Tomorrow the blog celebrates its 10th birthday!

The first post was on New Years Eve 2013 and  the numbers reading  have continued to grow apace with over 222,000 views  over the course of the year,  well up on last year’s already record 152,000, the 100,000 for 2020 and less than 7,000 for the whole of 2014!  All adding up to a grand total of over 850,000. 

As always, thank you  for your loyal support and the nice comments. Please keep  telling your friends about the blog and get them to join the mailing list.  Just  go to the very bottom of any post, enter an email address and each new post  will appear, as if by magic, early on Saturday morning in time for breakfast.

And now for the quiz….

But before we get to that you might like to know a few more facts and figures – and if not then just scroll down to this years questions…

Thanks to the statistics provided by WordPress I’m also able to tell you that this is my 521st post which in total scarily contain just over a million words,  with this year’s posts averaging around 2800 words each. 

As you can see visitors come from virtually every country in the world [apart from a few in west/central Africa] although obviously most come from the UK, the USA and the rest of the English speaking world, with Europe following quiet a way behind. 

The most popular one by far has been the one  I wrote on what I thought was rather niche, even by my standards, on electroculture which has had 64,000 views.   You can see the next most popular  in the list on the left.

To celebrate the annual quiz is going to look back over the last ten years rather than just 2023… so instead of the usual 50 questions there are 100. That should keep you busy for a few minutes!

The answers are at the bottom of the post but if you can’t wait then click on the links…

Starting with…

2023  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ANSWERS

2023

1. Ripley Castle , Nr Harrogate
2. Admiral Bligh
3. Marjorie Fish
4. Les Halles, the former central markets of Paris
5. The pavilion in the new coronation garden in Antrim
6. Beverley Nichols
7. Its a Lily Beetle so its looking for lilies  to lay its grubs on.
8. Stourhead
9. Sellar & Yeatman in Garden Rubbish
10. Bramham Park
11.  Antoine-Francois Bertrand, Marquis de Molleville
12. Tomato
13.  A Tudor Thumb Pot for watering 
14. West Wycombe
15. Queen Victoria – it’s Victoria Park, Tower Hamlets
16. The seed head of a peony
17. Harlaxton
18. The Brief Garden, Sri Lanka, home of Bevis Bawa
19. Swanage
20. Kingston Lacy
21. Seeds of the monkey puzzle tree
22. Kirby Hall
23. John Glover, in Tasmania
24. The judges of a gooseberry show weighing gooseberries 
25. The histoic treehouse at Pitchford Hall
26. Holkham 
27. Scotney Castle
28. Elizabeth I’s  favourite Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex
29. Frederick Gibberd
30. Hever Castle
31. William Barron transpalnting the 800 year old Buckland Yew
32. The Royal Horticultural Society gardens in Kensington
33. Sissinghurst
34. Charlotte Wheeler-Cuffe
35. Crystal Palace
36. Peter Barr, seedsman and nurseryman
37. Hollyhocks
38. The Empress Josephine
39. Hyde Hall
40. Leicester Square
41. Hippeastrum – not amaryllis for reasons explained in the post
42. Rev William Keble Martin
43. It’s the Amazon HQ in Seattle
44. It was the Hortus Palatinus at the castle in Heidelberg
45. They’re made of wax
46. Malaga
47. Leonardslee
48. James Bateman of Biddulph Grange
49. Grimsthorpe Castle
50. Arundel Castle: The Collector Earl’s garden
51. The Glastonbury Thorn
52. Aspidistra
53. Sir Joseph Paxton standing his daughter on a leaf of the giant waterlily Victoria Amazonica to show its strength
54. Houghton
55. The forcing houses and winter garden greenhjouses at Woburn
56. The Poultry Pyramid at Tong Castle
57. Cothele
58. Japanese Knotweed
59. Ickworth 
60. Stowe
61. Chiswick House
62. Ada Salter
63. Lampy – Britain’s oldest surviving garden gnome
64. Alfred Lord Tennyson. The house is Farringford
65. Walter Crane
66. A pony shoe worn when the pony was pulling a lawn mower
67. A cutting of what was claimed to be the first fig tree in Britain and planted b y Cardinal Pole at Lambeth Palace in the mid-16thc
68. Cardiff Castle
69. Coleton Fishacre
70. Sir Peter Smithers
71. Carters
72. Sir Nathaniel Bacon
73. An extremely old plant of Welwitschia mirabilis growing in Namibia
74. Tredegar House in South Wales
75. A cucumber slicer invented by George Stephenson
76. Robert Furber
77. Gertrude Jekyll
78. Its the world’s oldest pot plant – planted in 1775
79. Temple Newsam
80. Melbourne Hall
81. Mistletoe
82. Seaton Delaval
83. Annie Tempest, whose series Tottering-By-Gently has run in Country Life since 1993
84. The first European depiction of a pineapple
85. Wollemi Pines at Marks Hall arboretum in Essex
86. It’s the birthplace of Leyland cypress: Cupressus x leylandii 
87. Samuel Reynolds Hole
88. Thomas Hill or Hyll
89. Percy Thrower & Alan Titchmarsh. They met when AT was editor of PT’s books
90. Paulownia
91. Bennington Lordship in Hertfordshire
92. Humphry Repton – it was his cottage at Hare Street, Romford
93. John Claudius Loudon & his wife Jane Webb Loudon
94. It’s mechanical
95. Fred Streeter
96. A hedgehog bulb pot by Wedgwood c.1830
97. Henry Wise’s design for Hampton Court, c.1710
98. Sir John Soane at this house on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, now the Soane Museum
99. Soane’s country house was Pitzhanger at Ealing, then in Middlesex although now its in London
100. Dyffryn