Strawberry mountain

I loved Chelsea Flower Show last year so was keen to go along when the Bermuda Department of Tourism invited me. Last year, most of my favourite gardens were big show gardens outdoors, but this year I made more time for the exhibitors inside the floral marquee, and found lots of interesting smaller gardens. Here’s the 10 I liked best overall this year (in no particular order):

1. The tunnel of clematis of all different shades of purple and white, created by Raymond Evison and his Guernsey Clematis team

2. A huge mountain covered in nothing but strawberries that gave off the most delicious smell – but had a strict no-picking policy

3. An intricate display of flowers tucked into every crevice of an old, gnarled tree, making it look a bit like a maypole

Tree decked in flowers

4. The Bermuda garden, which was styled around a giant stone shaped like a polo – the ‘moonstone’ which Bermudians have in their gardens to bring good luck, and often used in wedding ceremonies

5. The Tourism Malaysia garden, again created by TV-gardener James Wong, but this year inspired by the pool-gardens of urban houses in Malaysia. Malaysia deservedly took home a gold award again this year

6. The incredible jockey’s jackets crafted out of flowers by entrants in the RHS Young Chelsea Florist of the Year competition

7. The Principality of Monaco’s chic, architecture-led garden with swimming pool and decking. As I left the show at 8pm I was mesmerised by the robot pool cleaner

Jockey's jackets

8. Sri Lanka’s beautiful orchid garden. Sri Lanka also pulled off a rather impressive list of celebrity drop-ins: Bill Bailey, JLS, Rick Stein, Jane Asher and Helen Mirren

9. The exciting B&Q garden with real goldfish and a striking vertical garden, promoting  techniques for maximising urban space to grow fresh produce

10. The controversial Failte Island ‘sky garden’ (the one that was lifted into the air by a crane every so often). I didn’t get chance to see it aloft but I loved the dense grasses and foliage of the garden, and let’s face it, it would be super-cool to dine in a ‘hanging Eden’.

It’s estimated that overfilling your kettle can waste as much power in a week as it’d take to light your house for a whole day. The way the Eco Kettle works is that it allows you to fill the entire kettle, then use a pump on the lid to release only the amount you need to boil into the boiling chamber. The kettle is therefore supposed to use 30% less energy than a standard kettle.

They could do with a few Eco Kettles at work, where the water-boiling situation is ridiculous. In my office building, there are two gigantic hot and cold water dispensing machines on every floor which no doubt cost a lot of money to run, but they’re pointless and damaging because:

1) the water only ever gets to 90-odd degrees after a lot of coaxing, and we all know you can’t make a good cuppa with anything shy of boiled water. So everyone uses a manky old normal kettle instead, while the water machine sits there keeping water semi-hot all day long, for that one strange person who can bear lukewarm tea and coffee.

2) London has some of the best tap water in the whole country so there’s no reason why we can’t drink our water straight from the tap over the sink

3) and stacked on top of the water machine is a pyramid of small plastic cups – about enough for three big mouthfuls – so people drinking a lot of water might get through a dozen cups day, and (despite clear signage) many find their way into the bin.

The water dispensers aren’t as bad as the industrial toasting machines that are on full blast non-stop for four hours every morning in the office cafe, but it still makes me mad.

We’re pretty happy with our new Eco Kettle at home because our previous kettle was knackered and we needed a new one anyway. It matches our silver toaster perfectly, and it has a neon blue light inside it which means making a late-night cup of Horlix feels a bit space-age (they retail at about £30 so you’d expect a few special features) .

But while I like a whizzy gadget as much as the next person, I think my Dad may have invented the original eco-kettle about six years ago…he measured two mugfuls of water (for him and my Mum) into the kettle and used a bit of Tippex to mark where it came up to…which seems to be the rather more straightforward (and free!) way to monitor how much you boil?

First off, I wanted to work out how much energy we actually use, so I downloaded our consumption history from the Scottish Power website (click below for full table). While electricity use has remained a fairly steady 6 or 7 kWh per day, gas usage varies massively according to the time of year, and since we had such a cold winter this year, our average use rocketed to 27 kWh per day. Yikes.

And how much do we currently pay?

Electricity: a standing charge of 13.39p per day, and then 10.246p per kWh.Gas: a standing charge of 13.12p per day, as well as an Independent Gas Transporter charge of 10.96p per day. Then it’s 3.057p per kWh.

Then I took a look at how much the various electricity companies use renewable sources to generate their power. As you can see, it’s only Ecotricity, Good Energy, and Green Energy UK that make a real commitment to renewables:

So, how to choose between these three?

