The day of the Darwin mistletoe workshop (see blog 13th Feb) . So off to north Kent/south London first thing. We start off with my mistletoe briefing – in Down House. Which is nice – ‘cos we’re in one of Darwin’s own rooms… So I feel obliged to quote, at appropriate moments, from Origin of Species. Then it’s off to plant some mistletoe, pausing only for the obligatory press pics. This is my version of […]

Thorpe Acre, Loughborough, 7.30pm Gorse Covert Community Centre Thorpe Acre is now a suburb of Loughborough town, but was once an area of apple orchards – and mistletoe. Recent initiatives by Roy Campsell and Mark Graham have shown that some of this mistletoe survives – on former orchard apple trees now ‘stranded’ in house gardens etc. So why not resuscitate the old mistletoe colony? Collect berries from surviving mistletoe-infected trees and hand ’em out to […]

The annual Mistletoe Walk at Hampton Court Palace takes place this weekend, led by the Palace Estates Team and Tyrrell Marris, who heads up the Richmond Mistletoe Action Plan. Hampton Court has one of the best mistletoe colonies in London, known for at least 200 years, mostly in the Lime Avenues. The walk was very nearly publicised on ITV’s regional London News programme yesterday evening – but the satellite link for the live broadcast failed […]

To Down House, Kent (actually London Borough of Bromley these days). This is Charles Darwin’s place, and I’m here with Judy John of Bromley Council and Toby Beasley of English Heritage to discuss planting mistletoe in the grounds and nearby. Down House and garden are owned by EH. The whole area has been proposed as a World Heritage Site – to be known as “Darwin at Downe” by the Government (Downe village has an E, […]

The TEME mistletoe shop is back in buisness – but the Valentine Mistletoe isn’t moving very fast. That’s not really surprising – as there are a lot of valentine products out there and TEME haven’t really advertised. The exercise is more about seeing people’s reaction and feedback than making a profit (this year). And there’s not much time left for new orders now. There is more interest in the TEME Grow-your-own Mistletoe Kit – and […]

Lots on the to-do list today, so have just spent a happy few hours ignoring it and browsing the web instead. Amongst other distractions I ran a search on Mistletoe Diary – just to see whether there are many refs to it. The most prominent was at Granny Buttons, a “narrowboat blog about the English cut” by canal enthusiast Andrew Denny. According to Andrew I “love” mistletoe. I’ll forgive him the exaggeration, but I’m concerned […]