Everything In The Garden Is Lovely by Alasdair Aston
Sometimes I get really fed up of 'lovely gardens' and all the other lovelies...and then I remember this poem... Everything In The Garden Is Lovely by Alasdair Aston Even the fat slug That drags its belly nightly Over dank paving And into the heart of the lettuce Is...
Taking the pictures….
I love it when Charles works on Veddw: his pictures are so much better than mine. It's like keeping the garden, saving its best bits: he only does best bits. Professional photographers aren't interested in the bits that don't work. They don't sell. Hence the deluded...
The Great Slug Scare
Monty Don started it apparently, suggesting everyone hunts around, under and in their pots and seed trays to find slugs. Yuk. And then, presumably, squish them..I didn't see it. The thrills I miss. But I didn't miss an article online telling us the slug is back. That...
Drought or Drown – what not to plant?
Noel Kingsbury has just published a piece in the Telegraph online, wonderfully identified in the link as 'Middle Column Puff' , about rainier gardening. It's about gardening in the New Wet and follows his previous, recent piece about how we still need to save water...
What NOT to do in your garden in April
They tell you : The arrival of spring can mean fast growth. Love this, as I see daffodils shivering in the east wind and refusing to open…. In sunny weather, temperatures can rise sharply in greenhouses and cold frames. To prevent damage to seedlings, make sure your...
What NOT to do in your garden this week, in the snow.
Mow the lawn ( yes...) Mow your lawn now and you'll enjoy a greener, denser and harder-wearing patch throughout the summer. Whether you want a bowling-green lawn or just a bit of grass for the kids to play on, regular mowing will improve the appearance of your lawn...
Why do I like a mixed vase of tulips?
I hate the look of a mixed hanging basket or jumble of annuals, even a jumble of tulips.. So why did I buy a mixed bunch of tulips? I'm not sure. Maybe the colours just work together? Or at least better than the Bodnant ones? Bright yellow and pale...
What NOT to do in your garden in March
Start chitting tubers of seed potatoes. Have you ever tried to stop a potato sprouting? (ie chitting) If anyone can tell me how to stop them I’d be very grateful. You do not, it seems to me, need to lay them carefully in single layers in trays in a cool light frost...
Institutional Gardens – are they all awful?
Postscript to this piece We just revisited Plas Brondanw (May 2014) and found it transformed. The changes have been sorted and the renovations as successful now as they could be. Wish they would lose the labels and the inappropriate roses but otherwise it's now a...
A Very Bad Day
It’s snowing and I’m feeling heartbroken. And Jeff, our gardener,( he comes one day a week and is indispensable - see sidebar.) is out there, in the snow, working so hard. Digging up the box balls in our front garden. What to say? We’ve been putting off this dreadful...
What NOT to do in January
They say (it's all true, promise you!) :- Recycle your Christmas tree by shredding it for mulch. Yey! Drive the neighbours mad with the racket!! The noise any decent sized shredder makes is excruciating. However, the jamming can be a nightmare and the resulting pile...
Not Snowdrops Again
Ok, I may hate gardening, but the slightest glow of winter sunshine draws me irresistibly outside. The sun is lost to this garden for a few weeks in the winter, because we are sheltered by a high ridge to the South. When the sun at last returns to the garden it can...
Garden visiting.
Thanks to our wonderful motorway system, overuse of which I do, of course, utterly deplore, we happily travel three hundred miles in a day from Veddw to visit gardens. Which means I've now seen an awful lot. (You can read that both ways.) A long time ago we used to...
An activity with no results?
I've just been wandering round the discovery engine sites. StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit - that sort of thing. It is a new term to me too, but they are a kind of filter to web articles you might be interested in. Like this one. In order to focus your selections they...
What not to do in your garden in November
A new feature for the lazy gardener. This month a response to the (rather desperate, it seems to me) Mirror. ____________________________ Apply a bulky organic mulch around the base of trees, shrubs and climbers to keep weeds down and the root area moist should...
Opening for the NGS: shocked, but not surprised.
"..I've been to open gardens where I had to go round twice to make it seem I wasn't leaving too quickly (and even then five minutes was too long).." John Grimshaw in The Garden June 2016. Those people who know that we opened for the NGS for many years - we have our...
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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.
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