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Bolivia.....
No gardening this post, but instead our impressions of traveling in Bolivia. Which we are truly enjoying. Traveling between places is difficult, as the geography is so extreme, but once somewhere,...
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Overwhelmed by plantlife in Amazonia
Amazonia is overwhelming. We went five hours by boat (a modified dug-out canoe) north of Rurrenabaque in Bolivia - the knowledge that this is only a tiny fleck of journey on the map emphasizes the...
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Where have all the trees gone - reading other people's landscapes, or, why...
Terracing on Titicaca - but how old are they? When where they abandoned?
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Two hikes in the foothills of the Andes...
Two very different walking experiences in the foothills of the Andes; the first was beautiful but badly eroded scenery with only a little plantlife hanging on, the second was a tantalising glimpse into...
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Back Home and Clearing Up, and thoughts on crimes against perennial growing.
Back home from two months away in South America, and there is a lot to do the garden, although our one-day-a-week gardener, Diana had got a lot done. Cutting back primarily. Usually I cut back most of...
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Beyond 'nature as virgin – garden as whore'.
Nature in the city has gotta look pretty. The New York High LineIn a recent, and well-argued post, fellow blogger Thomas Rainer quotes landscape architect Martha Schwartz as saying that “Americans...
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Nature improved upon in hellebore heaven
This almost-black hellebore looks like something straight out of a Victoran funeral. Of all black flowers they have to be the bestA wonderful day spent at Ashwood Nurseries in the Midlands, looking at...
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Ever green in North Carolina
Prunus mume, an exquisite early-flowering plum, thrives in the South, where the hot sticky summers are so much like its native Far East, almost ungrowable in England because of fungal diseases,. So...
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Plant Delights Nursery
A particularly delicious Trillium underwoodii form.Tony Avent's Plant Delights Nursery near Raleigh in North Carolina is legendary. 20,000 plus taxa. Primarily for the huge range of plants of course,...
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Suburbia, red in tooth and claw
On a recent trip to the US I found myself in several conversations with people about animals in the garden. Some astonishment that we do not have coyotes in Britain, nor racoons, or groundhogs, and...
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The vandal in the park - Margaret Thatcher
P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }Council contractor planting team April 2006. Good people. They deserve better.Margaret Thatcher had an impact on everything that happened in Britain, and in a way still...
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The joys of spring
P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }There are surprisingly few good spring gardens around. So often, a 'spring garden' consists of drifts of daffodils let loose in grass. Very nice, but so easy to do, it...
View ArticleWhy do we believe it? Gardeners - fact, myth and downright *******.
Gardening discourse is full of information which is actually wrong. Far more than in many other areas of life - medicine maybe an exception, if the whole wide world of complementary treatments and...
View ArticleWhy does Robin Lane Fox have to drag his sexual fantasies into a review of a...
P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } Let's face it. If I had had a good review from Robin Lane Fox I would have been worried – a sign that I (and by extention Piet Oudolf) had sold out, joined the...
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Making the most of native flora
Cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) and other wildflowers in light shade in a garden in Suffolk. Paths mown through create a wonderfully romantic effect. All is mown down later in the...
View ArticleWhy I'm not going to Chelsea.
P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } I usually go to the show every three or four years. Like a lot of people. Once you have seen two Chelseas you realise that one is much like another. Those who are going for...
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Funky art-plant-human hybrids in Vienna make us look again at plant breeding
I was in Vienna last week to do a lecture as part of an exhibition on plant breeding as an art form. One of those events which displays the city's imaginative thinking and creativity at its best. Check...
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Where have all the wildflowers gone? ..... (apart from the ones on the way to...
We had a few days recently in Austria. One of the things I had been looking forward to was seeing hay meadows. A long time ago (an embarrassingly long time ago) I had driven from Salzburg to Vienna...
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The garden at Bryansground - better than ever!
P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; }We went to Bryansground the other day for the first time in years. Silly really, as it is only half an hour's drive away. Mind you, they (David Wheeler and Simon Dorrell) of...
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Global Gardeners explore northern Holland
Seed mix, sown last year, created by Piet Oudolf using seed from Cruydt HoekP { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } Garden tours are always special experiences, but our recent tour to the northern Dutch...
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