Pop up Christmas trees

Who hasn't admired a very tall Christmas tree bedecked with tiny white lights outside an office, in a retail park or even outside someone's home.  It can take at least a couple of months planning to arrange such a display.   One Christmas tree grower I knew wouldn't even pick up the phone come December.  

Securing large Christmas trees can be a chore.  It may look great on the chilly, still day that you install it but if the weather changes and north winds doth blow then you doth have to go out and fix that tree that doth blow over.   Arranging the lights on the tree so they appear neat and crisp and even is time consuming.  There is always a gap where a branch to hang the lights on should be.   Don't get me started on the subject of the old strings of tungsten lamps!   One lamp doth blow and the whole of that string wouldn't light up.   Fortunately the old style lamps have been superseded by leds.   The first led strings had too much of a blue tint to my liking but other colours including warm white were soon added.

Some fortunate householders will have a lovely tall pointy shaped conifer in their garden and these are ideal for turning in to a Christmas display by covering it with lights.   Cover it you must as it looks a little sad when you try to stretch a 40 string set around an 8ft tall evergreen.   One neighbour covers their tree with plenty of lights but uses the same old extension wire that is around 3ft too short.  Four or five led lights are always draped along the ground as the cable is stretched to the nearest power outlet.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology it is now possible to have a Christmas tree display up to 30ft tall without an actual tree.   Fairy bells pop up Christmas trees are here to save the day!   These are simply strings of leds held in position with securing straps and attached to a fibreglass stem.   Fairy bells are quick to install and take up little room when stored.   See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxko4TTBlfk

www.plantcontainershop.com

Any colour you like, as long as it's green.

As fibreglass is such a versatile product when it comes to manufacturing interesting shapes, it lends itself nicely to the manufacture of plant containers.   A large range of shapes, sizes and colours added to watertight construction and ease of handling make fibreglass an easy choice for home and office planters.   Glass reinforced plastic or GRP as it's commonly known has a long life span and it's quite rare for planters to be thrown away.   If a plant container is no longer needed in an office there are always members of staff willing to rehouse it.   If a large number of planters in a building have become chipped and marked then it is very easy to have these refurbished.

The manufacture of glass fibre resins and glass strands has a low environmental impact when compared to other products such as steel and some plastics. There are times, however, when a GRP product comes to the end of its useful life and needs to be disposed of. Recycling by breaking down the product in to component parts can be very costly.  A simple plant container doesn't have any additional materials added but a boat or a wind turbine will have timber, screws, metals and possibly glass components and these will need to be removed manually before the basic fibreglass parts are left.

It is now possible to use the fibreglass waste components in the production of cement.   The resin in the fibreglass is used as part of the fuel for the very high temperatures needed for cement production and the glass in fibreglass is utilised as a proportion of the silica or sand required.  Developed by two German companies, Zajons and Holcim (now Largfargeholcim), CompoCycle uses a patented process to convert fibreglass waste into a raw material and with the addition of other products to produce cement, there is no waste left over.  http://www.holcim.com/referenceprojects/disused-rotor-blades-can-now-be-utilized-in-cement-production.html

The University Of Strathclyde is currently developing another method of glassfibre recycling: http://www.strath.ac.uk/rkes/fly/recycledglassfibreforcost-effectivecomposites/ and there is a New Zealand company that recycles: http://www.frpgreen.com/wa.asp?idWebPage=54642&idDetails=170 


Discovering new methods to recycle difficult materials is admirable but it's much more desirable to make the materials more recyclable in the first place.   Bio-resins have been developed using natural, sustainable sources that use less energy in production and produce less harmful waste on disposal and Eco-resins are products made in an environmentally friendly way with recycled materials.   A Netherlands based company uses eco-resins for the production of beautifully shaped planters a few of which can be seen below.   Call us at plantcontainershop.com for further details.

I want one of those...

At the time of writing "It's only seven weeks until Christmas!" still has the power to surprise.  We've only just had summer.   It may be a little too late to order for this Christmas but how about one of these in your stocking next year....