The main differences are that while Ecotricity does have nuclear, coal and natural gas as part of its fuel mix, Good Energy and Green Energy UK use 100% renewable sources.

However, as the chart to the left shows, only Ecotricity actively uses the money it makes to build renewable sources itself. They’ve built or are building 108 wind turbines around the UK, while Good Energy and Green Energy UK have not created any such renewable power themselves (though note that the stats come from WhichGreen, which was created by Ecotricity!).

So I faced a bit of a dilemma over which to go with.

I looked into the gas supply side of things too. None of the companies have really offered much in the way of ‘green gas’ until literally this year, but now Ecotricity is generating green gas from biomethane, and feeding it into the gas grid just like they are with electricity.

Green Energy UK supplies only electricity at the moment, and Good Energy’s ‘green gas’ concept seems more based on getting people to generate heat through solar panels rather than actually generating a gas which can feed into the gas grid.

Interesting, British Gas has also started generating green gas this year but I’d far rather give my money to a company with a conscience like Ecotricity.

Cost was another factor as my flatmate and I are hardly made of money and while we’re keen to do our bit for the environment we don’t have a huge stack of cash left each month to play with. At the Camden Green Fair a few months back, I picked up a leaflet from Ecoswitch.com which I used to do a quick price comparison for the three eco-conscious suppliers, after inputting our average usage.

Green Energy UK only suppliers electricity, not dual fuel, and we’d rather have just the one bill if possible. So this is how Ecotricity and Good Energy measured up (click the image for the full chart).

So…….

Ecotricity is certainly the cheapest option – they actually promise to price match Scottish Power on electricity. I also like the fact that there’s no standing charge. Since we’re low-usage, we only want to pay for what we use. Taking into consideration the investment that Ecotricity is making in generating the power of the future, we decided to go with them.

Switching via Ecoswitch.com earned us a free gift too as we had a promo code on the leaflet. I emailed Ecoswitch for clarification on what gift we qualified for, and got a friendly email back 30 minutes later…a really impressive service!

Since our kettle is knackered and leaking, it made sense to go with the EcoKettle as our free gift. Ecoswitch will also plant two trees on our behalf, apparently. I’m undecided on how much good planting trees can do but it surely can’t hurt can it?

So, the ‘switch’ has been made and now we’re just waiting for Scottish Power to release us to our new, greener energy supplier. Can’t wait for the kettle to turn up too – it looks like a smasher!

I’ve just received my next box from Farm Direct and it’s another corker. Some of the new products I’m trying:

-  Free range eggs from James Murdoch’s Duck Lane Farm in Cardington, Bedfordshire

-  An amazing walnut and apricot loaf from Matt Jones’ Flour Power City Bakery in Surrey Quays

-  Red, green and yellow peppers from Ted’s Veg Farm in Bennington, Lincolnshire. Hurrah for these being in season in the UK now. I had been buying them from Sainsbury’s I’m afraid

- Garlic, also from Ted’s Veg

-  Rainbow chard from Martin Mackey Ripple Farm Organics in Canterbury (I admit I have no idea what I’m going to do with this yet but in the photo it just looks so pretty)

I’ve already made a tasty breakfast of onion omelette on walnut bread. And lo, the hangover is gone!

Joining a ‘veg box’ scheme has been on my list of green things I really ought to do for a couple of years but when I checked it out it seemed extremely restrictive – having to commit to the same thing every week, prohibitively expensive, or limited in what they offer.

But at the Camden Green Fair a few weeks back I visited the Farm Direct stall and their set-up is completely different.

You don’t have to order the same thing each time, and you don’t even have to place an order each week – perfect for me as I’m away such a lot. Also, they sell so much more than fruit and veg – they have meat, fish, cheese, fruit juice, bread, flowers, jams and more, with different options each week depending what they’ve sourced.

The depot is close to me in Holloway so I can go and pick it up if I can’t be in for delivery on a Saturday or Sunday. And though delivery normally costs £3.95, you get it free on your first order, and if you have a neighbour who’s also interested, they’ll deliver to you both for free. Apparently there’s someone else in my block of flats who’s already using the service so Farm Direct’s going to put me in touch with them.

Farm Direct is also much clearer on exactly where all of their produce has been sourced from, right down to the name of the farmer, unlike veg box pioneers Able & Cole who aren’t able to give you specifics. I loved reading that my minced lamb came from Nicola Bulgin’s Beatbush Organic Farm in Methwold, Norfolk; my chicken from Gill Wing’s Organic Farm in Sussex; my natural yoghurt from Chris Timotheou’s Dairy in Chalfont St Peter; my splendid rye loaf made by Matt Jones’ Flour Power City Bakery in Surrey Quays, London; spinach from Martin Mackey Ripple Farm Organics in Canterbury, and so on.

