Journal

My second article on aspects of the emerging Regenerative Economy appeared in I By IMD today.

Delighted to soft launch today the new website for our Green Swans Observatory. Two of my favourite bits of content from the launch edition are the interviews I did with Patagonia, Inc. founder Yvon Chouinard and Dr Azzam Alwash, the man who has led the semi-miraculous regeneration of the Iraqi Marshes – devised on the order of the happily long dead Saddam Hussein.

What a joy to be able to identify plants as we walked across Barnes Common yesterday. I have had the PictureThis app on my iPhone for well over a year, but it really came into its own as we walked around Mill Hill and back.

Alongside relatively common plants like Comfrey, Gorse, Scottish broom, Sheep sorrel, Ribwort plantain, Hedge mustard, Wall barley, Greater Celandine and Star of Bethlehem, we came across Sicilian honey garlic for the first time. The latter’s leaves tasted as advertised.

The richness of plant names was illustrated by the Star of Bethlehem, aka as Garden star-of-Bethlehem, Sleepydick, Nap-at-noon, Grass lily, Summer snowflake, Snowdrop, Starflower, Bird’s milk, Chinkerichee, Ten-o’clock lady, Eleven-o’clock lady, Bath asparagus, and star of Hungary. And Dove’s dung.

I’d be rather less inclined to taste Ripgut brome which we saw on the Common or the Hemlock water-dropwort we saw along the banks of Beverley Brook, a plant whose common names include Dead tongue and Dead man’s fingers.

Wonderful sense of walking through a landscape in multiple dimensions. Past, present and future. Plants, insects, birds, and people representing many more nationalities and family trees than might have been the case in the sixteenth century, for example.

Delighted to see my first piece appear in I By IMD, produced by the Swiss business school, IMD.

Astonishing to look back at a key breakthrough moment in my working life, through the lens of Julia Hailes’ experience of the same events. Captured here on YouTube. Startling how much things have changed since then, in good ways and bad. But the fight goes on!