Category: Kent
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Silence in the nature reserve
And a happy new year to you all! I think it’s still all right to say that, but this has been my theme recently… just a little too late! We spent the weekend after the new year in the middle of silence. It was beautiful. I’d been wanting to stay at the Elmley Nature Reserve…
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Revisiting Salutation Gardens, Sandwich
Although I’m slightly horrified to realise that it’s SIX YEARS since I first wrote about The Salutation Gardens in Sandwich, Kent, it was a pleasure to go back and see them in all their spring glory. Look at the tulips in the bottom corner… Then, of course, they were called the Secret Gardens, but I…
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Always the two sides….
On this rainy Easter weekend we went walking in Kent, and came across this lovely rural scene of a church being decorated for Easter Sunday and the start of spring… And then keen to investigate the one Commonwealth War Grave in the churchyard, I went round the back of the church. Here it is… But…
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Halfway to Heaven in Folkestone
Not quite a garden, but this website has done graveyards before so we’ve got form. And besides, this is amazing. It feels so secret and magical, that even the dandelions look as if they are meant to be there. The Baptist Burial Ground in Folkestone has been left as an ‘island’ for more than 100…
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What people have been saying about Digging Up Paradise
I’m not always the best person to talk about my own work. To be honest, I tend to say stuff like, ‘Oh, don’t feel you need to buy it…’ or even direct them to someone else’s book about the same subject. So it’s made me laugh, cry and dance to get the blurbs below for…
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‘Loveliest’ Leeds Castle
Leeds Castle – in Kent, not Yorkshire as some people apparently think – is justly proud of Lord Conway’s comment that it is the ‘loveliest castle in the whole world’. It’s origin dates from 1119, and has been the home to six queens – Eleanor of Castile, Margaret of France, Isabella of France, Anne of…
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The view from a hill – Octavia Hill, Toys Hill and Ide Hill
The Octavia Hill Centenary Hill is not so much a garden, but a walk involving three hills – Toys Hill, Ide Hill and the woman who connects the two – Octavia Hill. She was a social reformer and nature lover who left her house to the organization she founded – The National Trust, who still…
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Porcupines and Poetry at Penshurst Place, Kent
I always think of Penshurst Place as a true writers’ garden. This isn’t just because it was the home of one of the great 16th Century English poets, Sir Philip Sidney. or the muse for Ben Johnson’s poem, To Penshurst. But it is still attracting writers today. Dramatist and short story writer, Gaye Jee (who…
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A joyride in a paintbox – a walk round Winston Churchill’s Chartwell, Kent
Regular visitors here will know that there’s a form of time-travelling that can go on. Sometimes I’ll put up a post about a garden on the day I visit it, other times it will take months. This is because I really hope I can write something original for each garden I visit, and sometimes thoughts…
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Eating William Morris’s Potatoes – Red House, Bexleyheath
I nearly turned back when I got to the suburban street marked as the address for Red House because it was hard to imagine William Morris, who once proclaimed that we should have nothing in our houses that were not beautiful or useful, commissioning his first ever home from architect, Philip Webb, here. Nothing against…
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Ruins and personality at Great Comp
Great Comp garden, near Sevenoaks in Kent, is a remarkably personal garden, wrapped round a 17th century house. Dotted around the garden are the ruins which, by the time you spot the second one, you realise must be the creation of the same person who has created the rest of the garden. They offer an…
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Sculpture, sun-tattoos and the ‘art garden’ – Marle Place
This may well be the quickest garden-visit-to-post on here because I was in Marle Place gardens just this afternoon. And talking about speedy, look autumn is on its way. There’s a reason for putting this up now though. Marle Place shuts to the public on the 29th September so there is only just enough time…