Time was when golden mimosa was an exotic plant you bought in a florist in January, or admired on a winter holiday in the South of France or Cornwall. No longer. The little puffy balls of yellow flowers are moving north and east.

The Mimosa Meter registers Acacia dealbata in London and in sheltered gardens all the way up to north Humberside. Since it will tolerate a few degrees of frost for short periods, it might be worth planting now anywhere in the lowlands of England and Wales, That is, if this past winter is part of a pattern, as the scientists tells us it is, rather than an aberration.

Changing climate, we are told, means stronger winds, particularly in autumn and spring, together with wet, mild winters that produce only the odd, short-lived episode of snow and no sustained periods of freezing weather, less incidence of spring frosts and then long, hot, dry summers. What happens, in these changed circumstances, to existing gardens and plantings, based very largely on reliably frost-hardy trees shrubs herbaceous perennials and bulbs; the kind of garden for which we are particularly known across the world?

It seems to me that there are a number of relatively easy things we can do to mitigate the worst effects of climate change on them. We should plant everything small, especially trees, so that they are well-anchored by an extensive root system in the soil and able to withstand gales. We should lighten heavy soils with grit and bark chippings, so that plant roots aren’t sitting in sopping soil through the winter.

For those plants which need moisture in summer such as South African bulbs, we should mulch the soil heftily in spring, so that it stays moist despite a beating sun in July; in the case of frost-tender plants, the mulching should be done in the autumn to prevent the roots from freezing. We should plant shelter beds, and, if that interferes with the view, then internal shelters using hedging plants. Northern European perennials and blackcurrants, which need substantial winter chilling, should be plants in the coldest part of the garden if possible.

You may wonder whether it is worth that bother to maintain our hold on traditional types of garden making, using well-tried plants with which we’ve become comfortable. The alternative, however is to risk a mish-mash of conflicting styles. Just because we can get something to grow doesn’t mean we have to. I shall refrain from planting a mimosa yet awhile.

Reproduced with the kind permission of The Spectator from “The Climes They Are A-Changing” by Ursula Buchan, as featured in The Spectator Guide to Gardening, supplement, 28.iv.07 

As we sit here in the Square Mile, with the lights blazing away all day, Blackberries, mobiles and iPods on charge, monitors displaying screensavers, TVs on standby, photocopiers whirring away to themselves, all of us generally burning up energy with insane abandon, as if it were completely free and everlasting, “like there was no tomorrow”, it might be an idea to stop for moment and consider whether tomorrow deserves better from us.

Could Rule Financial make a serious dent in its overheads by consuming less energy?  Can we bring ourselves even to find out whether it could function just as smoothly with fewer electrical machines permanently switched on, fewer pints of water boiled unnecessarily, and fewer trips in the lifts?

Supposing it proved an efficient, cost-effective, healthy and all-round ‘Good Idea’ to adopt such a strategy, why not tell other people what we’ve done, and even introduce it as a permanent fixture in Rule’s advice to its clients?

Specifically, could the company become an example for other organisations in the financial services industry to follow?

And if so, why not throughout the City?  …and other cities.  Paris recently switched off the Eiffel Tower - for five whole minutes -  in response to an eco-appeal (in typically Gallic style, there was a huge row beforehand about how much EXTRA electricity would be used up by the power surge when they were switched back on).

So could Rule Financial be the butterfly wing which eventually causes all the great conurbations on Earth to switch off the lights when they don’t need them? With the company actively looking to New York, perhaps our initial USA PR offerings could form a headline-catching appeal to turn the Big Apple from red to green.

THIS PAGE INVITES CONTRIBUTIONS ON GREENISH ISSUES FROM ANY SOURCE.

Aim them towards  riccooper@rulefinancial.com

David Little writes… 

Some suggested reading on this topic might include:-

“Inconvenient Truths”  by Al Gore.
“The Revenge of Gaia” by James Lovelock.
“Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning.” by George Monbiot.
“How to Live a Low-carbon Life: The Individual’s Guide to Stopping Climate Change,” by Chris Goodall.

And finally, if you ask e-Bay to sniff out an “Electrisave meter” you’ll discover a gadget which may cost you £60 now,  but will save you a fortune in the long run when connected to the logic nodes in your brain.