”A fantastic, innovative product sure to put a smile on the face of cyclists and gardeners alike. Ideal for London pavements and gardens.” by Erin Gill. The conclusion of a good review of PlantLock in London Cyclist, magazine of the London Cycling Campaign.

Brill, the coffee, cake & record shop on Exmouth Market, has PlantLock for its cycling customers.   

Here’s an unusual bike on a PlantLock in Hackney, East London.

The groups of photographs on the right are the beginning of a typology of front yards. Things you might find in the front of houses - the facades themselves, the materials to be found there, the objects to be found there. More no doubt to be added.Surfaces of fronts.The materiality of the front. Is there is a materiality of the house front yard? These pictures are not the answer to that question, but the beginning of one.Bootscrapers.Front yard ‘furniture’ from the days of horse manure. A virtually extinct need.Front doors.A typology of entrances. Front yards are where the enclosure of home begins and the public world fades into the memory. The threshold.Fronts of homes.A variety of home types with yards in front. Typologies of house & yard.Fences, railings,walls & hedges.A variety of boundary markers or edges. Caste iron railings, wrought iron screens, picket fencing. Of course this is only a beginning - we need to add brick walls, stone walls and more hedges & fences.Dan & Ollie

We have been asked many times “Why use front yard – surely that’s just an Americanism?” Well, yes, North Americans do refer to the front yard and the back yard. But if we look at the history of the two words, garden and yard, we are doing anything but importing a word. We are infact resurrecting the old English geard – the root of the word yard – in the face of the old French gardin – from whence garden.The point is that the contemporary urban front yard is not simply a garden – it has to perform a whole host of other functions – like storing wheelie bins and bicycles. This is not to degrade the cultivation – the gardening – of the front yard, but helps us imagine a host of different arrangements for the space in front of our houses and flats.Not so long ago we used the space in front of our houses to demonstrate respectability - the tidiness of our privet hedges and so forth. A new respectability seems to be emerging, placing greater emphasis on our wit & acumen: our sustainable methods of transport, our recycling, our home grown tomatoes, and the vitality of our imagination.

The flood waters that paralysed various parts of England in the summer of 2007 gave rise to a short but intense media graze over the causes. Climate change in its broadest sense was skewered as the chief culprit. As we climbed guiltily on board our 10 quid easyjet flights, many must have wondered what they could do about it. It’s unlikely that the un-concreting their front yards would have occurred to the guilt-ridden sky-riders. But that is exactly what some are suggesting.A London Assembly report published in September 2005, “Crazy Paving: The environmental importance of London’s front gardens”, claimed homeowners across the capital have paved over an area equivalent to 22 Hyde Parks to give them somewhere to put their vehicles.The growing tendency to cover front gardens means rainwater has no way of naturally seeping into the ground. Instead, it is channelled into the drainage system, which is already under pressure, increasing the risk of flooding during heavy rain. According to the London Assembly report, two thirds of the capital’s front gardens are already partially covered by paving, concrete or gravel.A year earlier West London Friends of the Earth set up a campaign known as “Front Gardens Matter” drawing attention to the effect this was having, including, increased risk of flooding especially flash flooding, increased levels of pollution of local watercourses, increased air pollution (particulates), a dirtier environment, increases the local temperature, the effect on the diversity of plant and animal life, and the increased noise from traffic and other sources, especially at ground floor level.As is often the case, the balanced front yard – which might include a gravelled space for car & bicycle parking TOGETHER with more plants AND more effective recycling storage - is most likely to pave the way to the future of front yards. After all, nothing is set in stone.

The last Friday of July was my first experience of taking part in critical mass. A few hundred cyclists, and a few inline skaters gathered on the Southbank below waterloo bridge at around 6pm. As I arrived I noticed a large police force also assembled, I began to imagine the event being a constant battle between cyclists and officers.

However, to my surprise, nothing could be further from the truth. When we finally got moving, at which point I was riding in the middle of the mass unable to see the head or tale of the procession. I was stunned by the sight at the first big junction - around London Bridge. A police officer - on a push bike - was placed at each exit to the junction blocking the traffic from passing while our slow moving parade past through all three colours of the traffic lights. By the end of the 3 hours I participated this just seemed normal. In fact I got a real shock when later cycling home and realizing that I didn’t rule the road.

Towards the end of the night, as the rain that had started got heavier and numbers had dwindled. The police presence made up a substantial number (if not the majority) of the moving mass. I think they enjoy it.

Critical mass has no one individual at its head, it’s a truly malleable entity. As me and two friends experienced when upon deciding to head home while the mass was stationary in Piccadilly Circus (with the help of the police calmly holding back all five lanes of traffic) we turned to see the whole precession loyally following our route.