Category: Uncategorized
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Who says a garden can’t talk? Lyveden New Bield
How’s this for a bit of magic? Lyveden New Bield is perhaps one of the most important gardens in Britain, and I’ll take a bet that many of you have never heard of it before. Or non-gardeners anyway. And why should you? The house is a ruin, and the garden unfinished. But… but … but……
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Digging Up Paradise… an ‘Eden of a book’
I had thought that Digging Up Paradise might just be a summer book, so what a treat to have two new reviews this week – all talking about reading it in Autumn. First of all, a huge thanks to Rosie Johnston from The London Grip who said: Beside an autumn fire while winds and rain…
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I hung a poem on a branch….
That’s the title of a poem I love by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I’ve kept a copy on my noticeboard since I first started this website, and today I got to bring it to life at Westgate Gardens in Canterbury. Thanks to all the friends and poets who contributed poems, to Westgate Gardens for inviting me to…
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The beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete…
That’s one of the descriptions of Wabi-Sabi, given in Leonard Koren’s book. Along with ‘a beauty of things modest and humble’. And ‘a beauty of things unconventional’. It is ‘the extinction of a beauty’. Things “wabi-sabi are usually small and compact, quiet and inward-orientated. They beckon: get close, touch, relate” I’ve just been on a walk round…
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‘Trying things out’ at Gravetye Manor
Earlier this month, I was lucky enough to be invited to visit the garden at the hotel, Gravetye Manor, as part of a tour of garden journalists. Appropriate really because Gravetye is famous, in gardening terms, as the home of William Robinson, (1838-1935), who purchased it as a result of the money he earnt as…
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Friends and reviews…
Just in this month… First friends… a page in Kent Life with photographs from the launch, such a lovely memory: And then reviews, a happy-making review by the garden writer, Annie Gatti in the magazine, Gardens Ilustrated: And if you still haven’t got a copy of Digging Up Paradise, and would like a signed one,…
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Apples, bank notes and a garden at Bere Mill
Bere Mill in Hampshire has a rich history. And I use that adjective on purpose, because it was where the Huguenot family, the Portals, made the paper that was used for Bank of England bank notes in the early eighteenth century. There are still traces of the mill, and also importantly, apple trees. I hadn’t…
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DIgging Up the Pantiles
Forget Potatoes, People and Poetry – it was Books, Bunting and Busking in the Pantiles this week for the signing of Digging Up Paradise at Gardener and Cook. As £4 for every book sold was going to SpotlightYOPD, a new charity aimed at raising awareness, support and advice for younger people diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease,…
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Old maps, hands and ghost gardens…
Or fingertips anyway… This is me joining the marvellous Vegplotting’s Show of Hands for the Chelsea Fringe, and a chance to show you a corner of the ghost gardens that I’ve been researching for my Lost Gardens of the Strand walk. See how wonderful they are. And you can see from this map too how…
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Love, duelling pistols and an outdoor theatre in a Luccan garden
I’ve been all – and happily Kent, Kent, Kent gardens recently (and a little ghost ones) so this post on a garden I visited in Lucca recently has got lost. I’m sure the Villa Bernardini can wait though – what’s two or three weeks when you’ve been standing since 1615? We stayed in the centre of…
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Hello beautiful….
Forgive me a little more book love here, but please can I introduce you to the front cover of Digging Up Paradise…