Clik here to view.
Buscot – Quirky Delights and Disappointment
The camera can lie. Visiting gardens is not the straight-forward business it would seem to be, and I don’t like to think of the number of wasted days I have had travelling full of anticipation to see...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wollerton Old Hall – A Quart in a Pint Pot.
Sometimes a garden delights and irritates in equal measure, and none more so than Wollerton Old Hall. Looking from the Old Summerhouse to the New Summerhouse When a smallish private garden with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
West Green House – Swash-buckling Flair, Imagination and Opera.
I am a huge fan of garden author and broadcaster Marylynn Abbott, and her garden near Basingstoke is one of my favourites, a great garden upon which she has stamped her flamboyant personality. It is a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
East Ruston Old Vicarage – A Magpie’s Nest of Treasures.
Where to begin? An old wife’s tale is that magpies’ nests are renowned for having a mismatched collection of things that have thrilled those beady little eyes, sometimes things of great value and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hidcote – The Elusive Mr. Johnston and the Extraordinary Mrs. Lindsay.
Sometimes it is the person who created the garden that is more interesting or curious than the garden itself, and in the case of Hidcote this turns into a fascinating detective story. Who was the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stourhead – The Genius of the Place
Someone interested in gardens and gardening would have found it difficult to avoid the television obsession with garden makeover programmes. As a starting point the garden team sends a family away for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The National Botanic Garden of Wales – Welshness, Originality and Excellence
The Great Glasshouse My visit to the Gower Peninsula started well. A long hilly and winding single track road led through the dappled light of mature beech and oak woodland, still wonderfully green in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park – Serpentine Follies
Interior of the Selgascano Pavilion – 2015 One of the highlights of my London summer, along with 200,000 other people is a visit to the Serpentine Pavilion. Each year the Serpentine Gallery finds...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Trentham Estate – The Good Developer?
The Parterre and Lake Beyond Wearing one of my other hats, I serve on the committee of an amenity society for one of the inner London boroughs. Our job is to vet planning applications and pass on that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Aberglasney – The Best Garden in Wales
The Cloister Garden In Britain, we set the bar very high. There are literally thousands of Jekyll-inspired borders and hundreds of Capability Brown-inspired English Landscape Gardens. In other...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Alnwick Garden – A 21st Century Pleasure Garden.
The Grand Cascade The Alnwick Garden has always sharply divided opinion. On one day it can be a delightfully tranquil place for the garden visitor (- my weekday visit in late September), yet on another...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Great Dixter – Scripted Chaos
Great Dixter was one of those beautiful Jekyll-inspired gardens when I first visited, a close relative in garden style to neighbouring Sissinghurst, but then in the late 1980s something remarkable...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Portmeiron – A Visit to a Parallel World
We get glimpses of what the past was like from what remains today, whether it is Bath’s Georgian crescents, Capability Brown’s landscapes, Hampstead Garden Suburb and Letchworth or the post-war New...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Levens Hall – Continuity and Playfulness
The Topiary Garden Having practised for many years as a garden designer and also being such an avid garden visitor I am often asked what makes a good garden. It is much more complex than it might at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Me and my friend ‘Capability’……
Hammersmith’s Statue to Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown Through much of my life, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown has been just a few steps away from me……….I wonder how true this is for other people? Whilst a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cranborne Manor Garden – the Borrowed View
Manor House and Church Towers You would never guess from surfing the internet or glancing through travel guide books that Cranborne Manor Garden was one of England’s great gardens. Hidden in the depths...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hatfield – Airbrushed out…….
Hatfield House and the private South Garden No, I didn’t get out of bed the wrong side this morning, and I’m not usually this grumpy, but the gardens of Hatfield House have turned out to be a great...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hampton Court Palace: The Privy Garden ‘The Little Gentleman in the Black...
View from Queen Mary’s Bower Looking Towards the Palace It was ‘the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat’ that led to the demise of William III and as a consequence the rapid decline of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Regent’s Park 2 – The Secret Garden – Calm and Tranquility
The Secret Garden: The Circular Garden I have on many occasions thought of writing a review about The Secret Garden but then it wouldn’t be secret anymore and do I really want more people to know about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Richmond Park: Charles I’s Great Legacy
Isabella Plantation: Kurume Azaleas Many would consider Charles I’s great legacy was his fabulous art collection of over 1500 pictures and 500 sculptures, sold off by Oliver Cromwell, and after the...
View Article
