In Britain, we set the bar very high. There are literally thousands of Jekyll-inspired borders and hundreds of Capability Brown-inspired English Landscape Gardens. In other countries any one of these would be considered a national treasure, but in Britain they … Continue reading
The Alhambra is Spain’s top tourist attraction, and although this covers a large hilltop site overlooking Granada, it is the three intact Nasrid palaces that the visitors head for. Surprisingly these are a series of small and intimate but … Continue reading
The Alnwick Garden has always sharply divided opinion. On one day it can be a delightfully tranquil place for the garden visitor (- my weekday visit in late September), yet on another be something akin to a theme park with … Continue reading
Late February and early March is the time to see winter gardens at their best, but a couple of sad borders of garish heathers, a bit of forsythia, a few camellias, and a sea of early daffodils don’t make a … Continue reading
If Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire’s other great Rothschild garden challenges my Arts and Crafts sensibilities with its glorification of the art of carpet-bedding, Ascott, I find to be a curious mismatch. Like Waddesdon, this is a house and garden where the … Continue reading
It was a long day trip from London that brought me to see a Dorset garden; but it soon became apparent that I had had a wasted journey. To save the day, I decided to re-visit Athelhampton, which I had … Continue reading
The Western Cape, in November, when the fynbos is in flower is astonishing. There is a profusion and natural exuberance in this unpromising shrubby landscape that is unique – the giant silvery-pink proteas, the orange pin-cushion proteas, the magenta-coloured pelargoniums, … Continue reading
Forget the Trebahs, Trewithins, Trelessicks and Tre ..whatever… this garden is the highlight of any trip to Cornwall, and despite its diminutive size is the most exciting and remarkable garden I saw last year. It was the quality of the … Continue reading
As a precocious 17 year-old, intent on studying architecture, what could be more appropriate for me, than asking for a book on Mies van der Rohe as a school prize? I became a devotee, and when Mies died in 1969, … Continue reading
I feel very apprehensive, a bit like the little boy and the emperor’s lack of clothes, because I am about to commit a heresy – criticising Betto Chatto’s Gardens. As a garden designer, I know my ‘Anthriscus sylvestris Ravenswing’ from … Continue reading
What a tantalising thought. Putting together the two greatest masters of landscape in a single garden; but Andre Le Notre met his maker in 1700 sixteen years before Lancelot Capability Brown was even born. However this novel idea comes closest … Continue reading
The many underwhelming gardens I have visited find themselves banished to the back corners of my mind. Some gardens, like Bodnant, refuse to go there yet irritate me so much that I have to write about them. Bodnant has two … 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
In the American Mid-West prairie states spring starts late. There was still snow on the ground last year in mid-April, and ice on the lakes until early May, but by late June the air temperatures were in the upper 20s, … Continue reading
The camera can lie. Visiting gardens is not the straight-forward business it would seem to be, and I don’t like to think of the number of wasted days I have had travelling full of anticipation to see some second-rate garden … Continue reading
When I first saw the Howardian Hills, that area of outstanding natural beauty with its distant views of the blue horizon and big skies I thought this was landscape perfection. Not for me the scraggy mountains of the Lake District … Continue reading
The highlight of my trip to Paris was always going to be a visit to Chantilly. I had visited Versailles, Fontainbleau, Giverny and so on before but never Chantilly. From the aerial photographs it looked breath-taking but that always worries … Continue reading
A few years ago, on a visit to Versailles, I was shocked by the restoration of the Courtyard façade on the approach from the town. Built in the late 17th century for Louis XIV, the over-use of gold screamed wealth … Continue reading
When I first moved to West London I was curious to check out local parks and gardens, the first being Chiswick House and Gardens. The house at that time was a faded, tired but spectacular small villa under the custodianship … Continue reading
Cliveden poses me with a dilemma – how much should I write about its colourful history, and how much about the garden itself? It would be impossible to write about Sissinghurst without Vita Sackville-West, or Great Dixter without Christopher … Continue reading
Coleton Fishacre has the feel of a family home, and on my most recent visit a competent amateur pianist had commandeered the grand piano in the salon (something surprisingly encouraged by a new touchy/feely approach of the National Trust), … Continue reading
It is probably fifteen years since I last visited Cottesbrooke, and it is exciting to see the changes that have been carried out by a succession of talented designers and an enlightened client. Gardens are dynamic, and herbaceous and … Continue reading
You would never guess from surfing the internet or glancing through travel guide books that Cranborne Manor Garden was one of England’s great gardens. Hidden in the depths of the Dorset countryside, it is only open Wednesdays in summer and … Continue reading
For some years, I lived in the delightfully quaint hill town of Rye, with its mix of black-tarred timber warehouses, steep cobbled streets and half-timbered cottages; an island rising out of the Romney Marshes, that mysterious landscape of big skies, … Continue reading
