National Tree Week

Those in the UK might be interested to know about the Tree O'Clock event which is taking place next Saturday, 5th December ... a mass tree-planting exercise! You can either go along to one of the many local planting events or you can pledge to plant a native species tree at home. All the information you need can be found at Breathing Places, which is well worth a visit even if you can't participate in the event.

"To help celebrate National Tree Week, BBC Learning has teamed up with Guinness World Records for Tree O'Clock – a nationwide challenge to plant as many trees as possible within a single hour, uniting the nation in an event which will provide a lasting legacy and an amazing learning opportunity for all ages.

At 11.00am on Saturday 5 December everyone is invited to join in and "do one thing" for nature by simply planting a tree and, in doing so, learn the benefits of plantingthe right tree in the right place.

In a recent survey for The Woodland Trust, 86% of people asked said they would like to see more trees being planted in their local area. And over 70% said if they had a wood within walking distance it would encourage them to exercise."

North London Herb Events

Just to let you know about some exciting herbal events taking place this summer/autumn in North London...

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Paula at Lemon Balm , a lovely new herbal shop and therapy centre in Camden, is conducting a

Special Midsummer Herb Walk and Picnic in Regent’s Park
Tuesday, 23rd June, 7pm
Meet at Lemon Balm, 76 Parkway, London NW1 7AH.
£10 per person (concs £5).
Book now on 020 7267 3334, or via shop@lemonbalmonline.com

"Join Medical Herbalists Paula Grainger MNIMH and Kristine de Block MNIMH as well as the Lemon Balm team to celebrate Midsummer’s Eve with an evening stroll through Regents Park and Canal, discovering all the wonderful herbal plants growing wild in the heart of the city. We’ll talk about the magic and folklore associated with these plants as well as their place in the modern Herbalists’ Apothecary. Please bring a contribution to the picnic."

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The lovely ladies at Sensory Solutions, who travel the country dispensing herbal wisdom from their airstream trailer, run a range of courses, including a

Superfoods Berry Day
Walk 'n' Workshop with The Wild Wicked Witches
Sunday 27th September
10.30am - 5.00pm
Lee Valley Village YHA, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire.
£60 / £45 concessions - deposit £20

Fiona: 07830 195 745
Karen: 07865 081927

sensorysolutions@hotmail.co.uk

"Come and experience autumn through our Native Superfoods, the berries and hips that
grow around us. Autumn is the perfect time to gather all the last hips, fruits and berries to preserve them for those valuable vitamins to protect us from colds and flu's over the colder months. You will learn to recognise the plants and also how to make a delicious medicinal tincture. "

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Do let me know if you have details of other courses, workshops or events and I'll update the noticeboard regularly!

Climate Change Film

Just wanted to pass on this message from Friends of the Earth - those of you in the UK can help campaign for climate change by going along to the cinema and watching a fab film ...



"The Age of Stupid is a new film about the consequences of dangerous climate change that's showing in cinemas around the UK. The makers of the film are also calling for action at the UN Climate talks in Copenhagen.

The more people who go to see the film early on the better the chance of a bigger global release. That will get the message about climate change out to new audiences."





You can find full details, watch clips and get a list of cinemas and times here.

Earth Hour

This Saturday, 28th March, the WWF are organising a 'Switch it off!' campaign to highlight global warming. At 8.30pm local time, people all over the world will be switching off their lights to signal to their governments the urgent need to tackle climate change.. please help to spread the word!



You can sign up to register your support and find resources for making your own blog post and visit the WWF's Earth Hour website for further information .. hope you'll be joining in?

Green Fair

A wonderful thing - I've just been to the Better Haringey Green Fair which was held just over the road from our house this afternoon.

It was so nice to see the green space outside Tottenham town hall being used for such a great purpose - it used to be behind railings, overgrown, full of litter and only frequented by vagrants and winos. But a year or two back the council put money and effort into sorting it out, opening it up and adding broad paved access paths and lovely old-fashioned street lights to make it safer. It is used a lot now and looks great.

But I digress! Back to the Green Fair ... lots of stalls with local campaigning, wildlife and recycling groups. I chatted to some lovely people, including the local Friends of the Earth group who had a bloke dressed up as an orang-u-tan to launch their campaign about Bio-Fuels: the EU is proposing a directive requiring 10% of petrol and diesel be made from biofuels by 2020, but using land for palm oil is causing food shortages and accelerating rain-forest destruction .. find out more here and contact your MEP about blocking the proposal.

It was great to visit the stalls and I signed petitions and MP letters on a number of issues and picked up lots of leaflets.

Thought I'd share some of the info and links, in case anybody's interested?

I got a wonderful 'STOP! Don't bin it, recycle it!' sticker which I'm going to stick on the lid of our kitchen bin to remind everyone to think twice about whether something can be recycled. This was from Recycle for London whose website tells you where to find your nearest recycling facilities and has lots of info on more ways to recycle kitchen and garden household waste.

