Flower Power
The Power of Plants is the RHS theme in the Great Pavilion, illustrating the diverse and powerful role of plants in our lives.
Centrepoint’s Superfoods Garden shows how plants and especially power plants, can make a difference to young homeless people on the road to recovery. The charity helps them to find a home in the urban jungle and root them back into society. Part of that is to learn about healthy lifestyle as well as using healing plants to mend and heal. But it’s a message for everyone. We can all learn from nature and by growing and eating the right plants, it can make a huge difference to our lives.
Power plants include super foods such as spinach and thyme, high in antioxidants to improve health, but plants play other roles too. Don’t miss the educational display from Pershore/Warwickshire College, the Plant Behind the Product, highlighting the plants that provide alternative materials such as a bamboo bicycle, soya knitting yarn, potato plates and even a vegetable plastic, it’s a steep and fascinating learning curve.
Biscuits, cakes and pastries
You wouldn’t normally associate the fate of the planet with afternoon tea parties, but your food choice may actually be impacting on the environment. Palm oil, a common ingredient in some baked products such as cakes and biscuits, is being grown on former rainforest land. By looking at what we are eating and choosing a more responsible option we can help make a difference. The World Land Trust showcases the medicine and food plants that we can’t afford to lose.
Just by growing plants we are already making great inroads into the issues of greenhouse gases, but there’s much more to be done, and even the gardener can learn to spread the gospel and help others to find the joy of plants. Garden Organic is highlighting its One Pot Pledge, where visitors are encouraged to grow a pot of organic, edible plants, the idea is to get the nation’s hands back into the soil.
