Working in a large garden a few years ago something suddenly struck me. Skilled gardening is at its best something like judo. In Japanese judo translates as ‘gentleness art’ and is based on the traditional Japanese system of unarmed self-defence perfected by the samurai and uses minimum force to overcome the power of an opponent. […]
Welcome to a new world! Every big garden should be made of little landscapes. Get past the obvious and it is the small details that reveal the world as a beautiful and amazing place. In a world where whatever shouts loudest gets heard it is a pleasure to look past the obvious into the world […]
The answer to that question has many parts but is in no small way due to my childhood. I grew up on 250 acres of private gardens and parkland in the UK. My Father managed the historic gardens and glass houses on a country estate outside London that in total employed sixteen full time staff […]
The Yawning Tree. If you went down to the yawning tree and turned left you were there, at the beginning of the ‘woods’. As children we had no other word for it, it didn’t need a word it just was. It was overgrown and ‘junglely’, a nature’s paradise. What was once a garden with planted […]