I’ve already had one salad using my rocket, cucumber and carrots and it was deeee-licious. They even threw in a bunch of dahlias for free as I had a promo code from the Fair!

But however much I’ve been impressed by the service and the quality of the produce they offered, I simply couldn’t justify it if it costs a lot more than I budget for. But I’ve just priced up what I’d normally have spent at Sainsbury’s and it’s barely any different.

In fact, the lamb, chicken and rocket came in cheaper. The total cost for the basket at Sainsbury’s would have been £17.39 (see pricing to the right).

For infinitely better quality produce, all locally-sourced, I paid just £18.36 with Farm Direct (see pricing below). And I didn’t have to struggle home on the bus with all my shopping bags!

There are still a few staples which I’ll have to go to the supermarket for – Ryvita, Actimel, tinned stuff and so on. But I’m hoping I might be able to stock up on these once a month since they aren’t perishable. Farm Direct also seems very open to new suggestions so I might put in a request for cottage cheese in case that’s something they can work on…

Inkaterra has some of the most exciting, sustainable hotels in Peru. It all started in the 1970s with Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica right in the Amazon jungle. Next were La Casona in Cusco, part of the super-luxury Relais & Chateaux collection, and Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel right by Machu Picchu. Inkaterra has now launched another sister brand, ‘by Inkaterra’, which is slightly more affordable but retains the same eco credentials.

The hotel group has its very own research arm, the InkaTerra Association, and employs its own scientists – guests can help out too while staying there.

All the guides or ‘interpreters’ employed to give wildlife tours are local, and real experts. I know what a difference this can make – when I went backpacking in Peru we got totally ripped off. The guides who took us into the rainforest didn’t have a clue what they were looking at and I had to point out wildlife to my friend.

Across its various properties, Inkaterra has been responsible for the discovery of many new species of frogs and orchids and planted countless trees and restored other habitats. Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel holds the record for the highest number of native orchid species found in their natural environment in the world!

With all this talk of sustainability, Bumpkin seemed a particularly appropriate choice for the press lunch – all of their produce comes from right here in the UK (except its olive oil – which we really do struggle to produce in this climate, apparently), right down to seasonal cocktails. I enjoyed a lovely duck breast with spring onion and tarragon cake. This does go against my Meat Free Monday efforts, but I didn’t have meat at all over the weekend so I reckon Sir Paul would forgive me?

Inspired by the lovely, locally-sourced salads on the menu at Bumpkin I came home this evening and vowed to have one more go at growing something for myself on the balcony. I know what I got wrong last time – the soil level was too low, so the lettucey shoots had to struggle too high to reach the sunlight and went all limp and wobbly and died. So I’ve topped the soil right up, and also sown just a fine row of seeds, as opposed to chucking in the whole packet like I did last time (also wrong, it would appear).

If it doesn’t work this time, those bloody troughs are going in the bin.

In other balcony news, we most definitely have some birds visiting the feeder now as the sunflower hearts have almost all gone. Wildlife triumph!

I was a guest of the Malaysia Tourist Board, which won Gold for its rainforest-inspired garden, designed by James Wong (off the Grow Your Own Drugs programme on TV).

The garden was really beautiful, with square stone slabs like stepping-stones on a shallow lake, and shiny foliage of different greens, shapes and textures.

I heard a few visitors grumble that there weren’t actually any flowers, but I loved it – much more to my taste than rows of rhodedendrons or pots of pansies.

A soundtrack of bird and animal noises played softly in the background and it was so relaxing I almost fell asleep on the Minister of
Tourism.

Dato Sri Dr Ng Yen Yen, the minister, told me all about the flowers in her own garden, and about the government’s plan to create a Malaysian version of the Royal Horticultural Society, to get more Malaysians involved in and excited by gardening.

I also had an interesting chat with James himself, about how gardeners often tend to want to grow species from far-away places, instead of appreciating what grows in their ‘own back yard’.

“When I was growing up in Malaysia, all I wanted to do was grow English roses and a perfect striped lawn,” he says. “They’d struggle against the climate. It’s only recently that Malaysians are realising there are so many things around them that are more beautiful than any rose. I hope we’ve shown that our normal plants can win gold on the world stage.”

This got me thinking about the impact of flying and shipping plants and trees from one side of the world to the other to make our gardens look pretty.  There’s often talk about ‘food miles’ but what about ‘plant miles’?

My other favourite gardens at the show included the Global Stone Bee-Friendly Garden, which had a giant message reminding visitors of Albert Einstein’s prophecy that ‘when the last bee disappears off the face of the earth, man only has four years to live” (see my earlier feature on the decline of the honey bee).

