I imagine I have a lot to deal with at The Watch House, but being the custodian of a large, historic garden is a different matter altogether. Responsibilities range from maintaining the fragile fabric (living and non-living) to deciding the future course of the garden’s…
How fortunate that my first visit to Sissinghurst this year should coincide with the warmest day of the spring so far. As the car bowled through the Weald of Kent the roads were fringed with sulphur-yellow catkins and golden daffodils, sparking beneath a clear…
“We reached Stourhead at 3 o’clock. By that time the sun had penetrated the mist, and was gauzy and humid ….. Never do I remember such a Claude-like, idyllic beauty here. See Stourhead and die.” James Lees-Milne, May 1947 It is incredible to…
I have been particularly dutiful this week, even if I do say myself. I began the week in Cornwall, entertaining my beautiful, happy, intelligent niece. As duties go, this was an absolute joy. Martha has taken to walking like a duck takes to water, and…
From a very early age my parents took me and my sister to visit gardens. I like to think the reason was to cultivate our interest in flowers and plants, but as one follower of this blog commented recently (with reference to another Cornish garden, Trebah),…
On the steep sides of the Helford River in Cornwall lie two famous gardens, as similar in style as the two halves of a 1920’s semi. The likeness is not so surprising when you discover that both were influenced by the same family at a crucial point in…
When I wrote my equivalent post this time last year, I thought 2012 was a momentous year, but reflecting on 2013 I find the last twelve months have more than measured up. I celebrated my 40th Birthday and over the course of the year visited 10 countries, including…
Northumberland is a wonderful, wild, unspoilt county in the north of England, once the frontier between rampaging Celts and civilised Romans. The region is noted for its landscape of high moorland and forests, and is mostly protected as a National Park. Northumberland is also the…
