Nick’s Garden: vertical gardens can be high art, but only when given the proper canvas

Have you ever noticed how some things emerge, seemingly from nowhere, to capture the zeitgeist, representing for a very brief moment, the very acme of “now”? Last year’s craze for all things “pop-up” is a case in point. For a brief period it was difficult to leave the house without being subjected to pop-up cinemas, pop-up restaurants and pop-up boutiques. Even this newspaper ran an issue entitled “Pop-up Abu Dhabi”.

Such trends normally bubble up from the world of music and youth culture or trickle down from the gallery and catwalk, but not since the 18th century has a similarly contemporary and fashionable impulse emerged from the world of gardening and plants. With vertical gardens, however, that might all be about to change.

All of this would be of little more than academic interest if it were not for the fact that prefabricated, off-the-peg “green” or living wall systems are now being manufactured that allow the installation of more modestly sized vertical gardens in the home, office or classroom. Many of these systems come from Canada, the country that has more living walls than any other, and most are used inside buildings, where they are sheltered from the harsh conditions of the North American winter. As well as bringing nature indoors, there are practical reasons for installing large-scale living walls. Externally, they provide food and habitat for wildlife, help to lower urban temperatures, protect building facades, and can even be used to teach children about gardening and growing food. Indoors, living walls can help combat sick-building syndrome and, when connected to fans that pull air up through the blanket of vegetation, can clean, cool and refresh the air, something that’s particularly useful in spaces such as atria that are prone to stale, dry air and overheating.

On a recent visit to London I was delighted to see some wonderful vertical gardens in commercial buildings, shopping centres and even in small cafe courtyards. Even more surprising was the planting used on a temporary construction hoarding directly opposite Buckingham Palace; planted with a cascading mixture of plants that included helixine (Soleirolia soleirolii), lily turf (Liriope muscari) and alumroot (Heuchera micrantha), all well-suited to the English climate. Though temporary, the garden has been designed to last for at least three years, but  unlike Blanc’s work, it shows none of the dynamic, painterly qualities that can be achieved in vertical gardens by someone who really understands how plants will behave in this most unusual, vertical alignment.

Unfortunately, this is also the case for the vast majority of vertical gardens that are starting to appear; smaller examples in particular look set to join the lava lamp in that category of interior decoration designated “novelty”.

Often under-planted with spiky, tropical plants that are designed to look contemporary and “edgy”, these doormat-sized units have none of the environmental benefits of their larger cousins and all the aesthetic merit of a fibre-optic table decoration.

Even when living walls are big enough and a suitable selection of plants is used, they still offer one of the most unforgiving canvases for planting design – all of those mistakes that can normally be covered up in a horizontal planting bed are exposed for all to see.

So unless you have 1,000 square metres to spare, I’d use my plants to grow up rather than “pop-up” by avoiding the novelty living wall and investing in some naturally climbing and cascading plants instead.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi

Nick’s Garden: it’s time to batten down the hatches

When did summer arrive for you this year? It is a question I’ve been asking friends and acquaintances in recent weeks in an attempt to conduct a purely anecdotal survey comparing gardeners’ experience this year with last, and to see what horticultural differences there might be in various locations.

Unscientific though this may be, the answers are interesting, particularly when you compare the experience of people living in coastal areas with those gardening further inland, where the climate is generally drier.

I live near Abu Dhabi’s Corniche, and although I noticed the temperature started to soar three weeks ago, the realisation only hit home on May 8, when the inevitable finally happened and the humidity spiked. A year ago, I lived further inland and I can see from my gardening notes that, perceptually at least, summer came later and that it was heat, not humidity, that heralded the change. On May 23 last year, I had to wear shoes on my morning tour of the garden to stop the hot tiles from burning my feet.

Now that the summer onslaught is upon us, it’s time to do those last-minute tasks that will allow you to effectively put the garden to bed and to reschedule essential garden visits to the margins of dusk and dawn as daytime gardening becomes increasingly uncomfortable.

Certain plants may already have started to register the increased temperatures and strength of solar radiation. The stylish umbrella plant (Cyperus alternifolia) is usually a good indicator of increased temperatures and the need for more regular irrigation, not least because it is such a thirsty beast. Like a tired teacher looking forward to the end of term, this Madagascan relative of Egyptian papyrus may already be looking a little ragged around the edges, something that is accentuated by the brownish spadix that forms in the centre of the leaf cluster when the plant is in flower. Given that this plant normally grows in tropical swamps and thrives best when its roots are wet, I am always amazed to see it feature so heavily in UAE planting schemes. If you have Cyperus growing in a container, you should consider moving it into a more shady position.

Two other plants that display signs of stress associated with the sun and heat are the Sago palm (Cycas revoluta) and cardboard plant (Zamia furfuracea), both of which bleach alarmingly when exposed to intense, direct sunlight for long periods. Interestingly, although these plants belong to different botanic families (Cycadaceae and Zamiaceae, respectively), both are cycads, a type of plant that dominated the plant world in prehistory. Some of the earliest cycad fossils are almost 280 million years old.

