Is winter interest interesting?
The term ‘interest’ in relation to gardens has irritated me for years. Partly because the use of the word seems totally wrong and I’ve found it hard to say why. I think it’s actually because interest (apart from when applied to money) implies thinking, or curiosity –...
How do we define ‘gardeners’? by Anne Wareham
What is a gardener?
Not all Glooom
Yes, I've been neglecting anyone who is kind enough to follow this blog. And right now I'm somewhat out of words, having been frantically book writing in every spare moment since June...words words words.. So, I'm cheating. Some pictures of Veddw in November. (though...
You never stop designing a garden, by Anne Wareham
The trouble is, gardens won’t stay still…
Thinkingardens Supper
My apologies for those who want words - this is a post principally for the interest of those who came to the thinkingardens supper at Veddw, to discuss beauty and gardens. And much else besides. And eat cake....drink a little... # .. and there are no pictures...
Interesting feedback.
An Addition to the visit from Brockweir, Hewelsfield and St Briavels Garden Society's feedback The group leader now points out to me that I only asked about the people who didn't appreciate the garden: the majority did like it. And she asked me to add a new last...
I speak. For the Herefordshire Horticultural Hub.
I understand there will be WINE - and it's in the cause of the Herefordshire Horticultural Hub, so you can drink and feel very worthy if you come. It'll be great! I'll be being interviewed by Tristan Gregory. Topic: Are Gardens Art? Here's what happened - a review To...
Pride and falling…
I was dead chuffed about this sight in June: - the euphorbia looked wonderful for weeks. I boasted about it and showed off. So serves me right - the euphorbia got rust. And because I don't just do the odd plant in amongst lots of other different ones, preferring...
A praise poem to the place by Elizabeth Musgrave
This is a personal email to me from a friend, so perhaps doesn't belong as a review. But Elizabeth discusses and responds to that which is so important to me, and which is so much at the heart of the garden that I wanted it here. I think what she has to say is...
Sitting
We just bought a new seat . And put it together. (both of us - would have been impossible alone - but I took the picture so you can't see me slaving away.) We've always wanted a seat in the meadow, but there never seemed to be the right place. Then some...
Gravel
I remember reading, many years ago, that one of the changes the death of Vita Sackville-West brought to Sissinghurst was that the paths had to be paved. The increase in visitors and wear and tear on - grass? - created the necessity. And changed the garden...
Shadows
Light is the magic in a garden. The most wonderful garden in the world can struggle to excite in rain and gloom. And spring and autumn do special light: because the sun is low, suddenly unexpected things are illuminated. And you can get dramatic shadows. Shadows are...
Enter the Replacement
Just in case you wondered: this is really only of interest to family and friends - or in the unlikely event that someone was totally gripped by the birdbath saga - it's for them. It's the post script to this account of the Big Bird Bath Disaster. Now anyone who says...
Hug a Slug by Anne Wareham
This piece was published in The Spectator on the 8th of March 2014 under the title 'The War on Beauty': Next week is ‘Hug a Slug’ week. Well, come on, you did believe it for a couple of seconds. We’ve all grown so used to the fog of humourless eco-rectitude that has...
For Karen – a Walk in the Woods.
This is a special for my great friend Karen, (@wildelycreative ) who bivvies in this wood when she can, but it's been ages now...(and with apologies to the real Walker.) This is the other side of that gate into the woods: There are not many flowers out yet. The...
Decay
Finished.
Digging damage.
We need a landscaper with a little digger and much drainage work doing. This relentless rain is beginning to make our yews suffer. The only way you can kill a yew, besides ruthless attack, is making it sit in water. And that is just what this weather is doing, despite...
White Houses
It seems absolutely the done thing to paint your house white. In the last few years other colours have made a small inroad indoors, but if you look round the countryside you'll see that white for the exterior is still the thing. As if we'd just invented white wash....
Here comes the Judge
Judging the Garden Media Guild 'Inspirational Book of the Year' The word ‘inspirational’ gets barrowed around the garden world with great enthusiasm. It is rarely clear what it means, and it is rarely clear what the book, article, garden, blog post, plant...
It has to go.
I've been told often enough now. That tree has to go and major reworking done. Most notable of the commentators is Rory Stuart in his book What are Gardens For?, who described the 'formal avenue of top-worked Corylus colurna' which 'disappointingly,..leads nowhere.'...
Just cut it down
Half of gardening is putting things in. Things then tend to grow themselves. Then we cut them down. Very simple, really, for a whole industry of advice giving. I have now been gardening at Veddw for over 25 years, so I think I can have confidence that what we do...
