Blog

Top of the Gherkin View west 1 View west 2 Tower Bridge Charmian (Love) and David (Grayson)

Across by taxi with Charmian and David Grayson to the Gherkin to chair a dinner discussion for Nestle ahead of their Creating Shared Value Forum tomorrow. We arrived slightly early, so we had the top floor almost to ourselves for a short while – extraordinary. Some 50 people came for the dinner and I pulled in a series of speakers (including Nestlé Chairman Peter Brabeck, Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke, Professor Michael Porter, Jane Nelson and Ruth Oniang’o, a member of the National Assembly of Kenya) and attendees. A remarkably uplifting occasion.

This morning in our garden The oasthouse Daleks of Sissinghurst Private Wisteria, I think Shadow Tower 1 Egyptian moment Beehives My shadow, but where’s my echo? Habitations Meditation Floral fireworks Blues and yellows Blue Spectrum 1 Spectrum 2 Weathervane Tower 2 Orb speaks unto orb Reflections Will plots Elaine’s shoes Overhead Hippo, when we drop Will and Carla off in Chelsea

Utterly glorious day, blue skies throughout. Will and Carla (Rosenzweig) arrive early for breakfast – and then we drive out on the M25 and M26 to Kent, and to Sissinghurst. Abominable traffic jam headed clockwise as we head anti-clockwise, with people out of their cars for miles on end, but somehow we get through unscathed.

Have only once been to Sissinghurst before, when we took cousin Hollister Sprague there perhaps 30 years ago. In many ways, better than I remembered, though fairly busy. The smell of flowers and blooms was ravishing, though Carla was suffering from a form of hay fever – and has the Chelsea Flower Show to ensure tomorrow.

Two of the highlights for me were (1) having a bottle of National Trust Viceroy Pale Ale for lunch and (2)  pausing by the beehives and watching the bees buzz in and out. Later, I rescued a bee that looked as if it was on LSD, but failed to rescue another this evening in our kitchen. Couldn’t initially work out where the frantic buzzing was coming from, then saw that a fatal drama was playing out over my head, with a large spider stabbing a bee and wrapping it in silk. A mummification that was slightly different to that in my mind when I was pondering the Egyptian head on a Sissinghurst flower pot today.

Amy holds sweet cicely (left) and hemlock (right) Queenie grapfruit Cork trees – and corks Handkerchief tree Sir Hans Sloane Gate – and Green Man, it seems Place tag My Sancerre Detail of Unilever House As I walked back to Bloomsbury

Early on Thursday evening, courtesy of Will Rosenzweig and his team at Physic Ventures, Amy (Birchall) and I made our way across to the Chelsea Physic Garden, by Tube and taxi. Arriving slightly early, we wandered around the paths, where we met the Curator Rosie Atkins, who very kindly took us under her wing and showed us a number of the Garden’s delights. These included the difference between sweet cicely (edible) and hemlock (potentially fatal), a test I passed because we have sweet cicely in our garden; a grapefruit tree called – I think – Queenie, with fruit, that grew from a pip; the glazed containers in which early plant-hunters shipped their finds; and a cork tree festooned with corks. 

Lovely dinner with Physic team and their guests, in glorious evening weather, with occasional views of Sir Hans Sloane, the ‘patron saint’ of Physic Ventures, and of a handkerchief tree. Then, early on Friday morning, across to Unilever House with Amy and Charmian (Love), for a morning conference with the Physic team and people from a number of their partner companies. Fascinating fare. A sense of the landscape of opportunity across which Physic invest can be found here. Among the sustainability-related portfolio companies I found particularly interesting were EnergyHub, Gazelle.com and Novomer. Then back to Bloomsbury for a session with Nick Rowcliffe, Editor-in-Chief of ENDS.

Playing Google’s Pacman game 1 Playing 2

Google’s homepage sports a Pacman-style game today, which had Charmian and Sam in raucous raptures for a while this afternoon.  Having never played such games, I didn’t want t be shown up and continued with my writing tasks, although couldn’t resist a snapshot or two.

As I travelled around Germany this week, I was fielding calls from Peter Marsh of the Financial Times on the news that Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart were opening up their cradle-to-cradle product assessment and design methodology to others players in the market. Some of my comments made it into the final piece, here. Other recent media work can be accessed here.