Come to the Queen’s Walk Art Gallery on Saturday the 15th October.

A free fun filled day of drawing with and from nature in the heart of the Meadows. Activities will include, making scrap books, a drawing treasure hunt around the park and creating dyes/ink/paints from natural materials and using these to draw with. Everyone is welcome!  At Queen’s Walk Art Gallery, Queens Walk Recreation ground, Meadows.

Come along and help us make the meadows beautiful – we’re painting all day so just drop by any time from 11-5 tomorrow or Saturday and you can help and have fun. Here’s a Map.

Help needed for our clean up of Cromarty Court, off Risley Drive in the Meadows. Google Map.

We’re planning a summer of events, workshops and planting and art in this small area of wasteland in the Meadows, we have the council on board to do all the hard work but need volunteers to come along and help clean it up so we can get started. Drop by any time between 10 and 2 on Saturday and lend us a hand.

A long post, but an interesting read into the history of flora and fauna in Nottingham, sections taken from “A history of Nottingham” by Cornelius Brown…

THE county of Nottingham has an exceptionally brilliant record in the botanical branch of its natural history, as no less than three county floras have appeared, one of them being among the earliest of British local floras. As long ago as 1738, Dr. Charles Deering published a work consisting of 231 octavo pages, entitled, ‘Catalogus Stirpium, &c.; or, A Catalogue of Plants Naturally growing and commonly cultivated in divers Parts of England, More especially about Nottingham.’ Although written at a time when botanical nomenclature was very different to what it is at present, the work must be acknowledged as a valuable record of the flora of the district. Its pages may be searched with interest to see the enormous changes which have taken place during the century and a half which have since elapsed. It may further be observed that it will always possess a more than local interest, because in it the two Nottingham meadow crocuses are for the first time introduced to the British flora.

…

The number accredited to Notts as truly indigenous is just under 750 species; that is, including the flowering plants and vascular cryptogams… The number given for the whole of Britain is 1,428 species, so that, if we accept 750 as the total for Notts, it will show a proportion to that of Britain of little over one-half. Probably this is too low an estimate, and considering the great advance made in our knowledge of British botany during the last half-century, and the changes effected in the district by the exigencies of cultivation, the breaking up of waste land, and the drainage of bogs and swamps, it seems desirable that a systematic re-examination of the county flora should be undertaken by local botanists, in order to supplement the work so well begun by Deering, Ordoyno and Howitt.

Linda Florence is a designer who creates bespoke wallpaper using a range of printing techniques. She took part in an exhibition at Tattershall Castle with the National Trust during which she turned the grass in front of the keep into a giant carpet by cutting patterns into the turf.

I also like the work they’ve created where they have covered buildings and rooms in grass like the areas below.

Guerilla Gardening: Seeds of Revolution is a PC game being made by independent games developers Spooky Squid Games.

Their synopsis:

General Bauhaus, the city’s fascist dictator, has had all the green space in town destroyed! Trees are banned! Flowers outlawed!

As guerrilla gardener, Molly Greenthumb you must use an amazing array of fast growing plants to avoid cops and cctv cameras, plant over government propaganda and make the city green again. Succeed and you’ll fill the apathetic citizens with cheerful insurrection and overthrow the state!

Great to see games tackling issues other than zombie invasions for a change, I couldn’t find a release date but I’m looking forward to seeing if it’s any good.

“Inspired by the tenacious plants that pioneer the tiny cracks of urban landscapes, a backyard is transformed through hostile takeover of an existing concrete slab by imposing a series of “cracks”. The rows of this garden contain a lushly planted mix of herbs, vegetables, flowers, and rogue weeds retained for their aesthetic value.”

Artist Chapman Kelley creates wildflower spaces within city boundaries.  He recently attracted much press attention for successfully suing Chicago City authorities for deformation of artwork.  They had ripped up a  wildflower space  he’d created to make way for manicured parkland.