Now the Mayor has partnered with the Royal Horticultural Society to create Sunshine Garden, a dry garden intended to showcase creative ways of maintaining a beautiful home garden without using water-intensive trees and plants.
Alongside classic British native plants, we have beautiful but tough varieties from the Seaside and Mediterranean that will dramatically cut your watering requirements. The garden will include a compost bin, wormery, water butts, a living roof, insect hotel, examples of Mediterranean plants and drought-tolerant vegetables, mini wind tower powering garden lighting and a childs playhouse. The garden will be made entirely from recycled or sustainable products including an artificial lawn.
Sunshine Garden will raise awareness of the repercussions of global warming by presenting solutions that allow Londoners to keep gardening all summer, even though, as Bruce Sterling says, "Britons can no longer plant the same things in their gardens that their parents did."
Posted by: Chuck the Lucky on May 19, 2006 8:51 PM
And he may or may not be anti-Semitic, depending on whom you listen to. (IMHO, the evidence for the allegations is tenuous at best.)
Having said that, whatever his whacko political beliefs may be, his concrete policies (massive public transport funding, the congestion charge, the London low-emission zone) have been just what London needs. Whilst one wouldn't want him running the country, he is excellently suited to the job of Mayor.
With regard to environmental initiatives, London has done well by Livingstone; the country has not done so well by 'Nuke' Blair. How has New York fared under whoever its mayor is? And the US under 'We're Prepared' Bush? It's pretty clear that Ken is the most credible of the bunch.
This particular scheme fits in with a bunch of other initiatives. On its own it's a bit naff, as it has no relevance to my garden plans, but as part of a package to get people to do things a bit differently it's very sensible, and can be taken as another factor in a 'progressive' approach to urban issues.
worldchanging was founded on the idea that real solutions already exist for building the future we want. it's just a matter of grabbing hold and getting moving.
Mayor Ken Livingstone of London has been making his progressive environmental agenda known far and wide. Recently, he laid out plans for a new 1,000-home eco village modeled off of Dongtan. 