...a full sized remote controlled digger!  Laing Plc recently asked about hiring some rocks for an event in London where their remote control technology was being demonstrated.  With all the basements being excavated in London, wirelessly controlled equipment is the ideal solution for a hazardous environment.

We had the perfect artificial rock for hire for this event: boulder G.  Made from tough and durable polyethylene it was the perfect size for scooping and shovelling without leaving a mess to clear up afterwards.   Weighing only 9Kg there was no risk that someone would be crushed by a falling rock.

With regard to the digger and remote control I'm sure with this purchase batteries will be included.

www.artificialrocks.co.uk

A posy for Her Majesty The Queen.

For the past seven years The National Federation Of Women's Institutes (NFWI) or the Women's Institute have chosen us to supply plants and flowers for the AGM.   This year, on the centenary of the founding of the Women's Institute I was also asked to supply three posies for members of the Royal family: Her Majesty The Queen, The Princess Royal and The Countess of Wessex.

There have been countless florists that have supplied beautiful posies for Her Majesty and I am sure every one of them has felt very honoured to do so.   I too felt honoured and grateful for the opportunity to supply not one but three posies for The Royal family!   It was a wonderful feeling to see pictures of The Queen holding her posy in newspapers the next day.  The Times had a particularly beautiful image on the front page.  The Daily Mail had a number of images: http://dailym.ai/1Kem4i4

The WI had commissioned a hybrid tea rose named 'Inspiration' to mark the centenary.   A hundred were due to be delivered to us a few days before the event and these were to form the centrepiece of the posies and table arrangements but due to the vagaries of the British weather only twelve buds were showing and eight of these were very tight.   Unlike the roses grown in Dutch nurseries, the buds hardly opened at all and the posies had just four Inspiration roses in each.  We had to try to match the colours of the Inspiration rose at rather short notice and chose colours to complement the WI rose.  The other flowers included Lisianthus (Eustoma), Peony, Dahlia, Ornithogalum and three other roses in similar hues.

The route for deliveries to the stage at the Royal Albert hall is rather tortuous and halfway through delivering the plants and flowers the large lift I use was nowhere to be seen.   After pressing the button for ten minutes I decided to walk up the stairs only to find a carpet fitter fitting a red carpet in the lift!   I thought that I would be barred from using the lift and forced to use an even longer route used for deliveries for catering.   Fortunately the WI are adept at resolving last minute hitches and the carpet was quickly covered in protective sheeting so I could finish off my work.

At every AGM, just before the end of the event the ladies sing Jerusalem.   They sing it very well I must say.   Within minutes of the song finishing the WI members are making their way to the coaches that will take them back to their respective counties.   It has become a bit of a tradition to hand out the flowers from the displays to those ladies to take home with them.   The table arrangements are shared between the WI organisers and hopefully on this occasion The Queen, The Princess Royal and The Countess Of Wessex took their flowers home too!

Mon Chapeau!

Love those shapes!   A new range of planters for you to consider: the Chapeau range.

www.plantcontainershop.com

Dry stone walling

Further to my earlier post on the artificial dry stone wall 'top' requested by a customer, dry stone walling we are familiar with is not restricted to rural areas in Britain.   A Canadian dry stone waller has a blog here: http://thinking-stoneman.blogspot.co.uk/ and the following site suggests that there are 35 countries that have dry stone walls:  http://www.lowimpact.org/factsheet_dry_stone_walling.html

If you like the idea of a dry stone wall but don't want the views from your country estate spoilt then your servants can build a Ha Ha instead.   The image from Wikipedia explains it all.   As the image suggests, it is not a good idea to fly a kite from the top of a Ha Ha.

It's all in the detail.

A new addition to our range of lightweight rocks: tree trunks, tree stumps and logs.   Like the rocks, the artificial timber products are lightweight and durable.   I thought it was time to branch out.   Silence.   Ok, that pun is so bad no body even groans any more.  

Take a look at the detail on the largest tree trunk.   It looks like the bark is actually flaking off just like the real thing, but it's firmly affixed.

artificialrocks.co.uk

Lightweight artificial log

Lightweight artificial log

Lightweight artificial tree trunk

Lightweight artificial tree trunk

Lightweight artificial tree trunk

Lightweight artificial tree trunk