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Green Thoughts: Sun Gods and Sun Worshippers

Sunday 26 February 2023 02:00 PM

As readers familiar with this column will be aware, I often iterate the point, perhaps ad nauseam, that botanical names are worth mastering since they offer valuable clues to a plant’s characteristics: maybe its place of origin (Japonica), its physical features (odorata) or even its cultural requirements.

Green Thoughts: Bizarre trees bear strange fruit

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 22 January 2023 02:00 PM

You don’t expect to find trees with bizarre labels such as the “pong-pong”, sausage or cannonball tree, but all these species, alive and well here in Phuket, are so named on account of their strange fruit.

Green Thoughts: In the blooming water

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 4 September 2022 02:00 PM

As the high annual rainfall continues to soak Phuket during these months of the southwestern monsoon, we continue our look at water-borne plants that feature prominently across Thailand’s floral landscape. Among those are water lilies (nympheas).

Green Thoughts: Top pot plants for shade

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 17 April 2022 02:00 PM

It’s a big generalisation, but on balance, the majority of potted plants available in the tropics enjoy a degree of shade. I am thinking of varieties of nephrolepis such as Boston, maidenhair, or bird’s nest ferns, variegated dieffenbachias, aglaonemas ‒ now available in striking reddish shades ‒ philodendrons, purple and green dracaenas, hymenocallis or spider lilies, spathiphyllum, the vast array of bromeliads. The list goes on. Go to any garden centre in Phuket and these fellows will be cosseted in a shaded area, usually under green netting, along with phalaenopsis orchids and an abundant supply of mosquitoes.

Green Thoughts: Army of Ants ‒ Low Life among the Formicidae

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 3 April 2022 02:00 PM

Last night I was woken by a burning sensation. It started on my right bicep, then I felt another irritation on my forearm. Finally, my wrist. Mystified, I went into the bathroom, where something dropped off me and fell to the tiled floor. The culprit was a large red ant. I squashed it unceremoniously and watched as a microscopic fellow ant, maybe one millimetre long and a hundredth its size, danced round the now lifeless corpse and – lo and behold – began carrying and dragging it to some unknown destination.

Green Thoughts: Top picks for container gardening

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 13 March 2022 02:00 PM

Why bother with potted plants if you have a proper garden? After all, container plants are labour-intensive, need frequent watering, and will eventually get root-bound and need repotting. True, true and true again. But what if you live in a condominium with a cramped balcony, or rent a shophouse with only a concrete parking space at the front of the property? Why not put plants in pots and create a mini-garden. Hey presto… Lots of Thais do.

Green Thoughts: The mysterious migration of plants

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 31 October 2021 02:00 PM

Because the local climate is so conducive to growth, we tend to conclude that most plants in our tropic gardens originated in Thailand or at least Southeast Asia. Not true.

Green Thoughts: How does your garden grow?

Phuket Life / Phuket Entertainment

Sunday 3 October 2021 11:00 AM

As readers of these columns can attest, for years, I included a ‘Tip for Gardeners’ to my weekly peregrinations about plants. Due to space restrictions, the practice was discontinued. Now, making up for lost time, I propose to devote this article entirely to hands-on advice.

Green Thoughts: Going for Gold ‒ the Allamanda

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 29 August 2021 02:00 PM

After the rain has gone and we are well into the dry season in Phuket, all the flowering shrubs show off their wares. Often as I look out from my study, I can see a mass of golden blooms festooning the front wall of the garden. Nothing unusual about that, you may say. And you would be right; After all, the island is not short of spectacular yellow shrubs. But what is surprising about this one – allamanda cathartica ‒ is that once it starts, it never stops flowering. Come rain, come shine, the blooms appear every day, and unless there are high winds or torrential storms to knock them to the ground, they are produced in great profusion.

Green Thoughts: Greening your garden

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 11 April 2021 02:00 PM

Not all colour in your garden comes from flowers or fruit. After all, few flowers bloom all year round, and fruits are highly seasonal. Nor is foliage limited to conventional leaves: it can come in the form of casuarina needles – or distinctive succulent shapes that do not resemble leaves at all. Nonetheless, leafy plants are central to your tropic garden, the more so since evergreen foliage retains its hues all year round. Not just green either, but silver, bronze, red, purple, and of course, variegated.

