Monthly Archives: June 2024

These days Garden visiting is a popular pastime but actually it has been so since at least the 18thc  and one of the earliest estates to become a tourist attraction in its own right  is Piercefield, which stands above the … Continue reading →

I found a copy of  The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett when sorting out some old books recently and flicked through it again – hence this post.  I suspect you probably  have read it yourself,  read it to children, … Continue reading →

Last week I felt as if I had stepped back into the 18th century when I visited a garden where the basic original layout from the 1740s has been slowly restored over the past fifty years. Perhaps nothing unusual about … Continue reading →

I’m writing this during Chelsea Week which is quite appropriate because the  famous marquee  is usually put up on the site of the long demolished Rotunda in what was once Ranelagh Gardens. There  have been commercial pleasure gardens  in London … Continue reading →

Japanese culture, plants and gardens took the western world by surprise – and by storm – in the second half of the 19th century. But how did that happen to a country which had been in virtually total isolation for … Continue reading →