Go Dutch!
Here we go!
It seems like only a few weeks ago the garden was fast asleep, then a few stirrings and then BOOM! Look at this, still in March! Gardening is...
Marmalade and Snowdrop Time!
The days are getting slightly longer and the very early snowdrops have been out for some weeks now. Then suddenly they are all there and we are...
“Have nothing in your houses that …
… 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...
Wonderful photographs!
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...
A Family Christmas outing to the Courtauld Gallery, London
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....
Now is the moment!
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...
The BBOWT Environmental Educational Garden
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...
Setting the scene
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...
Lookout! New website
Here is the wonderful Emma DeBanks! who has pulled it all together and it was quite a pull! Without her, it wouldn’t have been possible. Micky...
Seasonal Posts
Here we go!
It seems like only a few weeks ago the garden was fast asleep, then a few stirrings and then BOOM! Look at this, still in March! Gardening is fabulous, the roses are budding, there is blossom everywhere, seedlings are going mad, what a world, another year under way....
Wonderful photographs!
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...
No problem!
This wonderful tree nursery in north Germany moves huge trees as if they were saplings. Everything is possible, and you can see from the second photograph that you would never know that the tree had just been planted. The choice of trees in every species and size you...
A Genius!!
Joanna came to Oxford to give a talk and she was so brilliant, interesting, supremely eloquent, razor sharp and wittier and more elegant than ever!
York stone
Here are three photographs from a fabulous quarry I recently visited near Bradford in West Yorkshire. Wonderful, friendly, warm hearted people made me so welcome. Their skill and dedication I know I am going to always remember. My journey was to find British stone,...
Layers of time
In an off-the-beaten-track corner of Rome a week ago, I realised that the layers of living, shown here by the excavation, have a quality which is present in so many of the gardens where I work. How many untold years have people cultivated this soil before? Who were...












