This time of year is usually holiday time for me, so, when it comes to nature in October, my trips away from Shropshire and my garden have to involve a large element of looking at wildlife and hopefully walking in beautiful countryside. Read more

October is the month for clearing and tidying. Your cucumbers and courgettes are likely to be finished and many other plants are getting exhausted and diseased, but hopefully you have a batch of new salad crops ready to plant out now. Read more

October is really the last of the hectic months on the vegetable plot. There’s little to sow and plant but still a fair amount to harvest and store away to eat through winter. This is the month when the first frosts usually arrive so killing off all but the hardy plants. Read more

Here’s a living example of a ‘lean’ economy (outlined by David Fleming in our last blog post), and how you can help to preserve it. The ‘unlean’ economy is encroaching onto the territory of the Kichwa and Sapara communities in the Ecuadorean Amazon, in the form of large oil corporations, and will destroy their communities, as… Continue reading Reimagining progress: what we can learn about ‘lean thinking’ from indigenous communities Read more

I attended the launch of two books at Daunt Bookshop in Chelsea on Wednesday evening. David Fleming died in 2010, and now his friend Shaun Chamberlin has edited his magnum opus, Lean Logic, and Chelsea Green have published it. Read more

There was a story on Radio 4 this morning about NHS doctors who work in private healthcare ‘on the side’ now having to declare their income from private work under plans from NHS England to ensure that they’re not short-changing taxpayers. Read more

The Government and many of the rest of us interested in green issues know that we have to meet certain obligations when it comes to reducing the country’s carbon footprint. While those in the solar and wind industry might be complaining about loss of subsidies, Read more

My partner’s mother lives in Hounslow, under the Heathrow flight path and next to a dual carriageway. But she has filled her front and back garden with flowers, trees, bushes and vegetables. When she visits, she often brings pears, plums, spinach, tomatoes or flowers from her garden. Read more

We often hear it said that modern farming is efficient and results in low cost food on our table but how true is that? I would contend that there is an awful lot wrong with our food production and distribution systems in the west and the much vaunted efficiency is far from being the true… Continue reading Progress? Is modern food production efficient (using poultry as an example)? Read more

This is a beautiful and interesting way of dyeing cloth by imprinting plant material. Getting a precise imprint on cloth or paper is not new – take for instance the Turin Shroud. Read more

I’d like to bring to people’s attention a community event I’m championing in my neck of the woods called a Jumble Trail. I’m in Wandsworth, London, but Jumble Trails are happening all over the country, and you can join in. Read more

I haven’t opened my old university economics textbook (Economics, by David Begg, Stanley Fischer and Rudiger Dornbusch) since the 1980s, so I was curious to see how I would respond to what I was taught 30 years ago. Read more

If UK campaigners don’t set the terms of our trading relationships, insisting they protect public services and standards, it will be left to Theresa May’s expensive army of corporate lawyers. Read more

As a professional planner (of the town and country planning variety) and fan of Low-impact Living I always expect to see demands or requests being made of the planning system to assist in attempts by individuals or groups to experiment or set examples where impact on the environment would be minimised. Read more

I am privileged to be a director of the wonderful Ecological Land Co-op, and we are currently advertising for an operations manager. Read more