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It’s Earth Day today and we’ve been discussing how we would like to be greener at twig.
We’re pretty good at the small gestures such as recycling our waste paper, shredding and composting old documents, using energy light bulbs, trying not to leave our electricals on stand by.
And we’re not too bad at some of the bigger gestures either. Our embroidery threads meet strict EU environmental legislation in their manufacture, the studio we rent is heated with bio-diesel made from recycled waste oil. We only use recycled soil improver and mulches in our garden design projects to conserve water and reduce the need for fertilisers.
But we still feel there’s a lot more we could, and should, be doing. So we’ve made a few pledges
- we’d like to reduce the amount of driving we do which means a little more cycling, a few more rides on public transport, and the possibility of moving our studio closer to home.
- we’d also like to be more careful about the fabrics we use so we’ll be adding some organic and some recycled textiles into our studio collections.
- and we will be changing over to recycled stationery
It doesn’t feel like very much but we reckon that a few small commitments every few months should make it easier to be green.
The lovely folk at Hainsworth have sent some of their gorgeous pure wool fabrics for twig to sample.
What’s great about these fabrics apart from the quality and colour range is that Hainsworth is one of the only fully vertical mills still working in the UK and all the textiles they sell are produced by their 200 strong team of local Leeds residents, many of whom have been working in the company for years. So they meet our aim to source some of our fabrics ‘locally’.
Expect to see some cosy wool meltons appearing in the studio collections later in the year.
Here is a glimpse of a commission for Dolly, a very special baby.
‘hello dolly’ baby throw
A red cotton throw with applique flowers in natural linen and batic cotton. As a special extra we’ve named the design hello dolly. It’s not every little girl who gets to boast a designer collection in their own name, eh Dolly?
The hello dolly design will be available from twig in the very near future on a very exciting project we aren’t quite ready to reveal….what a tease!
It’s been a bit of a water garden marathon at twig recently.
Jason kicked things off in March with a talk to the Society of Garden Designers on designing ponds and water features.
Then we spent a busy weekend in the Highlands building a wildlife pond at Squirrel Cottage holiday home in Killicrankie for Jason’s cousins. They run a lovely holiday cottage and wanted a secluded pond for their guests to look out onto. Their garden is home to a whole array of Scottish wildlife including deer and red squirrels as well as an abundance of birds. We could tell that deer had already been to check things out before we got up on Sunday morning.
And finally Jason has just spent the day with a longstanding client refreshing the planting around this amazing pond.
Jason designed and built the pond in 2001 and the owners fancied a change. The contemporary two plant scheme of iris and bullrush has been replaced with a mix of year round flowering bog and water plants. There’s nothing like a change to welcome in the spring!
And the next pond project?
It’s probably going to be in our own garden….
