Favour the Ferns
Many years ago The Financial Times sent me to do a feature on the RHS ‘Flower Show’ at Tatton Park . I was totally naïve and had no idea what I was supposed to do or to write about. So my excitement was tempered by acute anxiety. The term ‘imposter syndrome’ could...
Snowdrop mania is coming…
In the UK, right now, the horticultural world is about to drive us all mad with snowdrops. Pictures of. Articles about. Gardens with them. Anything people can think of to bash us over the head with snowdrops.
Brilliant Brecon
Recently we made a visit to Brecon. This is not far from us, in case anyone was getting over excited about the possibility that I might have been travelling again. It’s in Wales, in the Brecon Beacons, recently re-christened Bannau Brycheiniog.
You should have been here Next Year
Charles made a complaint recently when we were walking in the garden.
When I complained about him complaining he told me that it was good for me to have complaints about the planting.
Garden Seats – to make and sit on.
I am discovering more and more often that it is important to have a great many seats in the garden. In fact there should probably be one every three feet or so.
Winter plants flattering the town: a short break in Chipping Campden.
But what does Chipping Campden have to offer gardeners in the middle of winter, besides cream teas and toasted teacakes? Well, it has Plants in Doorways for a start,
The Joy of Succulents
Well, it’s frosty outside and the sun is shining and you probably want me to write about snowdrops. There’s a lot of snowdrop waffle at this time of year, (I’ve done it myself) totally ignoring the freezing cold out there and the requirement to bend to see them. No, I...
Messy with good bits
So, it’s good to be dogmatic and do the ‘put your garden to bed’ thing (, or equally, leave it all for the hoar frost (which never comes) – or the wee beasties who prefer it standing. (which are?)
But really, it’s rather more complicated.
Box Blight: another hedge goes.
If you look carefully at this wonderfully out of focus photo you can see the blight. We have fought it for years. All over the garden. And we have been removing it from all over the garden. This year, after a drought, we got much pouring rain and the worst blight we had ever seen.
My favourite plant right now.
I still love these two flowers together though. Maybe proving (rightly) that I know nothing of colour in gardens and understand even less.
Gifting the Ephemeral.
Knowing we won’t live forever, (we have not had a nasty diagnosis) we’re thinking about what will happen to the house and garden when we die.
Weeds I Want
I am deciding which weeds I will choose to live with.
Words and Things in Gardens
’m not sure why I originally wanted to make a garden. I started with a need to grow things, which grew and grew until I needed to leave London to find more garden space in the country
Alison’s Visit to Veddw : Part Two
Here is the second part of Alison’s walk through the garden.
It’s still raining.
Alison’s Visit to Veddw, Part One.
I invited a friend to walk the garden and give her responses on the way. Alison agreed and recorded her visit.
To the Woods!
So after some rather futile years, losing as much as we planted, we made a radical decision: to keep the big old trees, which appear able to weather the wildlife.
Voted one of the UK’s Top 100 Gardens by Garden News
Recent Posts From: thinkinGardens
Are Gardens just for Gardeners?
Do you visit art galleries and museums? Do you enjoy theatre and concerts? Hauser and Wirth – art gallery and Oudolf Gardens As a garden writer and garden maker I deeply regret that my audience for both appear to be almost exclusively gardeners. It is as if the works of painters and sculptors were only […]
Should thinkingardens migrate to Substack?
I think it’s possible that such platforms are the future. At least for as long as blogs were, once.
Otherworldly Gardens by Mary Keen
“The question to ask is, ‘what is here that is true, that is underneath the superficial things? What is here that matters?”
Autobiography of a Garden by Patterson Webster: a review
Autobiography of a Garden is about the garden making, Pat’s life, the history of the land, the ideas, the art, the plants and the devouring deer.
Garden regionally, get inspired globally by Marianne Willburn
But to dream, and perhaps more importantly, to innovate, we should inspire ourselves globally:
Chelsea or Chaumont? by Catharine Howard
“Have issue. You were so adamant that you wouldn’t go to Chelsea again. Discuss, please”.
Gifting the Ephemeral
. And now, knowing we won’t live forever, we’re thinking about what will happen to the house and garden when we die.
Hadspen aka The Newt in Somerset, by Anne Wareham
The garden is actually interestingly old fashioned. It’s not just the bedding but the relentless inclusion of every garden cliché, however brilliantly executed.
This site built by