Green Thoughts: Walking on Water – Lotuses and Lilies

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 25 October 2020 11:00 AM

Thailand has a high annual rainfall and Phuket is no exception to this, as anyone who has experienced the summer monsoon can testify. This year has been especially watery with precipitation likely to exceed 100 inches. But despite this abundance, Thais have a special reverence for water and its vital role in life. Expats drenched during the April water festival of songkran quickly realise that one of the impulses behind this celebration is to cleanse and renew, to herald the onset of the new rains that will bring life to the parched earth.

Green Thoughts: Sprouting sun worshippers

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 28 June 2020 02:00 PM

As readers familiar with this column will be aware, I often iterate the point, perhaps ad nauseam, that botanical names are worth mastering, since they offer valuable clues to a plant’s characteristics: maybe its place of origin (Japonica), its physical features (odorata), or even its cultural requirements.

Green Thoughts: Is your garden full of beans?

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 17 May 2020 01:31 PM

The very first time an expat ventures into a local Thai establishment for lunch, s/he will probably find a plate of green veggies on the table. We are not talking posh restaurants here, but the kind of open roadside eateries frequented by Thai workers, where the food is presented for your inspection in large metal pots. The platters of greens? Usually a mix of morning glory and cashew tree leaves, maybe some Chinese kale or chives, perhaps okra. Certainly, beans. A gamut of exotic flavours.

Green Thoughts: Good vibrations and your garden

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 19 April 2020 01:36 PM

“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good…” While we are all confined to barracks, or, more pleasurably, to our own home in the tropics, the privation has, ironically, opened up a wonderful opportunity for us – the chance to appreciate our gardens anew. Beyond their walls, Mother Nature is herself enjoying a welcome respite from man’s incessant predations: less pollution, less plastic, less  pandemonium, fewer people. More opportunity for the planet’s besieged and threatened creatures to get their breath, maybe their lives back. But the garden is unique: a natural location where man’s presence is not only necessary, but invariably positive. A symbiotic arrangement. Not only is the gardener good for the garden, the garden is good for the gardener. Have you ever encountered an unhappy tiller of the soil? Not often, I would guess. From the time when mentally disturbed Egyptian royalty were prescribed soothing walks in palace parks, to the use of therapeutic gardening to assist World War One soldiers with nerves frayed by gunfire and mud, there has been a proven nexus between such “green” activities and improved physical and mental rates of recovery – including reduced stress, a keener sense of well-being, even increased self-esteem. In his 17th century poem “The Garden”,  Andrew Marvell famously described such immersion as trance-like: “annihilating all that’s made/ To a green thought in a green shade.” In fact, the natural world has long been lauded by writers able to empathise with its ‘good vibrations’. Thus the Romantic poet William Wordsworth writing more than two centuries ago: One impulse from a vernal woodShall teach us more of man,Of moral evil and of good,Than all the sages can. An extravagant claim. However, what he means is something all nature lovers and, one hopes, all gardeners believe in, the restorative and benevolent force of nature. In what is more a Buddhist than Christian “impulse”, the poet avers that walking in a wood where spring is springing is an enspiriting experience, a place where we feel a sense of kinship with other living things, in harmony with the universe. While few of us today nowadays enjoy such a bucolic existence, every gardener can testify to the therapeutic power of Mother Nature. If we cannot walk among the bluebells in a “vernal wood”, or marvel at a tropic lake ablaze with lotus blooms, where better to experience the presence of nature than in our own garden; smelling the earth after a freshening shower, inhaling the perfume from a jasmine flower , or listening to a chorus of cicadas. Personally, I experience another more mundane benefit – a sense of optimism and satisfaction at the very  thought of all that springing, magical growth that is silently happening beyond the house walls – buds opening, roots delving, leaving unfurling, seeds sprouting, flowers bursting into bloom. Come a new day, I venture out into a kaleidoscopic world, a living tapestry where everything has subtly changed. There is growing evidence [no pun intended] that gardening helps in other, measurable ways. In an increasingly urbanized world , the presence of plants, particularly trees and shrubs in our own borders or in nearby parks and communal gardens, enriches the very air we breathe. All photosynthesizing  plants act as a sink for potentially harmful carbon dioxide, sequestering the greenhouse gas, and releasing life-enhancing oxygen into the atmosphere. Just for the record, they also intercept harmful airborne particulates, save water through their roots and leaves, and prevent flooding. One study recently found that green plants prevented nearly a million cases of respiratory disease, and removed in one year an estimated 17 tons of atmospheric pollutants. Six leafy trees provides enough oxygen for one person. Who knows, they could be an unseen ally in the fight against Covid 19… And the nearer these plants are to human habitation, the greater their health-giving impact on people’s lives. Trees in your garden? An especial treasure. Nor are we the only beneficiaries  Shrubs and leafy trees provide cover and nesting areas for birds; your lily pond is home to frogs and fishes; the nectar of flowers is life-sustaining for butterflies and bees. In material terms, gardens increase property values and help pay the grocery bill. If you have a garden in Thailand, there is little excuse for not growing your own produce since most of the world’s edible fruits and vegetables thrive in this most fecund of environments. Your local market demonstrates what local growers can do. Are you doing likewise? The garden is a microcosm of the world at large – the natural world. Today, its ecological importance has never been greater- and is getting more and more so. As green spaces vanish everywhere, as habitats for wild creatures shrink and as man is increasingly confined to an unnatural existence in apartment or condominium , our gardens and even our pot-lined patios fulfill a crucial role – oases of greenery in our concrete jungles. Tend and nurture your garden, In so doing, you will be nurturing yourself. Patrick’s book ‘The Tropic Gardener’, the culmination of 13 years of writing about tropical plants and their cultivation in Phuket, is now available. Promotional price of B900, including post and packing. Dr Patrick Campbell can be contacted at his home Camelot, located at 59/84 Soi Saiyuan 13; Rawai; Phuket 83130. Tel:66 076613227 (land line), 0655012326 or 0857827551 (mobile).

