It happens every day. There will be a moment when I need to lay my hands on my debit card, mobile phone or car keys. Or my secateurs, or grafting knife, or my favourite jacket, or a garden fork I used yesterday. And everytime the sense of relief when I find them is palpable, each […]
Fallen leaves are the finest treasure a gardener can have, the raw material for the black gold that is leaf mould. Some magical alchemy of dead leaves, fungi and time produces the sweetest, cleanest, softest compost possible. And you can’t buy it – you make your own or go without. On Wednesday we filled old […]
I closed the gates for the last time in 2008 on Sunday night. The sun was warm, a light breeze cajoled the seedheads of the grasses into mingling with the Rudbeckias in the new borders and all looked wonderful. It seemed strange to be closing. But as if on cue, autumn arrived on Monday morning, […]
No time to grab the camera despite the gorgeous light. May’s sunshine has brought a flood of group visits, photography days, streams of visitors and plants flying out of the door at a rate of knots. I’ve been frantically restocking the tea room with clean mugs, biscuits and ice-cream and just as frantically keeping the […]
December is a struggle. The alarm goes off at about 7am, (I know, that’s not early…) and my eyes immediately register that it is black outside and therefore surely still the middle of the night. If I really have to get up, I can. But it feels all wrong – the glowing clock’s mindless insistence […]