What is an urban park for? Is it somewhere you go to escape the pressures of city living, or should it be an abomination of minority needs – all-weather pitches, athletics tracks and changing facilities, tennis courts, basket-ball courts, car … Continue reading
Where to begin? An old wife’s tale is that magpies’ nests are renowned for having a mismatched collection of things that have thrilled those beady little eyes, sometimes things of great value and interest, and others that are brightly coloured … Continue reading
Put together an enlightened client, a great architect and a famous artist and something wonderful might happen……….. However, my first impressions of the Fondation Maeght were not favourable; unfriendly ticket office staff, high admission charge (justifiable in view of it … 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
In the last week or so, it has dawned on me that if there is such a thing as a garden visiting nerd, I have become one. I keep catching myself saying ‘when I visited this garden 20 years ago’ … Continue reading
Great Dixter was one of those beautiful Jekyll-inspired gardens when I first visited, a close relative in garden style to neighbouring Sissinghurst, but then in the late 1980s something remarkable happened. Tall stems of sultry yellow verbascum, like an invading … Continue reading
It was ‘the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat’ that led to the demise of William III and as a consequence the rapid decline of Hampton Court Palace’s great formal gardens. The little gentleman in question had pushed up … Continue reading
Sometimes, when designing gardens, there is a clear need for a piece of sculpture, and I always find this is a problem because it is a subjective choice, and the client seldom wants to be guided by the designer. … Continue reading
No, I didn’t get out of bed the wrong side this morning, and I’m not usually this grumpy, but the gardens of Hatfield House have turned out to be a great disappointment. I visited Hatfield this summer just a week … 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
Confronted with a Health and Safety video, told to take a torch, closed at short notice in ‘unfavourable conditions’, (and unsuitable for push-chairs, the elderly and the disabled), I was expecting something comparable to the Grand Canyon; but this is … Continue reading
When I last visited Hestercombe 20 years ago, there was one great historical garden of note, the famous Lutyens garden, the Great Plat. Now there are two. The older one, the Georgian Landscape Garden was so badly overgrown that it … Continue reading
When it comes to garden history and garden conservation; I am a lightweight. I am more interested in the feel of a garden, than the conservation of a broken down bit of wall with an empty plinth where a … Continue reading
Sometimes it is the person who created the garden that is more interesting or curious than the garden itself, and in the case of Hidcote this turns into a fascinating detective story. Who was the elusive Lawrence Johnston and what … Continue reading
Sometimes I want to say something about a garden but I grapple with it, try and pin it down, think I’ve got it beat, only to find it is pulling me towards a dead end; and then in resignation I … Continue reading
I confess that the fashionable New Perennial Gardens don’t do a lot for me. They seem to be transitory will o’ the wisp things with no sense of time or place, that in our climate, where things grow eleven … Continue reading
Of all the garden visits of my recent Dutch trip, this was the biggest surprise. Few Amsterdamers have ever heard of Jac P Thijssepark, but for me this was a delightful and mind-changing experience, although poorly signed and difficult to … Continue reading
I do like a good party, and my visit to Marrakech was nothing to do with gardens. Things got off to an inauspicious start – a flurry of rumours, and then the pilot announced that a bomb had gone off … Continue reading
Visits to sculpture gardens carry high hopes, but I usually come away feeling disappointed, in part due to the subjective choice but also because an artwork is not something to be viewed in isolation. So often wealthy galleries and private … Continue reading
It was a trip to see my old friend Gerhard and time on my hands that led me to the Karl Foerster Garden in Potsdam-Bornim a short train ride from Berlin. It’s a journey that can easily be combined with … Continue reading
One of the highlights of my London summer, along with 200,000 other people is a visit to the Serpentine Pavilion. Each year the Serpentine Gallery finds prestigious wealthy sponsors and chooses an internationally famous architect who have never built anything … Continue reading
Gardens inevitably reflect the times and wishes of the people who commission and design them and altering or restoring an historical garden presents a problem. To what period and to what extent do you reinstate it, particularly when it has … Continue reading
I think of the ‘Japanese’ gardens that my clients from time to time have asked me to design as a bit of exotica to jazz up an English garden. A curved granite bridge over a stream, a bank of hostas, … Continue reading
Kew is arguably the world’s finest botanical garden, and I have huge regard for the collection and the passion and foresight of all those involved, particularly in these times of diminishing government support. Recent innovations such as The Hive, and … Continue reading
The first time I remember an individual tree exerting a powerful effect on me was when I moved to a large shared Georgian house on the outskirts of Bath. Of course, trees provide us with shade, relaxation and aesthetic pleasure, … Continue reading
The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew can be a confusing place. The big attractions such as the Palm House, the Great Broad Walk Borders, Kew Palace, and the Hive are easy to find; but the delightful Minka House and Bamboo … Continue reading
