruits, I reproduced an English translation of a German recipe for Wild Service vodka, or Chequer schnapps as I now prefer to call it.