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
My visit to the Gower Peninsula started well. A long hilly and winding single track road led through the dappled light of mature beech and oak woodland, still wonderfully green in early August. There’s a lot to be said for … 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
Beside the Grotto at Vaux le Vicomte can be found a pair of allegorical stone statues of a lion protecting a squirrel. The lion was meant to represent Louis XIV, the tiny squirrel Nicolas Fouquet (whose name in … 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
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