For as long as I can remember, Kew’s Temperate House has been its ugly duckling. Botanical gardens have to move with the times and can no longer rely on government largesse, and therefore a great deal of effort is put … Continue reading
Set in a remote corner of the Cotswolds lies two of England’s most memorable gardens, yet the contrast between Hidcote and Kiftsgate Court couldn’t be greater. The National Trust markets Hidcote (I think controversially) as ‘The 20th century’s most influential … Continue reading
My first visit to Kirstenbosch, some seven years ago, was something of a disaster. Driving from the opposite side of Cape Town, in warm sunshine with clear blue skies; a thick sea fog swept in, turning everything into grey gloom. … Continue reading
I have always enjoyed visiting artists’ gardens because they often give an insight into a different view of the world; such as Monet’s garden at Giverny and Barbara Hepworth’s at St Ives. In the early 20th century the famous Japanese … Continue reading
The twists and turns in the life of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who built the Silver Pavilion, would have made a good Shakespearean tragedy. He never expected to be the Shogun (the feudal military dictator) but the death of his older brother, … Continue reading
Small London gardens have been a major source of interest and pleasure to me over much of my life and I have enjoyed designing a great many of them. The brief was almost always the same; all year-round interest, low … Continue reading
I think future generations will look back and say that mass tourism was the curse of the early 21st century. Whereas people of my parents’ generation were happy to make themselves a home, carrying out DIY, and tending tomatoes in … Continue reading
It would be as difficult to write about St. Peter’s in Rome without mentioning the Catholic Church, as it is to write about Nanzen-ji without considering the Rinzai School of Zen. The Rinzai is one of the two main schools … Continue reading
The Heian-ji is something of an oddity on two accounts, firstly being a Shinto shrine of the late 19th century Meiji period and one of the newest shrines in Japan, but also (and unusually for a shrine) having a stroll … Continue reading
I have always found excuses not to go back to the Cote d’Azur; the conspicuous show of wealth, the hordes wishing to associate themselves with celebrity glamour, the endless camper vans and caravans clogging up the mountain roads, and a … Continue reading
Having practised for many years as a garden designer and also being such an avid garden visitor I am often asked what makes a good garden. It is much more complex than it might at first appear. Certainly … Continue reading
Fortunately my organisational skill are scarily good, or at least that’s what my friends tell me, but it doesn’t help that I am mildly dyslexic, so dates and times I can find confusing. The number of times I have arrived … Continue reading
When I started my scribblings about visiting gardens I showed them to a friend who worked for ‘The Independent’. He was kind enough to forward one to a grand doyen of garden writing who gave me a piece of advice … Continue reading
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
Through much of my life, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown has been just a few steps away from me……….I wonder how true this is for other people? Whilst a boy, I would pull my father’s golf trolley around Belton Park in Lincolnshire, … Continue reading
I stumbled across Mendocino by accident. We had arrived in San Francisco the weekend of Gay Pride where we were confronted with a difficult decision. Were we going to party with about half of the city or do what we … Continue reading
Whilst staying in Amsterdam at one of those late 17th century canal-side houses, I mentioned to my friends that I was going to see Mien Ruys’s garden at Overijssel the following day. Imagine my surprise when they said they thought … Continue reading
I am always apprehensive when I visit sculpture gardens. Some of them are a collection of ad hoc unrelated works by up-and-coming sculptors, others are grand and often disparate collections of world famous artists put together by committees, and a … Continue reading
Newby Hall, near Ripon in North Yorkshire, has been described as ‘one of the most elegant houses in the country’ and that is a suitably fitting description. Attributed to Sir Christopher Wren and enlarged and improved by the prolific 18th … Continue reading
We English are so polite. Like most of my compatriots, if I visit a garden that I don’t like, I don’t write about it; but all that is about to change, no more Mr Nice Guy. I have resolved to … Continue reading
Light hearted and flamboyant or frivolous and vulgar? Rococo seemed a fitting description for many of the smaller English gardens of the middle part of the 18th century now long since gone. A commentator at the time sneered: ‘You are … Continue reading
Paris has its many grands projects, and although Parc Andre Citroen may be one of the lesser ones, 20 years after its creation it has become a discarded trinket. An international competition, a critically acclaimed brilliant design opening to a … Continue reading
Mention ‘park’ to any visitor to Barcelona, and they immediately think of Parc Guell, Gaudi’s extraordinary masterpiece, visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year. The number of visitors is overwhelming; particularly around the key features of the … Continue reading
I doubt that the IXXth is a great arrondisement in which to live, but if I ever moved to Paris I would want Parc des Buttes Chaumont to be my neighbourhood park. It is curious, wacky and sublimely picturesque. … Continue reading