Ladders
I don't advertise anything here except Veddw and my excellent Christmassy -present - book, The Bad Tempered Gardener, which are possibly excusable. Nor do I, in spite of endless tedious requests, sneak in little mentions of products under the guise of copy. However,...
Why Highgrove?
OK. No names – right? Because the garden world is not robust enough for people to express their opinions openly and I don’t want to upset people more than I already have. But this was illuminating to me and so it may be to you. I was at a social event with garden...
How does it happen?
above: The Cornfield Garden, Veddw Many years ago I designed and created the Grasses Parterre at Veddw. By which I mean I covered a small hillside with a design of hedges taken from the local Tithe Map of 1848 and then, with great difficulty, tears and expense, filled...
The Reveal
No, this has not become bad reality tv. This is gardening in the raw. Least it feels like that. This is one time of year when hard work in the garden is unavoidable. The Crescent Border finishes the great Campanula lactiflora and Epilobium 'Stahl Rose' fest. I have to...
Throw the Hoe
I’ve never used a hoe. I bought one originally, thinking it was sort of necessary, a gardener’s necessity. Since when it has just taken up space in the potting shed, like the equally useless riddle. It’s no good mulching and then trying to hoe in the mulch – and...
Wild gardening, Veddw style.
At this time of year I make a point of getting away to see what other people are doing in their gardens and it always prompts a great deal of thinking. One thing I got preoccupied with this year was tidiness and the wild. I cheerfully say to visiting coach parties...
If you tell a lie big enough…by Anne Wareham
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” - Paul Joseph Goebbels This piece was originally published in the Spectator, 29 October 2011 as The Emperor's New Weeds. I'm republishing it here because it may be behind a...
The bars of a prison
There’s a convention in the cultural world that people shouldn't respond to criticism of their work. That no doubt had its merits once, but the world is livening up and dialogue is increasing everywhere as a result of the web. For the garden world this should, at long...
Weeds – what’s weeds?
Weeds attract repetitive garden articles, as useful as those about slugs. So I'll try and spare you the cliches and report my current thinking. A visitor yesterday took me to see the flower of ground elder, thinking it was cow parsley. No difference as far as he was...
Using a matrix
A matrix is " A situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained". That's one, above. Now I know that the usual way of planting in the uk is to buy a plant, wander round with it in its pot, looking for a space where...
Is it worth removing these flowers?
Just how important is detail in the garden - or, at what point does it begin to matter?? The planting in the front garden at Veddw at this time of year has quite bold patches of telling foliage and flower. The effect is kind of clean.. But then the variegated ground...
Propagating without trying
In the conservatory at Veddw we have a display of succulents, which we love and other people seem to, too. Makes for visitor entertainment when they are sheltering from the pouring rain. Personally, I like them better when they're not flowering. Anne's picture....
Good things
After writing about destruction, time to write about some mending. Some people will remember the removal of the box balls from the front garden. Now Jeff has made created a new front garden for us (ish - the plants are all the same..) This was no small task, as the...
Death and snow damage.
Veddw may not be an over gardened zone, but it does make demands. Last year three full grown trees - cotoneasters - died and had to be removed. A huge job and many thanks to Jeff for doing all that work. That disaster was then followed by heavy snow - about 10 or 12...
What Are Gardens For? plus shameless self promotion..
I'm sorry to begin another post with a disagreement with a much respected colleague, (see also) but here I go again. And it is also one of the joys of blogging that I can. Once we had to struggle to get a voice, now we can take one... I was just reading the RHS...
Weeding
I did some hand weeding the other day. I know. I know. First time since never.... All the better to learn something then. And I did - see if you agree. It was the creeping buttercup curse. I used to think I would never get on top of this. I have had colour schemes in...
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...
Garden light.
I'm after beauty. It's why I made the garden. But it really needs light. Wet dulls it down, drags it down, and just now should be the very best time of year for the beauty light brings. In 2010 I wrote this about early autumn sunshine on the yellowing foliage:...
Reconnoitring Veddw
A genuine request for information. I'm closing the garden this week - our last coach party is on Friday. I find keeping the garden looking as good as possible through May to September quite tough and end up exhausted at this time of year, in desperate need of a...
The way to get things done in the garden
The way to get things done in the garden is to go out there intending to do something else. So I went out yesterday all girded up to plant the 30 odd plants that were all sitting there demanding to be planted. For some reason the other plants that had been dug...
Worth the trouble?
In the kind of weather we've been having it is impossible to keep a garden immaculate. And, besides, there will always be a time when something is past its best or has just been cut down or replanted. That's the nature of the beast. But there are other things which...
