Quiet Mastery: Honouring the craft behind horticulture Last Saturday marked the launch of the Hortistry Masterclasses, held at Jekka's Herb Farm and Beth Chatto's Plants & Gardens - locations rooted in the heritage of Briti...

Quiet Mastery: Honouring the craft behind horticulture thedirt.news/quiet-master...

You Don't Know What You're Missing: The science of what’s lost, and how to find it The science of what’s lost, and how to find it

I’m delighted to share some news: my new book "You Don’t Know What You’re M ss ng" is coming out in the UK on 4th June.

It’s about something that lies hidden in the background of almost everything we do, yet rarely gets named: Missingness.

uk.bookshop.org/p/bo...
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#monoprint Acrylic on Paper

#art #printmaking #abstractfigurative

Monoprint in blue ink of a roughly drawn landscape with trees on the skyline and some scrubby trees in the left foreground.

Monoprint in blue ink with some young trees on the skyline and in the left foreground.

Monoprint in blue ink of a very roughly drawn fence in the foreground, which curves from right to left and then round to the right again in the middle ground, around a field. Rough trees and sky in background. Grasses etc in foreground.

Have finally found a way to loosen up when drawing a local landscape. Monoprint.

@simonforstroud.bsky.social

Help us uncover the hidden lives of Europe’s ground-nesting bees When most people think about pollinators, they picture bees visiting flowers. But for many species, a large part of life happens elsewhere: in the soil. Many pollinators do not just feed above grou…

Join a new citizen science project and help us to uncover the hidden lives of Europe’s ground-nesting #bees - please share with your networks:

jeffollerton.co.uk/2026/04/02/h...

Your regular reminder:we’re famed for our stringent, darn fussy, book review process.

We don’t ‘just’ sell inclusive children’s books.

We sell THE VERY BEST inclusive children’s books.

See our insta for our recent reels & pinned posts where you can also meet our review team!
#KidLitUK
#BookSky

Colour photo of an excavated, preserved tree stump of an oak that grew in the Early Bronze Age

The preserved stumps of oak trees survive below the Flag Fen post-alignment. Part of a submerged forest, these trees belong to a Early Bronze Age terrestrial landscape that pre-dates the rising groundwater table that turned these low-lying contours into a fen embayment. #BogOaks #Fenland #FlagFen 🏺

A screen shot of the webpage showing information relating to this talk. There is a photo of brightly coloured mineral samples on a black background. The text reads ‘mineral and Earth pigments in art and architecture - public lecture, 21 July 2016, 18.00-19.00, virtual and Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BG’.

I’ll be giving a public lecture on mineral pigments in art @geolsoc.bsky.social on the evening of 21st July. You can attend in person or watch online. Registration details in the link below
www.geolsoc.org.uk/events/miner...

Fun fact that lying UK journalistic hacks won’t tell you because they hate Labour: Boris Johnson did not pass vetting when Theresa May appointed him Foreign Secretary. #UKPolitics

Who or what is Roseberry Topping? Find out in our new episode featuring @theyounguns.bsky.social - out now.

🎧 Listen here: pod.fo/e/4000ea

This is a dream job for an ecologist eager to investigate the loss of ranunculus on the Rivers Wye & Usk, and the conditions that best facilitate its recovery.

Come & work with us on a project to help restore this key species.

Leicester also. Apps only (farming your data and location)....or, stand in the street juggling phone and card, feeling vulnerable. I refuse.

Abstract seascape in charcoal and oil pastel: a lot of charcoal scribble in the foreground, over a base of bright blue pastel, smudged together in places, with a faint horizon line in charcoal beyond.

Sketchbook: charcoal and oil pastel on Fabriano, A3

SOFT PASTELS: Landscapes from Delacroix to Anderson Super smudgy, applying pigment straight onto a surface without a brush!

This looks good from London Drawing Group. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/soft-paste...