When used as an understorey planting below trees and taller shrubs, cycads will require little extra care. However, if you have them growing as specimen plants in full sun you can always take them indoors, where they will make excellent houseplants for the summer.

Generally, cycads are hardy in nature but susceptible to over-watering and will die quickly if their stems and roots begin to rot, something that can be a problem during a UAE summer, when irrigation systems are running daily. Therefore, it is important to make sure that plants with similar irrigation requirements are located next to one another. When it comes to irrigation, Cyperus, Zamia and Cycas do not make good immediate bedfellows – although I have seen them planted closely together on several occasions because they are so visually striking, often with disastrous results.

If tender plants can’t be moved, consider covering them with a shade cloth to protect them from the summer sun. Meshes and nets are readily available from garden centres and hardware stores. I cannot help but think, however, that having to do this in the garden represents some failure in the original planting scheme. Even with the UAE’s limited palette of commercially available plants, there are a sufficient number of species available for sun lovers to be used in garden hot spots and more tender specimens in shade. However, when temperatures soar like they did last year, even desert plants can need extra care, and even cacti can get sunburned.

One of the most widely used and available cacti here is Echinocactus grusonii, more commonly known as the Mexican barrel cactus. Highly attractive, particularly when planted en masse as an architectural ground cover, the species is widely perceived, like all cacti, to be virtually indestructible. This is, unfortunately, not the case. On a visit to Al Ain Wildlife Park and Resort last summer, I saw Echinocactus that had puckered and blistered in the sun and others that had effectively been cooked, like roast potatoes, inside their skins.

Part of the reason for this was extreme temperatures. On some days thermometers registered 57°C. However, as the resort’s landscape manager, Jamie Hilyard, explained, high temperatures alone weren’t the whole story. Like most of the cacti species that are imported here, Echinocactus comes from an environment where daytime temperatures are high, but nocturnal temperatures are often very low in comparison. This allows the plants to release the heat that builds up inside them during the day and to cool down at night.

This temperature differential also produces invaluable moisture that forms dew each morning, thus providing plants with essential irrigation that enables them to survive throughout the day. In the UAE, however, day and night-time temperatures in summer are often quite similar, so there is less opportunity for the plants to chill out as they do in the Sonoran and Mexican deserts.

While cooked barrel cactus is unusual and extreme, it does point to the importance of good plant research and suitable species selection. More than anything, making the right decisions at the early design and planning stage of your garden and putting the right plant in the right place will always be the best and easiest ways to combat the effects of the UAE’s unforgiving summer sun.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi

In pictures: Nizwa livestock market, Oman

The city of Nizwa sits in a strategic location at the foot of the Western Hajar Mountains in Oman. One of the oldest cities in Oman, Nizwa was the national capital in the 6th and 7th centuries and has long been recognised as a seat of Islamic learning, art, trade, and religion. Early on Friday mornings, a livestock market is held just outside the fortified walls of Nizwa’s ancient souk. Here are some pictures from a recent trip when I was travelling up into the mountains of the Jabal Al Akhdar.

Travelling with kids

I thought I was the kind of parent who liked to travel light. Not for me the pantechnicon of baby kit, stocked to anticipate every possible eventuality. Carrying the bare minimum, I relied instead on the availability of supplies at my destination and the generosity of others en route. That was until a recent escape-the-heat, five-week solo trip to the UK with my 18-month-old daughter taught me a valuable lesson.

My in-laws had generously decided to collude in my delusion by supplying me with a car seat, travel cot, high chair and stroller, thus greatly reducing the amount of luggage I would need to carry from the UAE. My wife had warned me about the potential comedy value and great antiquity of the stroller and high chair, and I had promised to be gracious. She had used the high chair as a child, but had failed to realise that this wooden scaffold, a cross between a Coney Island fair ride and some antediluvian siege engine, was already ancient even in her infancy. Here, at the best guess of everybody who saw it, was a museum piece whose origins dated to a time when children were seen but not heard.

At least the high chair was fully functional, something that could not be said of the tiny stroller, an object that proved more difficult to date. Its high-contrast colour scheme and postmodern patterning bore more than a passing resemblance to the bedroom wallpaper I’d had as a child, so I guessed early 1980s. Whatever its age, here was an object with an uncanny state of preservation and cleanliness, something that could only be explained by the fact that it had probably only ever been used once before being discarded in favour of a less infuriating and excruciating form of transport.

Predictably, my daughter was in on the joke and seemed more than happy to sit in the toy-sized stroller, which caused the sleeves of my jacket to ride up my forearms as I pushed her, bent double, around the local town.

To add insult to injury, the stroller’s hard rubber wheels produced an ear-piercing screech on any uncarpeted surface and were fixed, making any sudden change in direction all but impossible. To steer the chair I was forced either to lift the back wheels before charting a new course, or to tack along the kind of broad arc normally associated with a figure skater or yacht, an impossible manoeuvre in the narrow aisles of most shops.

Our holiday ended, five weeks later, with my daughter newly skilled in the art of scaffold climbing and with my biceps ripped from the exertion. I have learned my lesson. Whatever your approach, there’s no such thing as travelling light when it comes to travelling with kids.