The Brockweir, Hewelsfield and St. Briavels Garden Society visit Veddw
In July 2012 the Brockweir, Hewelsfield and St. Briavels Garden Society visited Veddw. They subsequently wrote up their visit for their website and the members have kindly given me permission to reproduce their comments here. To see the original and to find out more...
A miserable summer (so far)
It really has felt like a continual nightmare. There are just the odd moments which are like the brief waking up from a nightmare, when you realise it's not real, before getting dragged back down into the nightmare's pit. I mean - this summer in the garden. But it...
The Sacred Objects of Gardening
It's strange how some garden implements have acquired iconic status - and perhaps inexplicable. When I first started gardening I 'invested' in a Hawes watering can - not because that is my husband's name but because they had such a great reputation. It was expensive,...
Did we get this right?
This is the before picture - with a tentative cut where we thought we might do it. (thanks Jeff!) The block on the left had always seemed too - well, blocky. Heavy and out of scale. So, much discussion and contemplating. Today Charles went and did it. It...
The dubious worth of garden writers’ opinions?
Stephen Lacey was possibly a bit of an idiot to put the Laskett in his recent Telegraph piece about the best garden makers? See these opinions elsewhere. I'm sorry to be exampling the Laskett again - it's simply that there are not many gardens that have been so...
Cleavers
I do wonder as I'm pulling out streamers of cleavers ( Cleavers, Clivers, Goosegrass, Stickywilly, Stickywillow, Stickyjack, Stickyleaf, Catchweed, Robin-run-the-hedge, Coachweed, Bedstraw) which break off as I pull - would I do better to be patient, let it fill out...
Fashion or taste?
Yesterday a garden visitor asked me what I was intending to cover my black pergola with. I felt mildly shocked - I love it just as it is. He seemed equally shocked that I would permit unadorned black wood in my garden. I wondered why he picked on that? However, when...
Anne Wareham’s Garden Blog
All right – I have given in and here is my garden blog. I keep wanting to write shorter pieces than could find a home anywhere in the printed media, so it does in the end seem obvious.. And, as someone pointed out recently – it’s a form of social media. A conversation...
Links to newspaper and magazine articles by Anne Wareham
In The Garden (RHS) Non-Gardeners see the Beauty How do we define 'gardeners'? Inspired by Meadows You never stop designing a garden In the Telegraph: Garden photography: a form of worship? Strim your way to Sanity Bird Bath Disaster The Garden Media Guild...
Veddw en fête and at dusk by Robert Webber
We were both delighted to be invited to Veddw by Anne Wareham and Charles Hawes for their Summer Party last weekend. Aside from fascinating people, including ‘literati and glitterati’ from the garden world, great food and flowing wine, the context of the garden itself...
Recent articles and reviews of Veddw
Links to articles about Anne and Veddw. (see also Anne's writing ) Veddw A visit to Veddw House Garden Is less more? And for whom? Trying not to say 'lovely' Visiting Veddw The Struggle: Working Man's Blues Veddw - a thinking person's garden An Undulating Eye-Opener...
Review of Veddw by Bridget Rosewell
The garden made by Anne Wareham and Charles Hawes in the Welsh Borders has been described by Anne as a modern romantic garden. I struggle with this description which conjures up for me visions of 1980's music and Adam Ant. In this review I try to come up with...
Seeing the Garden by Anne Wareham
It would be easier to make and maintain a good garden if we could see what we are doing. But we can't. The problem is that we can go out and look at our gardens every day without ever managing to see them clearly. I think the difficulty is that evolution designed us...
Extracts from “Gardens of Illusion” by Sara Maitland & Peter Matthews
"Most people consciously and unconsciously respond to the larger topography in the making of their gardens. Often it is to something simple – a slope, a curve, a mature copse, a single tree or (lucky gardeners) standing or moving natural water. If something is there,...
Veddw in late summer by Anne Wareham for the English Garden Magazine
The trick to keeping your borders going all the way through to the winter is shopping. Garden centres report that their peak period for plant purchases is spring, which is why we have a great many gardens that peak early in the year and very few good late...
Being Criticised, by Anne Wareham
Speaker's Corner Piece for Gardens Illustrated Last year we spent a bleak winter’s day removing and burning many yards of maturing holly hedge. It was a bleak day not so much because of the weather as because of the task. It had taken ten years to grow the hedge and...
Review of Veddw House Garden by Noel Kingsbury
This is a garden which is very ambitious; it is intellectual and experimental, occasionally provocative, but for the most part beautiful and relaxing.