I first visited Park Guell, designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi in the last dark days of Franco’s rule, before a resurgent Catalonia and before Barcelona had become a hip tourist destination. Then the park was a sleepy and … Continue reading
Parking next to a family just leaving, I was witness to a small girl’s red-faced tantrum, accompanied by much stamping of feet. ‘But Mummy, we’ve just adopted it, ….WHY can’t I take it home?’ I looked quizzically at the exasperated … Continue reading
As a small boy, I was a caddy to my father, a keen golfer who was recovering from heart problems. Most of the time, he played at Belton Park, in Lincolnshire; a landscape laid out by Emes, a successor to … 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
So-called as the reflection of the moon appears to be trapped in the pavilion’s shadow on the pond. It has always struck me as strange that Chinese gardens in the West are rare, but Japanese gardens are comparatively common. … Continue reading
It may seem strange that a middle-sized American city has what is widely acclaimed to be the finest Japanese garden in the United States but also considered to be the most beautiful and authentic in the world outside of Japan. … Continue reading
We get glimpses of what the past was like from what remains today, whether it is Bath’s Georgian crescents, Capability Brown’s landscapes, Hampstead Garden Suburb and Letchworth or the post-war New Towns. In all of these examples there was a … 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
It’s one thing to have a brilliant idea, quite another to make it happen. I spend a lot a lot of time thinking, much of it of the ‘what if’ variety but one of my many failings is that most … Continue reading
Is Prospect Cottage an important lesson for us all, on how with a fertile imagination and a shoestring budget a garden can be created in the most hostile of environments; or is it just a scattered pile of beach flotsam … Continue reading
‘If you haven’t got vision, you very quickly degrade the landscape’. These were the prophetic words spoken five years ago by James Hitchmough the designer of much of the landscape planting at the 2012 Olympic Park (now renamed the Queen … Continue reading
The gardening professions divide into two occasionally hostile camps, the horticulturalists and the designers, and what is one’s cup of nectar is often the other’s draught of poison. At its most extreme it is an obsession with new cultivars which … Continue reading
I have on many occasions thought of writing a review about The Secret Garden but then it wouldn’t be secret anymore and do I really want more people to know about it? Its proper name is the Garden to St. … Continue reading
Many would consider Charles I’s great legacy was his fabulous art collection of over 1500 pictures and 500 sculptures, sold off by Oliver Cromwell, and after the Restoration only partially reassembled by Charles II; but for me and many other … Continue reading
I would imagine that visiting gardens between the wars was much more of an adventure than it is today; no road signs, no gift shops, glossy brochures, plant sales, restaurants and cafes, no children’s play areas, farmers’ markets, no pay … Continue reading
I knew little about this enigmatic garden before I went there, and without doubt, it is one of the most astonishing places I have ever seen. Being somewhat intellectually lazy, the temptation for me is not to try to understand … Continue reading
No description of Sanssouci would be complete without reference to Louis XIV’s great palace and garden landscape at Versailles. This was such a statement of power, splendour and taste that even 30 years after Louis’s death, diminutive copies were still … Continue reading
From time to time a new garden opens to the public that grabs the headlines, and back in 2003 Scampston Walled Garden certainly did that. It is a garden that I should have been to a long time ago, but … Continue reading
It should not be surprising that some of the very best examples of Japanese gardens outside of Japan are to be found in the Pacific North-West, in view of the region’s close cultural ties with the Far East and the … Continue reading
I was first captivated by Dale Chihuly’s glass sculptures in an exhibition of his work at the Palm House in Kew Gardens in 2005, and so the visit to the Chihuly Garden and Glass was always going to be one … Continue reading
Lawrence Johnston is famed for creating his great and influential garden at Hidcote, but I have always been curious to visit his other garden in the hills just outside Menton on the Cote d’Azur. How does it compare to Hidcote, … Continue reading
Spring in England is pure delight, but nowhere more so than in Kent, the self-proclaimed ‘Garden of England’. My second career was as an restauranteur, and moving to Rye, on the Kent – Sussex border in spring, I was … Continue reading
Come with me to the weird and wonderful world of Snozzle, or at least that’s what I was reliably informed the locals called this sleepy little village before it, along with most of the rest of the Cotswolds, was annexed … Continue reading
The remarkable thing about St James’s Park is not its undoubted charm but the fact that it has over five million visitors a year yet still looks fresh and well-kept, a tribute to the Royal Parks. The sense of tranquillity … Continue reading
Someone interested in gardens and gardening would have found it difficult to avoid the television obsession with garden makeover programmes. As a starting point the garden team sends a family away for a couple of weeks. The garden is then … Continue reading
At last, it looks as if the final part of this great jigsaw is about to fall into place. Stowe was a garden that always irritated and disappointed me. Undoubtedly it has the finest collection of 18th century temples, follies, … Continue reading