Cottage Gardens

Phyllis Bide – the perfect rambling rose for a cottage garden – informal flowers in a muddle of apricot and cream – and not a monster either, like Kiftsgate or Wedding Day… The Story cover photo is from the Welcome to Yorkshire Garden at RHS Chelsea this year. Proof if it were needed of the…

Petersham Open Garden 2018 – all the pictures!

Ten gardens, ten private passions, ten stories - all on show for Petersham Open Gardens, an event every two years where private gardens showcase their beauty and skills (and skulls in some gardens), for charitable purposes. And given the footfall today, the charity-benefitting coffers will be full to overflowing. Congratulations folk, one and all. I…

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018 – the show gardens, the great pavillion, the roses and … well, pretty much everything

From my walk through Chelsea, to the very last moment - a few hours in the company of the world's greatest flower show....

More from Petersham House Open Gardens …

A play with the camera first thing this morning, before the crowds, with a few at the end of the day, with the longer shadows. A cycle in along the river this morning and again on the way home, quite delightful. Hundreds of visitors for the gardens, four hundred? five hundred?, enjoying the double borders…

A few hours at Kew Gardens – the newly re-opened Temperate House, Alliums on the Broadwalk, treetop walkway, the Hive, gorgeous Wisteria, a Rhododendron or three, and laburnum arches, waterlilies, the Davies Alpine House and Rock Garden, peonies galore, many remarkable trees, a Japanese landscape and the Pagoda … and much more-

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a million. Kew Gardens today. Amazing, as ever -

Petersham House Gardens National Garden Scheme Open Day

A little bit of repetition in these images, but I am dithering about editing them and can't decide exactly which I prefer, so you're getting pretty much them all! A beautiful sunshiny spring morning, after a night of stormy electric rain, and everything after the warmth of the last week - and the weeks of…

An East Sussex Odyssey and the jewel in the crown, Great Dixter

Well this time I'll let the pictures do the talking. And I nearly didn't call in this time around to Great Dixter and am so glad I did. I don't recall that I have visited in Spring before (it is a stupendous garden in late summer and autumn) and I did attend one of Fergus…

Cool, Green and Tranquil Gardens – with a twist – exploring the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden

A garden visit this afternoon but not entirely for the horticulture ... This is, despite the artful additions, a just-tamed and beautiful, cool green, tranquil and quite enchanting garden - the rock and water garden to the former Leith Vale Estate built in the 1920s (Leith Vale was then owned by one Trotter, banker and…

The sun has got his hat on and – simmering in the heat – here are a just a few things that caught my eye today #floralmonday