The world’s largest green wall was unveiled at the Expo 2005, featuring the Bio-Long in Japan, the wall is 200 metres, 15 metres high and has 200 different species of plants growing on it totalling a 200,000 plant population altogether.

Green roofs in the UK are (pardon the pun) growing in popularity and becoming more and more common according to Dave Auster at Greenfix Sky Gardens who are UK Green Roof specialists.

Nightclub owner Billy Reilly is opening a roof terrace venue called Pacha, let’s hope that more nightclubs follow suit and cover their clubs in foliage.

In cities across Germany it is becoming law that flat-roofed buildings must have a green roof, and the overall roof coverage is said to be growing by more than 13 million square metres a year. In the UK it is expected that future UK planning regulations for roofs are starting to move in the same direction as the Germans with new buildings being required to have a portion of their roof surface area be dedicated for green walls and roofs.

As more and more people give up living in large houses with gardens and swap them for apartment living, many of them refuse to give up their gardening lifestyles.

Urban people are growing their vegetables and flowers in container gardens, on their balconies.

Bev Worsley does just this because she wanted to maintain her organic diet. She doesn’t want to compromise on the quality of her food so she made certain her new apartment had a container garden installed when it was built. She will continue to grow her herbs and vegetables.

“Just because I am moving into the city does not mean I want to give up on good, healthy eating,” she says. “I am not giving up on my lifestyle.”

With urban gardens they are smaller which is better for finding problems quicker and easier. So fungal infections that are more common in these container gardens are not allowed to spread and cause havoc.

“In an urban garden, you are always up-close and personal with your plants.”

Every year, the RSPB publishes the results of its annual Big Garden Birdwatch survey, which is held in January. This year shows the highest number of sightings of the garden goldfinch (picture courtesy of the RSPB) in five years and the RSPB believes this is due to our milder winters in recent years. The goldfinch made it into the top 10 most common birds for the first time. Read the rest of this entry »

A garden in memory of Lord Merylyn-Ree, a Labour MP for South Leeds from 1963 to 1992, has been built in Leeds.  The Lord Merlyn-Rees Riverside Garden has been built beside the Aire and Calder Navigation at Knostrop Cut, Hunslet, and was opened on Friday by city officials.  It forms part of a wide regeneration project area running through the Aire valley Read the rest of this entry »

I read an article in The Independent, which was talking about the collapse of bee colonies across the world, initially in the US, then Europe and now in Britain too.

Scientists believe that the radiation from our mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets could be killing the bees.  They think that the radiation interferes with the way that bees navigate, meaning they can’t find their way back to the hive.  60 - 70 percent of beehives have been abandoned and one the London’s largest bee-keepers has also announced that 23 of his 40 hives have also been abandoned.  Nobody knows for definite why it is happening but German research Read the rest of this entry »

Who would have thought that a little gardening hobby could land you in jail?

It seems one lady found her gardening habit dangerously addictive - she stole $38,000 from Read the rest of this entry »

Police in Prestatyn dealt with a rather unusual crime last month.  On the night of February 6th, police were alerted to individuals who were taking garden ornaments and gnomes from people’s gardens and dragging them out onto the pavement, where a vehicle was picking them up.

Two people were arrested and Read the rest of this entry »

This is an image, courtesy of Drives, showing a pneumatic flower display put in the offices of a ten-storey office block in Spitalfields, London. In repsonse to movement, these flowers start to move - and presumably scare Read the rest of this entry »

The classic bluebell, adored and treasured by many, normally blooms from early April to the end of May. However, the bluebell has been flowering all over the UK over a month earlier than usual. It was seen in February in Wales, Dorset and Surrey, amongst others.

Experts are blaming climate change with ever warmer temperatures early in the year. It was not the only flower to bloom early this year with National Trust gardeners spotting Read the rest of this entry »