Friday 14 August 2009

Waterless Garden

These wooden uprights are part of a ‘desert garden’ on Worthing beach that stands as a warning to the perils of fashionable doom mongering. Built a few years ago, when a couple of hot summers had led the media to run hysterical features recommending people to replace their roses with cacti, it’s meant to be an example of how gardens might change for a drier climate, and comes complete with a nice little homily about how summers are going to get hotter and drier and we need to preserve water. (Nothing in there about mending leaky water pipes though.)

The smug self righteousness I feel every time I’ve walked past it has nearly made the last three wet, chilly summers worthwhile.

Skywatching all over the world.

7 comments:

  1. Yep - good old British media! Great picture though.

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  2. Nice picture, I don't think there is less rain in the UK these days :-(

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  3. We have had so much rain on and off this summer it has felt like being back in Britain! Nice sky photo and story.

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  4. LOL! Global warming = junk science. The media love crises, real or not.

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  5. I've been peering at it because we have rows of posts like that round here which, I think, are the uprights left from disintegrated breakwaters; possibly jetties.

    I suppose the trouble is, you can water a dry garden but can't very easily dry out a wet one.

    Perhaps if they had giant hairdryers? I know, turn wind generators into fans. Or is desert heat the lack? Um . . . those energy wasting outdoor heaters they have in pub gardens - would they solve it?

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  6. Interesting "desert garden." They're probably not the best choide for your part of the world, but they have their place in Utah and Nevada, where the land isn't likely to get any wetter!

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  7. I think the wooden poles are designed to look like old groyne poles (hmm, not a dodgy as it sounds!) but were actually new when the garden was put in.

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