This article originally appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi

‘Fertigate’ your way to a healthier, greener, and cheaper garden

Rob Hardaway, or “Mr Green Fingers” as he is known to his friends and neighbours, first arrived in Dubai from the UK in 1999. Faced with the classic expat dilemma of having an uncertain future and living in rented accommodation, he curtailed his early horticultural ambitions. “I lived in a villa in Jumeirah for four years, but was never sure if I was going to stay there or not, and because of that I did limited amounts with the garden.”

When he moved to his current 818-square-metre plot in Dubai’s Arabian Ranches, however, Hardaway started gardening in earnest and, over the last six years he has transformed an empty, barren patch of sand and builder’s rubble into the garden that is now his pride and joy. There is a deck area for entertaining, a pond for his koi carp and ficus and palm trees that provide much-needed shade. There is even an artificial hill. “It was the first thing I wanted to do,” Hardaway explains. “It gave the garden an immediate feature.”

When it came to plant selection, Hardaway was helped by looking at local municipality planting schemes, and by his family. “My sister was a great help. She’s a qualified horticulturist, and has a good understanding of trees and plants and what they need. I also had some labour to give me a hand, but other than that I made all the decisions myself.”

For Hardaway, one of the most important things to establish was just how much sunlight each part of his new garden would receive. “You can come up with fabulous designs for a garden, but it really all depends on what will grow and what won’t.” To establish just this, Hardaway spent time observing the way the sun moved around his house before he planted anything.

“It was a case of watching the garden to see where the sun came across the house, and to see where I got most sunshine and where I got virtually none at all. I wanted to create as much shade as possible around the fishpond so that when the summer months come the water doesn’t get too hot. That helped me decide where to put the grass, the trees and bushes.”

In spite of his efforts, Hardaway admits that it is only in the last six months that the garden has really come into its own, an improvement that coincides with the installation of a new “fertigation” system.

Fertigation is a technique that uses irrigation systems to fertilise plants and soils at the same time as it provides them with water. It does this by dissolving fertiliser solution into the irrigation mainline so that you feed while you irrigate. It’s a system that’s tried and tested in the hydroponics and agricultural industries and is also employed on golf courses, where large areas of delicate turf require regular feeding. But when it comes to smaller landscapes and domestic gardens in the UAE, Hardaway is definitely an early adopter.

He first discovered fertigation while listening to an interview with James Waters, the managing director of a company called Associated Response, on a Dubai radio station. Waters is responsible for bringing the EZ-Flo fertigation system to the Middle East and has been working hard to raise awareness of the product as well as the wider benefits of fertigation in general.

“Fertigation has been proven to be the most efficient way of feeding any landscape,” says Waters. “It’s also more sustainable, particularly if you use an organic fertiliser, because it allows you to use less water and fewer chemicals.”

Nonetheless, Waters is the first to admit that raising awareness and getting the system introduced into domestic and amenity landscapes is an uphill task. “We’re seeing directives aimed at local farmers to look at more sustainable and more efficient growing and irrigation techniques, but there doesn’t seem to be anything similar for the landscape industry,” he says. “It’s only when you see directives like these that you see action, and fertigation is the logical next step if you are serious about sustainability.”

When Hardaway speaks about the impact that fertigation has had on his garden, he does so with the zeal of a convert. “Fertilising a garden is one of the most difficult things to keep on top of, but we’ve seen a huge difference, particularly in the grass. The growth that I’ve seen so far this season is about 300 per cent over what I’ve seen previously.”

Hardaway is also keen to point out that the benefits can be seen below ground in the vital root zone of his shrubs and grass. “Once we fitted the fertigation system, we lifted some of the grass and found that the roots were about [15cm] longer than they had been previously.”

This helps to make his turf more drought-tolerant because deeper roots are more able to seek moisture in the damper, cooler zone below the soil surface.

In turn, this also helps to reduce the amount of water that Hardaway’s garden requires. “I was able to reduce the amount of water I actually need because the plants become more drought-resistant. I’ve probably reduced my water bill by 25 per cent.”

For Hardaway, the other attraction of fertigation is the fact that it puts him in complete control of the feeding process because nothing is left to chance. “I know that I can fill it up for a period of six weeks, and you can leave it and you know that your garden is being fed for the whole time. If my plants are being fertilised for the whole time, they’re going to be much stronger and healthier.”

Fertigation also helps to cut costs by reducing the amount of fertiliser that’s required, despite the fact that the system is introducing microscopic amounts into the irrigation mainline continuously. Fertilising becomes a matter of little and often, rather than a monthly or six-weekly lurch between “feast” and “famine”.

Delivering too much nitrogen to the plant in the feast portion of the cycle increases the succulence of the grass and its demand for water. This has encouraged Hardaway to experiment further. “One of the things I’m still struggling with is when and how often to water. You can read a lot of information and everybody contradicts everybody else. Now the plants have got deeper roots, I’m going to try to get a deeper average coverage of water across the garden, and experiment with only one watering a day.”

For more on the EZ-Flo system, visit www.ezflofertilizing.com