Does employing a garden designer lose you your garden? by Michael McCoy
Perhaps it’s not easy to feel that your garden is really your own when you have had a garden designer working on it? Do you feel free to amend the planting and to make changes? A version of this article by Michael McCoy originally appeared in the excellent...
Doing the Art by Holly Allen
What is it like to create a garden as a work of art? Holly Allen discusses that in this piece, which is an interesting follow up to last week’s review of ‘Are Gardens Art’? Anne Wareham, editor Holly Allen: Most people will probably think it precious...
Community Gardens: do we care?
I am very busy just now, so instead of the usual post I am inviting a discussion by means of two links about community gardens. Do we really care about them? Are they a sop to a sentimental notion of community? Do they open up gardening? Do we like them? Are they...
Naff names by Katherine Crouch
There may be slightly less posting here over the next four months, as I have just signed a contract to write a book. (over 20 thousand copies sold so far..2017.) Forty thousand words before Christmas and we’ve still got coach parties and Sunday openings at the...
More Chelsea
I’m risking boring everyone with more Chelsea stuff – in this case, some thoughts about the actual 2014 show: mine and those of Katherine Crouch. I promise that normal service will be resumed shortly. (ie not quite so often ..) Anne Wareham, editor I...
Everyone has their idea of paradise: an interview with John Sales by Anne Wareham
I’ve been preoccupied with the gap between the professionally designed garden and the garden of the serious amateur for some years, particularly because I experience garden design as an ongoing process which I am involved with daily at Veddw, rather than a one off...
Show gardens: what are they for? by Wanda Oprea
I would like to propose that show gardens could be simply for delight, illumination or challenge – or whatever we would like a great work of art to be. But that is still whistling in the dark. Maybe they are a form of flower arranging? The following is what...
We closed our garden, by Abbie Jury
Yes, this is a conversation we have every year: shall we go on opening the garden? It’s very hard work and I end the season exhausted. It comes easier to the naturally gregarious, I suspect, the ones that don’t want to hide under the bed when people...
What is Natural? by Emma White
We love to talk about ‘natural’ gardens – but what does that mean? If anything? Anne Wareham, editor Emma White: I find myself in a bit of a quandary at the moment. I’ve spent the past three years looking at how the natural elements of gardens...
The Thinking Gardens Supper – what was it like? by Lucy Masters
At last – the account of the thinkingardens supper, which took place in London in the pouring rain and a tube strike. For all that sixteen people made it (see who at the bottom of this page) and it was excellently chaired by Chris Young, editor of the RHS The...
Try formality? by Susan Cohan
Our last piece was by Michael King and suggested that the New Perennial or Naturalistic style was getting everywhere and being used insensitively. Susan Cohan goes slightly further than that and dares to express an admiration for formality; indeed, four hundred year...
It’s Everywhere – Michael King on Naturalistic Planting.
Michael King has just stirred things up again by publishing a post on his blog suggesting we may be finding naturalistic planting a little ubiquitous. Is it all getting a bit samey? (Is the classic herbaceous border a bit samey too, though?) And are naturalistic...
Be critical! by Tristan Gregory
I have had no difficulty getting reviewers of books or magazines for thinkingardens, but people are still backward in coming forward with garden reviews. We need them. Tristan suggests why and how… I hope it will encourage you to send them piling in…. Anne...
Recent Posts from: Veddw
I’ve fallen in love with these.
I love my garden, I do. It’s at the heart of my life. But just recently I’ve been drawn back and back to a windowsill with some sweet dwarf pelargoniums.
Favour the Ferns
Many years ago The Financial Times sent me to do a feature on the RHS ‘Flower Show’ at Tatton Park . I was totally naïve and had no idea what I was supposed to do or to write about. So my excitement was tempered by acute anxiety. The term ‘imposter syndrome’ could have been invented for me. […]
Snowdrop mania is coming…
In the UK, right now, the horticultural world is about to drive us all mad with snowdrops. Pictures of. Articles about. Gardens with them. Anything people can think of to bash us over the head with snowdrops.
Brilliant Brecon
Recently we made a visit to Brecon. This is not far from us, in case anyone was getting over excited about the possibility that I might have been travelling again. It’s in Wales, in the Brecon Beacons, recently re-christened Bannau Brycheiniog.
You should have been here Next Year
Charles made a complaint recently when we were walking in the garden.
When I complained about him complaining he told me that it was good for me to have complaints about the planting.