I also loved Bradstone Biodiversity Garden which had insect-friendly flowers and log-piles, and a stone pavilion with crevices for nesting birds and bamboo canes to house insects.

The Eden Project garden was huge, if a little bonkers, with rows of old washing machine doors. It did well in the competition but I wasn’t sure if buying the biggest plot of the Show might have anything to do with it.

I was also fascinated by the Naturally Norway garden which was promoting the use of kebony instead of tropical timber for decking and pavilions. Kebony is made using the byproducts of sugar-cane production to harden sustainable wood species like pine and maple, and it looked stunning.

I wasn’t convinced by the Daily Telegraph garden, which seemed to have gone for the overgrown, disused railway track look. I didn’t find it particularly, beautiful, relaxing or interesting but I must have missed the point as it was the overall winner for 2010. Shows what I know…..

I knew about the impact elephants can have, tearing down vegetation.

I’ve read about the impact of cattle and invasive species like cane toads and crown-of-thorns starfish too.

But it was news to me that the common carp is also a bad guy! Apparently they uproot vegetation and can majorly affect their environment. They spend millions of dollars a year trying to control populations in the Australia and the States.

If elephants, locusts, cattle and goats are the bad guys, then bats, birds and lizards are the good guys….or so a feature I spotted on Wired Science says.

Bats, birds and lizards eat insects, thereby protecting plants from being eaten by those insects.

If birds make plants more likely to grow, then perhaps it’s safe to deduce that not having birds means plants won’t grow.

Which could tie up the total lack of bird visitors to my balcony with my total failure to grow any plants and veggies on said balcony….

I made a brilliant job of hanging a lardy-cake and sunflower hearts over the handrail too!

There are several wildlife-identifying ones which might have come in handy on my Big Garden Birdwatch a few weeks back. There’s one called Pollution which tells you how badly the air around you right now is polluted. Adam also recommends GoodGuide – a buyer’s guide along the lines of Ethical Consumer. You can even scan in barcodes while you’re shopping to find out a product’s environmental and social credentials but I’ve scanned everything in my kitchen cupboards to no avail – it’s very US-centric at the moment.

However the app I got most excited about was a free-of-charge app called Skeptical Science. It arms you with a whole list of climate change sceptics’ arguments – and the scientific rebuttal of them. There are 28 arguments under the subheading ‘It’s Not Happening’; 54 under ‘It’s Not Us’; and 6 under ‘It’s Not Bad’.

I wish I’d had this app a couple of weeks back when my friend Dave came round for dinner. He befuddled me with talk of ‘sunspots’ being the possible cause of global warming as opposed to CO2 emissions. I knew this couldn’t be right but I hadn’t read much about this particular argument so I didn’t have much of a come-back.

But with a few taps on my iPhone, this new app gives me a link to the sceptics’ argument in action (in this case, a BBC story  on the sun being hotter now than it has been for the last 1,000 years), and then the scientific counter-argument, a lovely graph, and a whole list of studies and experts which refute the sunspot theory.

Simples!

CEO Guido Bauer revealed the difference that a Green Globe certificate can make to a hotel’s bottom line: having the certificate lets hotels increase their room rates by 3-7%, reduces their operating costs by 3-11%, and adds 1-3% to the property’s value.

It’s great that they have proof of the financial benefit – in a cash-strapped economy like the Caribbean, a financial incentive for greening your business is particularly necessary.

I’m a little sceptical about such certification schemes though. Firstly, Green Globes are like several other schemes in that hotels pay to join the organisation which can’t fail to at least slightly compromise their impartiality.

Secondly, a hotel does not need to meet all or even most of the list of criteria in order to pass: they must satisfy just 51%. Some of the criteria are extremely difficult to satisfy (the newest criteria is PVC-free room keys) but you’ve got to ask – what about the other 49%?

I also had trouble with Guido’s comments that Caribbean countries are the most advanced region in the world in terms of sustainability, ahead of nearest contenders New Zealand / Australia / France.

Having stayed in countless hotels in the Caribbean which do not recycle, which turn the air-con on in my room while I’m not there, and which fly in food and beverages from around the world, I found this hard to believe.

Doubly hard after the lecture I attended in December in which Kristian Teleki of SeaWeb told us that outside Europe and North America, 80% of sewage enters the coastal ocean untreated – including in the Caribbean. Tourism is by far the biggest industry in the Caribbean so if 80% of its sewage is untreated, some of this must surely be coming from the hotels. Hardly sustainable!

I put this to Guido Bauer but he said he won’t accept that this is the case with the Caribbean…. I’m going to see if Kristian can point me in the direction of some further info.