Hay Meadow Restoration: Practical Guide to Biodiversity Learn how to restore species-rich hay meadows with this practical online webinar. Explore meadow ecology, site selection, preparation, sowing, and long-term management to create biodiverse wildflower ...

🌾 Boost your meadow restoration skills!

Join the self‑paced Hay Meadow Restoration course with specialist Carol Edmondson. Learn how to restore wildflower‑rich hay meadows for biodiversity—for ONLY £12.50.

📌 Enrol: courses.biologicalrecording.co.uk/courses/hay-...

@forestofbowlandnl.bsky.social

Pregnancy vaccine reduces baby hospital admissions for RSV by 80% A study confirms the vaccine gives excellent protection for babies against life-threatening chest infections.

As it's the weekend, let's take a moment to enjoy and celebrate what for the entire country is an unalloyed good-news story!

Standing cat with arched back facing right created with vertical strips of wood with peeling paint, all against a light blue background

'Scaredy Cat' by Cornish artist Kirsty Elson who trawls the beaches of her home collecting driftwood as the raw materials for her artworks #WomensArt

Pencil Drawing by Helmut Smits. A collection of used coloring pencils arranged in appropriate size order to color in the void of a tree trunk fork. Photo by Malte Oing

Helmut Smits
www.helmutsmits.nl

April Forum: Artists of the North West: The Lake District and Liverpool  - Leicester Vaughan College A talk about the works of art by Lakeland and Liverpool artists which are in the Lakeland Arts, the National Trust and Liverpool Record Office collections.

Our Next Forum is on April 30!
vaughan.coop/course/april...

The application has remained stable since approximately 9 PM PDT, April 16 despite ongoing Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks.
We have not seen any evidence of unauthorized access to private user data.
We will provide our next update on or before the morning of April 20.

Talking Cities Project - Nottingham City of Literature The Talking Cities project is an initiative from the Youth Advisory Board to pair young writers across the Cities of Literature network.

Aged 16-25? Like writing? Fancy a pen pal in Germany, USA, Australia, Poland, Iraq, Tasmania, Norway, Indonesia, Canada, Latvia, Holland or India?

Nottingham City of Literature are part of the UNESCO #TalkingCities project and can make it happen...

nottinghamcityofliterature.com/projects/tal...

Accelerate building an independent European social web This week Bluesky went down. This is why our vision for a fully independent European social web matters. You are the first users of Eurosky. You are the community making this vision a reality. We are ...

Yesterday Bluesky went down. @eurosky.social servers worked but we couldn't communicate as we don't have an app.

Our next step is to build everything we need to operate without Bluesky. We're raising €100,000 to build a European app backend supporting 100k+ users.

Let's do this

fund.eurosky.tech

Poem reads 'How lucky am I to have fallen into this moment in time, to thrive on all discoveries that came before?' Bridie Squires.

Three years late but worth the wait, it's a lovely, airy space with flowing shelves and an outside terrace. Tardis-like, it does seem bigger on the inside. Great to meet so many old friends there. Here's a poem by Bridie Squires that you'll find on the staircase when you check it out for yourselves.

Children queuing to enter new library

After closing during Covid, Sherwood’s new library opens at last. Going in!

A postcard format poster for the walk, showing a photo of the Guildhall Art Gallery and a photomontage with an ammonite fossil and some pink granite and the text ‘Geology and building stones in the city of London. Meet at 2.30 pm at Bank Station Exit 1’

My next #urbangeology walk with London Walks will be on 2 May 2026 and will be all about the rocks, minerals and fossils in building stones in the City of London. Reservations and more info is at www.walks.com/our-walks/ge...

See you there!

Our team received a report of intermittent app outages at about 11:40pm PDT on April 15, 2026. They worked through the night to mitigate a sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which intensified throughout the day.

'An East Anglian Landscape.' (c1971) In the early 1950s, Denis Wirth Miller settled in the Essex town of Wivenhoe - he considered the ship-building and fishing town a perfect retreat for his work and began to skillfully capture the austere, beautiful Essex flatlands on canvas.