Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
Remember Remember the 5th of November, Gunpowder, treason and.... Roses? This floriferous rose garden certainly has other ideas about a quiet slide into senescence, leaf-drop and rose-hips - these are flower-packed shrubs with more to come. Colour, fragrance aplenty and fresh, clean leaves in abundance. A remarkable display given it really is November and hardly…
Continue reading ➞ The Rose Garden at Kew. Vital still in November ….
A real treat to see this installation by Rebecca Louise Law. I'd read an article in the Kew subscribers magazine, and someone had mentioned it to me though I confess it had dropped from my immediate consciousness until yesterday and I veered across the lawns to the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art. 375,000 flowers,…
My first visit in ages to Kew it seems, certainly I haven't kept up the mini-incursions where I would rush in to see one thing or another - just the Alpine House, or the Paeonies, or the raft of Camassias, the flowering cherries, or the roses, each taken in within a hurried hour (or two),…
Continue reading ➞ Take a walk with me through Kew Gardens – Part 1 – Magnificent Trees, The Hive
Christmas spirit is seeping into the Nurseries and I have already been buying decorations and gifts. Autumn seems to be clinging on after a series of bright warm days, though it's chill at night and first thing and of course, the clocks went back on Sunday night so it is dark by 5.30pm, so I…
Continue reading ➞ Halloween? Christmas? Where has the year gone…?
I've an 'Introduction to Pruning' workshop to present tomorrow so I'm all about secateurs and shrubs; loppers, ladders and most importantly, looking; and climbers; roses, of course; a foray fruit trees - and trees generally; a touch of soft fruit if there is time. The dead, diseased and dying, and timing. Safety, very importantly. And…
Continue reading ➞ Autumn Pruning …
A beautiful promontory, long and rocky, with far reaching views (the draw, really), with such amazing topiary in one area, close to the Chateaux, but the views are the thing. For every unanswered promise these gardens might have made, I wouldn't have missed them, but neither would I have missed them very much if I…
Continue reading ➞ Les Jardins suspendus de Marqueyssac
A little tour, through a macro lens, of the Nurseries where I work. A sun-warmed, blue-sky-afternoon, a kaleidoscope of colour and texture, fragrance too, and within the glasshouses, a world of tropical stars, adapting to our northern climes, and desert denizens hoping for a regime of benign neglect. Sparkle and glamour in Glasshouse One (of…
Continue reading ➞ A little tour of Petersham Nurseries on a fine October day …
I just couldn't resist - this beautiful Kalanchoe thrysiflora - and I have photographed just one plant - gave me the opportunity to take rather a lot of photographs today (in my lunch break I would say) and although I have wittled down the greater number of original shots, there remain quite a few. I…
Continue reading ➞ A little Kalanchoe Magic, Georgia O’Keeffe in mind ….
A late summer - nearly autumnal - tour of Bordeaux and the hinterland heading past Bergerac into the Dordogne. I'd been last there in 1991, zipping around in an electric blue Peugeot 205 GTI (and one sold recently, not the same special edition even, for £38,000. Not bitter, not a jot). This time around, in…
Continue reading ➞ Teddington Gardener abroad – Eyrignac et ses Jardins in the Dordodgne …
The Teddington Gardener 