Tag: Poetry
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Plants and love lessons
Maybe because it’s been too wet here in the UK to be out much in the garden, but I’ve been taking extra care of my house plants recently. So it’s a joy to revisit this gorgeous New Yorker documentary video of Ched and Maria Markovic’s shop, the Noble Plant shop in New York. As with…
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The Quiet Enchanting on London’s Strand
Shhh… you’ll have to listen even harder at the moment to hear the artwork whispering to you outside King’s Strand campus because it disappeared yesterday. I know. I know. It’s infuriating when that happens. In fact, I thought I probably should never post this, too late again, but then I remembered that things in gardens…
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Stepping insideThe Yellowhammer’s Nest
It’s National Poetry Day today – and for this, I wanted to take at least one of our words about nature and its beauty back to where it belongs. I was dismayed recently to search for ‘Yellowhammer’ only to wade through a full page of political jargon before I got to the bird. Really? So…
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Creative writing exercise, week 4 – writing your own instructions
The late great Toni Morrison famously said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I like this advice on many levels, but mainly because it deals with the idea that when we are writing, we are also listening to ourselves. Perhaps one…
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Week 1 of Writing in the Garden – a free creative writing exercise
Hello! I had such a lovely response to my recent article in the RHS Garden magazine on reading and writing poetry that I’ve decided to put a different creative writing exercise up on this website EVERY WEDNESDAY. We’ll see how we get on, but I suspect we will make some poetry and prose creative fire between…
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Remembering Capability Brown – Lady Nature’s Second Husband – and a little bit of Compton Verney
The English landscape gardener, Lancelot (Capability) Brown died 236 years ago today, 6th February 1783 – and fittingly is remembered on Twitter, via @BrownCapability: “Your Dryads must go into black gloves, Madam. Their father-in-law Lady Nature’s second husband, is dead! Mr Brown dropped down at his own door yesterday” wrote Horace Walpole to Lady Ossory…
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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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Poor Susan and the sounds of the city
This week I was lucky enough to go on a guided walk around the city of London with Rosie from Dotmaker Tours. She was concentrating particularly on the sounds of the city – we walked without talking, just listening (almost too intense, was the verdict), we talked how the city would sound in the future…
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Papermaking in the garden
Back in the summer (remember that far back, when the sun shone and everything?), I went on a day papermaking course at Morley College in London. I was drawn to it by the fact we were going to be using natural plant materials, but what I hadn’t expected was that I would fall in love…
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We’re in The English Garden!
Or at least the very beautiful glossy magazine by that name. You can imagine how happy I was to flick through this month’s copy to find a mention of this website by Lia Leendertz. A wonderful surprise. In fact I was SO happy I did some serious squeaking – which isn’t so cool when you’re on…
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Chelsea Fringe – Cake in the Garden…
Well, I’ve come to the end of (almost) daily posts but haven’t come to the end of all the London gardens so I will be posting more on here. Slowly though. And will be collating them all under the London Garden tab on this website. It’s been yummy, a piece of cake, the cherry on my…
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Chelsea Fringe – London Garden No 16
Five Minutes Peace: a garden to sit in, a poem to read, and a prompt to write to … No 16. (Find out more about what this is all about here.) Pop Up Garden by the Balcony Gardener, Squint This pop up garden by the Balcony Gardener has been a popular part of the Chelsea Fringe…