Green Thoughts: Flowers of fortune and good luck

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 16 February 2020 10:00 AM

Valentine’s Day is upon us and the shops are awash with cards displaying gold hearts and red roses. Ever since Robert Burns wrote: “My love is like a red red rose / That’s newly sprung in June” and likely long before that, the rose has been every lover’s choice for February the fourteenth, a floral symbol not just of beauty and romance, but a metaphor for the well-spring of true love, the human heart.

Porto de Phuket breezes into town offering something for everyone

Phuket Life / Community

Monday 16 December 2019 05:20 PM

PHUKET: Situated in trendy Choeng Thale close to the Laguna zone and Surin beach, the new outdoor lifestyle and retail complex Porto de Phuket offers an exciting, engaging and fresh shopping, dining and leisure experience.

Green Thoughts: Practical palms

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 15 December 2019 02:00 PM

In many countries, palms are grown not for their aesthetic charms, but because they produce edible fruit in the most unpromising conditions. While they have been important throughout recorded history, especially in hot, arid regions, nowadays they are assuming even greater commercial importance as cash crops.

Green Thoughts: Small and mighty palms

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 10 November 2019 03:00 PM

While many arecaceae are notable for their impressive height, characterised by a solitary, unbranched stem surmounted by a crown of fronds, and often producing massive seeds – the coco de mer has seed pods weighing up to 30 kilograms – other palms are neat and shrub-like, often denizens of the understory and able to survive with limited access to sunlight. In fact, their diversity is highest in tropical rainforests.

Green Thoughts: Grand palms

Phuket Life / Environment

Sunday 13 October 2019 03:00 PM

When I was a boy, I had to endure long waits on sooty railway stations – yes, it was the age of steam – whose walls were plastered with posters of seaside resorts with azure seas, white sands, bronzed maidens and swaying palm trees.

Green Thoughts: Spiky fellows

Phuket Life / Environment

Monday 16 September 2019 02:00 PM

A number of foliage plants are characterised by long, narrow, usually stiff leaves which are serrated and/or spiky. In landscaping, these are employed as architectural or accent plants, placed in locations where their distinctive shapes and sword-shaped leaves add an exotic element to the appearance of the natural environment.

Cache on 2026-05-23 09:54:37