So the joys are shrinking. At least they’re shrinking in physical size, but curiously without any diminution of their joy-level. I don’t know how this works. All I can think of is that somehow, ...
I’ve never found the space, or more correctly, the context, for small stuff in my garden. I’d much prefer to be swallowed up in plants, than tiptoe over a carpet of them. But over the years I’ ...
I can’t decide if it’s just a matter of association, but I love the look of bulbs. I’m not talking about the flowers (though I love those too), I’m talking about the bulbs themselves. I lo ...
Just back again from the deliciously juicy, turgid gardens of Marlborough, NZ, and while I’ve been ranting about the joys and the unrealized potential of dry gardening for years, I still find that I ...
It’s too easy, as a designer, to find yourself delivering design solutions within a certain habitual or predictable range. In fact, I can’t help but think that it’s inevitable. And it’s not ne ...
Many thanks to GardenDrum, which inadvertently answered a lurking plant identification problem I had. It’s curious, in this day and age of information accessibility, how hard it can be to identify u ...
There’s two particular questions that I’m always dealing with when designing a garden, or evaluating an existing one. I’ve been dealing with them for years, though they’ve only recently emer ...
Back in the years leading up to August 1661 Le Notre used recent mathematical revelations about the angle of incidence equaling the angle of reflection to design a pool at Vaux le Vicomte that perfect ...
I almost missed Dan Pearson’s garden. I ran into an old buddy in the Grand Pavillion at Chelsea, and he asked me what my favourite garden was, then Ed: ‘What did you think of Dan Pearson’s garde ...
Some time in the last ten years, possibly only the last five, planting of the bulbs in various parts of Keukenhof took something of a turn away from beds of solid colour, and towards a layered effect. ...
My nose tells me that there must be a genetic link between flower colour and flower scent, but it’s not something written about at all in the garden literature. Maybe I’d find something in the l ...
This time last year we had a great long discussion (possibly the longest in the history of The Gardenist) about companion planting for colchicums (check it out here). The point was that they can loo ...
So I declare, straight up, that PGA (Plant Growers Australia) occasionally gives me plants to try out. They’ve never asked me to write about them, and I’ve never offered to, let alone promised t ...
This post was published on the excellent on-line mag The Planthunter a couple of days ago (hence a few pics that regular readers of this blog will remember from earlier posts). There’s no other p ...
Yet another shake-up. Will I ever be left alone to dwell in a chubby, buffered comfort zone? I’d barely regained my balance after being knocked for six in the gardens of the Marlborough region o ...
I’m currently re-listening to an audiobook of a very light-weight novel about a late-teen in the mid 1950’s who’s family owns a massive house dating back to Medieval times, with a huge extension ...
Way back in 2009 when I ordered 24 sheets of colorbond, rolled to my specified diameter, it was my intention to organise the consequent 12 raised vegie beds to define an inner space. I suspected tha ...
It’s the weirdest thing. You grow vegetables in order to eat them, right? How is it, then, that when the time comes to pick, the knife can hover over them, poised for the kill, but waver in vaci ...