At the BBC Breathing Places stand I was given a free CD 'tune into the dawn chorus: audio guide' which has the songs of different birds on it plus a quiz at the end.. brilliant! I can only recognise one or two, and would really like to learn some more so that I can listen out for them. We have a pretty good dawn chorus here, despite being in a built up city area. There's a little booklet to go with it which has pictures of all the birds and advice on encouraging birds into your space. You can hear and see some of them here and also download a beautiful kingfisher screensaver. Apparently, once a year in May there is an International Dawn Chorus Day.. shame we just missed this year's one, but definitely something to get involved with in 2009! Some more bird links you might like are British Trust for Ornithology and the RSPB.

I was also given a 'tree party' pocket guide - which has tree-planting tips plus spotting tips for common local trees. You can download your own copy here and, if you have kids, you might be interested in the Tree For All initiative, too?

Well, I hope you found something to interest you somewhere in all that! I'll add the links to the side bar in my continuing quest to develop Earth and Tree as a sort of resource centre for information on all these earth friendly types of thing.

Earth Day

So tomorrow is Earth Day and people all over the world will be attempting to focus their leaders' attention on the plight of the planet, as well as re-visiting how they themselves can take positive steps to make a difference.

This is the Official Earth Day site and I've collected a couple of interesting links to peruse on Earth Day, if you're having a perusing kind of a moment (!)

The Nature Conservancy Earth Day info including details of their Plant a Billion Trees campaign

Wear Blue on Earth Day to Vote for NO COAL

Earth Day Gallery at Love Earth which has some stunning images of the Earth viewed from outer space.




Earth Day isn't such a big thing here in the UK .. but I'm not going to let that stop me joining in! So I will be donating all proceeds from tomorrow's sales at Hedgewitch to Friends of the Earth. Please spread the word if you can, and help me raise some funds for a good cause!




I usually mark the day by quietly appreciating the earth .. and I will be doing this tomorrow the best way I know how, by getting outside in the fresh air to commune with nature, either visiting a local site or on the roof in my garden with my sleeves rolled up!

------> GET INVOLVED: How do you celebrate Earth Day? What does the Earth mean to you?

Capel Manor

Today I went to Capel Manor Gardens for their Spring Show. It is a horticultural college and has 30 acres of beautiful themed gardens, including Sunflower Street - a series of spaces designed for the front and back gardens of normal houses. My favourite was called Rustic Garden and influenced by Tuscany..
















I loved this one, too, which had a formal area with a willow screen in front of a great space for growing veggies with a green house and shed...






And then this garden is just plain pretty..




There was a 'step towards Greener Living' marquee, which was great! I met a wonderful lady from the North London Organic Gardeners Society who pressed a packet of heritage peas collected from her own plants into my palm in return for my meagre 50p donation! How exciting.. she thought they would be OK on my roof and I could pinch them out once they were thigh-high without them minding.. watch this space.



I also picked up a moth and butterfly identification poster and some interesting information about making your garden friendly for wildlife. And I left the marquee with a letter to send to the Secretary of State for the Environment objecting to GM crops and a flyer for an open day at the national collection of hyssop and thyme garden in June.. not a bad morning's work!


















Here are my treasures from the Herbal Haven stall ... I thought I was very restrained, to be honest(!) I got another lovage plant, because its a favourite. I got a chicory, which I have never tried before but hope to use as a salad leaf. I got a bronze fennel, because its SO beautiful and I'm thinking of using the fronds as foliage in vases of cut flowers. And I got some Southernwood - the fragrance is amazing and I'm planning to use it to pack some punch in my herb sachets this year.





If anyone's in the UK and fancies going along, its on Saturday and Sunday this weekend and I'm putting the link here ... there's a real punch & judy show, sheep-shearing and a brass band at the weekend!

Local Lavender Project

I've been adding a couple of my handmade lavender sachets to Etsy today .. and in the process, I found the details of the community lavender harvest where I collected the lavender and some photos taken on my last visit. It was such a beautiful way to spend a sunny afternoon and I thought others might be interested, too?

The once famous lavender fields of the Carshalton area of London have been revived by The Local Lavender Project: cuttings were collected from the public and grown as a horticulture project at HMP Downview, providing prisoners with useful skills. Then prisoners on day-release helped clear and plant up 3 acres of disused allotments. Now that the lavender has matured, hundreds of people turn up every year to “pick their own” at the annual community harvesting event.




It just happened to fall on my birthday the year I took these photos, and it was one of the best I've had. We had to be very careful, though, as my companion was allergic to bee stings... and where there are 3 acres of lavender, there are lots of lovely big bumble-bees!



It was really easy to dry the lavender.. I had only dried smaller quantities before, from my garden, by hanging up bunches by the stems with a paper bag secured around the flowerheads to catch them. The same method worked fine for the larger bundles and the room smelt kind of wonderful for months! I save the dried stems when I've rubbed the dried flowerheads off to put on the fire in the winter.

Bioregional Local Lavender Project

I will definitely be going along again this year. Its hard to describe how it feels (and smells!) to be waist deep in a field of lavender.. its wonderful. And as the sun shines down and you inhale the relaxing aroma, you can't stop smiling.