“Have nothing in your houses that …

by Laura | 28 January 2025

… you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” Flowers from the garden in mid-January, on a day of wind and tempest and pure blue skies in between. With this photograph, William Morris came to mind, a hero for putting so much meaning into a few life...

Wonderful photographs!

by Laura | 24 March 2024

Gardens and plants are so photographic, and here is the proof of it! I so often say, “a photograph is better than a thousand words”. When I am beginning to work with a new client, I ask them to look out all and any photographs that appeal to them, and I will do the...

A Family Christmas outing to the Courtauld Gallery, London

by Laura | 22 December 2023

These two paintings date from 1873 and 1874, when Renoir was just 32 years old. In a gallery full of wonderful paintings, they just knock you over. The picture of ‘Lilies in a Jar’ by Matthew Smith, an English painter who studied with Matisse in Paris,...

Now is the moment!

by Laura | 14 October 2023

Not a day to lose, October is bulb planting time and also November! The choice is extraordinary. You can have the most amazing colours of disco lights and fireworks from January to July! In the garden, pots, lawns, woodland, house, roadside, anywhere! Bulbs and corms...

The BBOWT Environmental Educational Garden

by Laura | 2 October 2023

The task was to bring new life to the BBOWT Environmental Education Centre at Sutton Courteney, on land leased from Didcot Power Station. BBOWT is the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. What a great name, once heard always remembered!...

Setting the scene, a stage set

by Laura | 29 August 2023

The whole world is a play! When you get an entrance right like any of these, with such a strong sense of invitation, one is drawn in. Even the dark green gates, you want to know what is behind. Such beauty, such poise, such high art in all of them, rustic country...