A few images from April 2018 featuring the Cutting Garden and Petersham House Gardens and more specifically the bulbs planted in great parallel swathes in the working Cutting Garden and then more expansively throughout the gardens of the House itself. A memory-jogger for me, given my workshop on Spring Bulbs together but boy, has it…
Seasonal colour
April at Great Dixter, reprise, for a spring-flowering extravaganza and a lot of inspiration
These images were taken on a visit on the 20th April this year to the gardens at Great Dixter in East Sussex. I had been to the charming and gently planted King John's Nursery beforehand, and there is some memorable naturalizing of spring bulbs and primroses in the old orchard that is quite superlative. But…
A late-September taste of the gardens at RHS Wisley
A mid-week, late morning, late September tour of the RHS Gardens at Wisley. Blue skies peppered liberally with white clouds (today was a brighter, warmer clearer-skies day than yesterday, but probably overbright for my photographic skills so here we are ...) It is still quite definitely late summer, rather than full-on Autumn. Very few of…
Continue reading ➞ A late-September taste of the gardens at RHS Wisley
Blue
OK, so there is a touch of rose-making-the-blue-purple going on here too though I have weeded out the more obvious not-blues, but the theme, from palest to the boldest, with some blue-grey foliage too, is a cool blue palette. Fruit, leaf and flower all contribute and I refer you once again to Gertrude Jekyll. In…
Yellow
From the palest blush, soft cool primrose, sulphurous, acid, gaudy, bright, golden, and adorning the garden right the way through the year - this is a richly diverse palette and can be used to many an effect. I've been reading Gertrude Jekyll's book on colour schemes in the flower garden and she is extraordinarily…
Orange
A little orange on a dull, wet day. Bring back the sunshine ... In the meantime, this
Floating Flowers …. almost igniting this huge bronze bowl at Petersham Nurseries (a new institution!)
We have really enjoyed floating all manner of seasonal flowers in this wide, shallow and beautifully scrolled bronze bowl, which we began in February. Then it was a huge brass urn from the Bank of Rome (it was one of a pair, one since sold, the other, available...) but we swapped to the lower, pedestal-less…
Petersham House Gardens – formal gardens, generous borders and a vibrant Cutting Garden
After a cycle ride along the towpath and the Thames sparkling in the sunshine, and nearly being late for taking so many photographs, a look in the Kitchen Garden first, which was the vegetable garden but has been co-opted into an additional Cutting Garden, as well as having the peony beds, Hellebores, many old roses…
On Home Ground – a little peak at Petersham Nurseries
The Garden Shop at Petersham Nurseries is filled with houseplants, whose homes hail from all over the world, together with seeds and tools, pots and gardening equipment and in the blessed rain yesterday, was my home for the day. In the rare moments between torrents, I had a wander through the rest of the nursery…
Continue reading ➞ On Home Ground – a little peak at Petersham Nurseries









