Pondering the mead

I was making a hasty departure from Longwood a few weeks back, and with no time to take a proper look at the excellent shop near the exit, snatched up a book on meadows near the door.  After a very q ...

Originality is overrated

There’s this thing going on the The States at the moment, where they stick their pots of annuals and perennials full of….well…sticks.  It may well be happening elsewhere, but its been a while s ...

Perfect balance - is it achievable?

For several totally disconnected reasons I’m back in the zone of thinking about plant-driven gardens vs design-driven gardens.  If you were here, I wouldn’t be able to resist telling you each of ...

Colour: dense vs diffuse

Most plants present their floral colour in a way that is irritatingly, or at least disappointingly, diffuse.  This is never more obvious than when you take a photo of a plant or combination of plants ...

A Pinch of Floral Spice

One of the really big questions is how much garden space should be allocated to good, reliable plant matrix, and how much to seasonal, colourful, ephemeral blast.  It’s sort of the same as when you ...

Humbled by the tropics

I’m totally thrown by tropical gardens, or at least by tropical plants.  I can’t shake the conviction that, given a tropical climate, I wouldn’t have a clue how to use them effectively together ...