The Floating Gardens of Xochimilco (chimpampas) are just 25km (15 mile) from the historic centre of Mexico City, but as a mega-city of 22 million people, it can take over an hour to reach them. They have a delightful carnival … Continue reading
Lanzarote 2 – Jameos del Agua and El Mirador del Rio
Although Cesar Manrique’s El Jardin de Cactus is his best-known landscape intervention, Jameos del Agua is his most spectacular. Visitors descend first into the large cavern-like café-restaurant, then zig-zag down a steep bank planted with shade-loving perennials into an astonishingly … Continue reading
Lanzarote 1 – El Jardin de Cactus, Lanzarote
Compared to its two neighbours, Gran Canaria and Tenerife, Lanzarote is considered a very quiet, perhaps rather dull place to go for a holiday. Fortuitously, It has escaped the excesses of tourism because of a unique partnership, between the internationally-renowned … Continue reading
Parc Sama
Parc Sama is a strange tropical curiosity dropped into the Spanish countryside. There is a botanical collection of tropical palms, but all that remains of the menagerie is a large collection of exotic birds. However, worthy projects abound, such … Continue reading
RHS Wisley 2 – Piet Oudolf and the Oudolf Landscape
Whilst visiting gardens in the Netherlands in the late 1990s, I decided I must make a pilgrimage to see his Piet Oudolf’s garden at Hummelo. He was a rising star in the garden world. It was early May, and in … Continue reading
RHS Wisley 1 Hilltop – The Home of Gardening Science
Until a few years ago, the Hilltop site at the Royal Horticultural Garden at Wisley was a storage yard, an uninspiring glasshouse and a line of somewhat tired small show gardens. There was a small conventional vegetable garden nearby, and … Continue reading