Lotusland is a garden that I have long wanted to visit; a botanical fantasy created by a wealthy failed opera singer with the added allure of very restricted opening times. Set high in the hills above Santa Barbara it is … Continue reading
If you put a fine, thorough-bred Arab stallion and a cutesy, shaggy donkey together in the same pasture you can appreciate their respective characters and charms, but they are bound to be compared to the detriment of one or the … Continue reading
I have always been a bit suspicious of the modern and contemporary art market. I can remember Alfred Taubman, the chairman of Sothebys, being imprisoned in the early 2000s for price-fixing, New York dealer Larry Gagosian being embroiled in a … Continue reading
Bourton House is idyllic, a handsome Georgian house of fine, golden Cotswold stone set in three acres of stylish and exemplary gardens; a smallish garden to a family house with not a blade of grass out of place, and not … Continue reading
Powis is one of the most spectacular and best planted gardens of Britain, and so why has it been hobbled by its history? Most great gardens are built over the remains of previous gardens, but at Powis this is not … Continue reading
Gardens are so often an expression of their owner’s character, so what would the garden be like of someone Cecil Beaton described as ‘a galumping, greedy, snobbish old toad’ and the Queen Mother somewhat more discreetly as ‘so shrewd, so … Continue reading