Or a good idea, depending on your sense of humour. This one’s a year old but ’tis the season to break out the christmas decorations and besides, everyone loves a good cautionary tale.
Tag: hort crimes
Gardening as an extreme sport
Remember the orchid collectors who were kidnapped back in 2000 by Columbian guerillas? One of them, Tom Hart Dyke, is returning to the country where he was held hostage for 9 months.
Tom recalled the day his captors announced that he would be killed,
Tom spent his ‘final day’ designing a dream garden that contained plants he’d collected from across the globe.
His determination to garden against all odds drove his captors crazy:
It was perhaps Tom’s jungle antics that made his captors glad to see the back of him.
“Building gardens in the mountains was much to the annoyance of our kidnappers,” said Tom.
Now if this isn't gardening as an extreme sport, I don't know what is.
Read the article: Orchid hunter Tom Hart Dyke returns to Colombia 14 years after guerrillas kidnapped him in Darien Gap region
I prefer my bushes natural, thanks
A botanical graffiti artist continues to shock the grey-haired set at the riverfront park in Windsor, Ontario. Honestly, when I saw what he did to that shrub my first thought was “bravo”. Up with the revolution! Go natural! Shaving Trimming Shearing shrub balls is the real vandalism here.
The City of Windsor’s executive director of parks and facilities, John Miceli, said:
Well, it’s unfortunate that they don’t use their talents with our Adopt a Park program. We could really use their skills, because they’re very, very good, whoever’s doing it, at being able to, uh, shape things.
Read on: Windsor’s phallus-obsessed bushwacker strikes again: Guerrilla gardener writes ‘penis’ with shrubs
Potty idea
A great article from The Telegraph UK:
Using crocks to help containers drain? A potty idea
It’s a sacred principle of container gardening, but putting crocks at the bottom of a container can do more damage than good.
Great Storm 25th anniversary: what we learnt about our trees – Telegraph
This is a great time of year to plant a tree, so here is some great advice from England:
we used to dig a deep round hole and fill it with rich tree compost which we planted the tree into. We now know that this encouraged the roots to stay in the planting pit; rather than spreading out laterally in search of nutrients and moisture, they grew in a circle. In severe cases the roots became almost “pot-bound” and there were few wide-spreading roots to anchor the tree into the ground.
Alberta ‘pot’ turns out to be late-blooming daisies
This article brought me out of my blog slumber.
Alberta ‘pot’ seized by police was late-blooming daisies
Please don’t smoke the daisies.
It turns out that more than 1,600 suspected marijuana plants that a special police squad ripped out of a yard in Lethbridge, Alberta this summer are a species of daisy.
The bust, which was announced with fanfare in July, has homeowner Ryan Thomas Rockman scratching his head over the confusion. Just the same he’s happy the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT) has dropped the charge of producing a controlled substance.
My first thought: 1600 plants!! Man, that must have been a beautiful display. I’d go ballistic if that were my garden. My second thought: Daisies? For cripes sakes, how do daisies get confused with marijuana plants? Those cops really need to spend more time in gardens looking at plants – not pulling them out.
On the case on MySpace
The "Hanging Basket Vandal" of Chatteris, England, has been busted. He was caught when a police officer came across his video, "Skeggsy destroying Chatteris in bloom" on MySpace.
Don’t mess with the flowers in jolly old England!
