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
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
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
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
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
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