Biodiversity estimation based, I presume, on fossil pollen is a straw man here. Pollen is carried by various means far from its point of origin. Clearings, edges (which include stream banks as well as the boundries between different ecosystems), and areas disturbed by wildlife and the forces of nature hold the majority of the biodiversity. Climax forest is open and easy to walk through with very little biodiversity once you are deep in away from such edge zones. If absolutely undisturbed soil were the ideal growing medium you could drop your seeds onto the surface of the mulch or, for that matter, onto hard-packed ground and they would require no further care. Every time a no-till gardener pulls back the mulch to access the suitable growing soil beneath then digs into that soil to plant his seeds he's doing on a small scale what tilling does on a larger scale. Loosening the soil and working organic material into it is not evil. The hooves of the grazers, the feet of scratching birds, and the snouts and claws of the rooters and burrowers do those tasks daily. Tiller tines and plows are faster and more efficient, but they are not evil or even unnatural. With very few exceptions our food crops do not and cannot grow wild. They need some help -- whether that be from the traditional digging stick of Buffalo Bird Woman's grandmother or the fanciest setup John Deere can provide. Like any other activity tilling can be done right or wrong. Done wrong it is useless or even counter-productive. Done right it facilitates the luxuriant growth of our domesticated crops by loosening packed soil and incorporating beneficial organic material. In some cases a single tilling will be all that's needed for many years. In others more frequent tilling is needed. But talking as though disturbing the "natural" soil is an act of black-hearted malice is really quite silly when you consider that if you left nature to herself few, if any, of the crops we gardeners plant would grow where we live. Gardening is about creating an environment where our unnaturally productive and tasty plants will grow in a place they would not normally live. Tilling is a tool to assist that process. It is not the only tool. It is a tool that can be misused by the ignorant or careless. But it is a valuable tool that should no more be banned from the garden in the name of ideological purity than hammers should be banned from the literal toolbox because some people hit their thumbs or use them when they should be using screwdrivers or drills.

Hi Gonzer The top plant looks kinda like the tenuifolia Fred Lenert that is in Paul Isleys' new book. I know you have that book So I'm guessing that is not it. You may have a one of a kind which is not a bad thing. It would be nice if it would bloom. The second one looks like a plant Paul Isley sold here as ionantha apretado which turned out not to be that. It looks just like that plant. It hardly ever blooms and just keeps on growing. I'm in the same boat as you, don't know what it is.I will post a pic. of it later on. Best Bob

Ornata, Hi there! I live in the Staffordshire Moorlands, about 4 miles across up hill and down dale from Alton Towers. (which I guess you may have heard of?) We are situated high up on a ridge overlooking the Churnet Valley and get lots of cold westerly winds. Heres a pic to give you an idea of our situation, A. Towers is on the skyline about 1/4 of the way in from the left of pic. Realise you can't actually see it in this pic, but it is there, you can see Oblivion/Corkscrew with the naked eye...on a clear day! I would agree your London climate is a lot less harsh than ours, and from what I've sen on the TV, gardens to many of the houses especially the town houses as us 'country bumpkins' call them are sheltered and have their own microclimate....something I could do with up here!! The C.C is kept outside mostly, it's in a large tub, and is dragged into the protection of the greenhouse for the winter. Unfortunately, although we have almost half an acre gardens, with every aspect possible, none of it has a wall that faces south that has/could have a border beside it for the C.C. to be planted outside permanently. I find it a spectacular shrub when in bloom and have had it for several years flowering regularly and as such it is a reminder of our recent holidays in Oz, although it was bought from our local Wilko store!!! No doubt it could be replaced with another relatively easily as they are being seen more and more as are lots of other 'tropicalesque' plants don't you find? Cheers! Gill.

High magnesium can give otherwise normal soil the sense of being clayey. That's about the extent of my soil chemistry knowledge so I like to slip that in when I can '- ) Up there where morph said your soil test didn't make sense...that's why we suggest going to Logan Labs. Their $25 test is so comprehensive that those with morph's background can make sense out of it. I suspect your soil is hard and turns mucky when wet. Those are two different issues but make people believe they have a clay based soil. Hard soil can be fixed with shampoo applied at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Follow up with deep watering. Repeat in 2 weeks if the soil does not soften when moist. You can repeat as often as you like with no problems. Morph did not get into how he makes his lawn(s) look like that. Here's the basics: Redo the entire lawn with an Elite Kentucky bluegrass mix. Once the grass is established, water deeply and infrequently. Mow KBG at or near the highest setting (he uses a mowing robot). Fertilize with organics all season long and make the last app a high N, fast release synthetic fert. Once a year get a Logan Labs soil test and rebalance the micronutrients as indicated. Note that there is nothing special about what he does. There are no secret formulas, expensive products, magic methods, or any of that. There is no routine use of herbicides, insecticides, or fungicides. He'll tell you that #5 is very important. In my opinion the soil test is much more important if have tried everything and nothing seems to work. But if you want the nicest lawn on the block, then it becomes important. The last picture belongs to a friend of mine in SoCal (Huntington Beach). He's not a grass guru by any means. He does what I tell him and nothing else. I told him about mowing high, deep/infrequent watering, and organics. All of a sudden his mediocre lawn became what you see. It's Kentucky bluegrass. He can get away with KBG in SoCal because he's just a few miles from the beach. He fertilizes with used coffee grounds once in the spring. Coffee grounds and corn meal are the two worst organic fertilizers there are next to compost. The protein value is rock bottom, but they do have some value. Here is another picture of his house from Google Earth. His lawn is the nicest on his block, and he doesn't know what he's doing. You'd have to look pretty hard to find a nicer one. It really is as simple as what morph does and what we've been preaching for years.