Olympic Games

[Anthony Darby]

I love the plants. Amazing considering the summer up until a week or so ago!

[Maggi Young]

On the Olympic Park plantings, from hortweek.com :


"Palmstead planting on display for Olympic opening
By Matthew Appleby Wednesday, 25 July 2012 - quoted from HortWeek online

Olympic planting from Palmstead Nurseries will be on display to the world throughout the 2012 Games in London.

The London Olympic Park includes half a mile of naturalistic perennial planting designed by James Hitchmough, Nigel Dunnett and Sarah Price in cooperation with LDA Design/Hargreaves.

Palmstead marketing manager Nick Coslett said:

"We are very proud to have contributed plants to the Olympic Park's World Gardens. We are just a small contributor in a very large and professional team who have produced an exemplar public park in a most considered and intelligent way; the park just happens to have Olympic facilities within it too."

Two of the designers behind the project, Hitchmough and Price have been speakers at the last two Palmstead annual workshops.

Coslett added:

"As the park bursts in to colour for this superb event I sincerely hope it will be a stimulus which will shape and colour many more of our public parks for years to come. Shame on our public park managers and councillors if it does not."

Palmstead grew more than 60,000 plants, grasses, herbs and flowers from across the globe for the Olympic park project.  Coslett said his "medal winning’ plants" include:


The white Shasta Daisy in the Europe garden - Leucanthemum x superbus TE Killin   
The red Prairie bush mallow in the North American Garden - Callirhoe bushii
The South African Thistle in the Southern Hemisphere Garden - Berkheya purpurea
The Drackensburg Red Hot Pokers in the Southern Hemisphere Garden - Kniphofia triangularis - and
The False Gerbera - Haphlocarpa scaposa "

[vivienr]

Thanks for posting those lovely photos Tony - I just love that kind of planting. There were similar borders around the Floriade park too. I had asked my son to get some pictures for me but he is not allowed to have a camera with him.

My only disappointment with the opening ceremony was that I was hoping for Tom Daley to be diving off the Orbit platform into a big vat of custard.

[Maggi Young]

My only disappointment with the opening ceremony was that I was hoping for Tom Daley to be diving off the Orbit platform into a big vat of custard.

And what a magnificent spectacle that would have been, Vivien - sadly, in a secret recce of the site before the  games, some un-named Scots came upon the giant vat of custard.... and ate the lot. Just as well, because I'm sure I've read somewhere that young Mr Daley is allergic to custard...... 

[Anthony Darby]

That would be certain death Vivien as custard (if it contains cornflour) is a non-Newtonian liquid and if he tried to dive into it it would be like hitting concrete.

[Paul T]

Anyone know what that lovely dark Gladiolus in the plantings is?  Great pastel colour to the Kniphofia too.  A lovely display.

Thanks for posting the pics, Tony. 

[Brian Ellis]

Loved the video Anthony

[Anthony Darby]

Tickled me too Brian.

Cringed this morning listening to Radio Sport where one commentator was trying to explain to an even less enlightened colleague that the 'pants' that horse riders wear were called jogpurs! The same muppet was commenting on the canoe "slaylom" earlier! I despair.

[Lesley Cox]

Can't excuse the "pants" but we do, in NZ, pronounce what you presumably call slahlom as slaylom. Just as we grow sikelamen rather than sicklamen. Don't despair of us because half a world away we pronounce things differently. (though I would have confined slaloms to a skifield, not a rowing course.)

[Anthony Darby]

Slalom is a Norwegian word. I think just means (to zigzag down) a sloping path. Originally skiing but now applies to canoeing for want of a better word?

[Hoy]

Slalåm: 'Sla' is sloping and 'låm' is a track. When you ski down a hill you have to avoid the trees etc hence the zigzaging

[Hoy]

Oh sorry - seems I have missed the real content of the thread. I wasn't aware - is it some kind of games going on in the islands in Vesterhavet?

Nice plantings though

[Lesley Cox]

Very well done that man from Dunblane!!! No, not YOU Anthony.

[David Nicholson]

Lesley, it was in my morning paper that Australian TV were only showing the first 9 in the medal table because NZ happened to be 10! They wouldn't stoop to that would they?

[Paul T]

David,

No, I think it would be because they can only fit 10 on the screen and we're not part of the top 10 (so they list nine, then put us at the bottom of the screen with our number alongside.

One off the morning shows did a "medals per population" type of arrangement based on populations...... New Zealand was first!!  They're doing an absolutely brilliant job!!    Australia was still 5th in that. 

The home advantage really makes a difference, doesn't it?  Just like Australia when it was in Sydney in 2000.  So many more medals that year.  Some of the GB stuff has been brilliant.  I loved the C2 Men's Slalom Kayaking..... both gold and silver to GB.  And some great rowing etc, and cycling, and......  Great to see some countries that traditionally don't win golds winning some as well.