The Garden History Blog

The title of this post conjures up a horrible idea!  What’s wrong with flowers being the colour they have always been?  Yet for centuries the world has been trying to find new colours [and indeed shapes, sizes and almost any other feature you care to name] and if they can’t be found then manipulate them into existence, first by  natural selection, then by deliberate hybridising and most recently by genetic means.  Nowhere is this more true than in the case of the blue rose.

However maybe it is worth remembering in  the Victorian language of flowers, blue roses meant a quest for the impossible or unattainable! Will 21stc science change that? Continue reading →

I bet that like me you have a picture of Regency England as elegant and refined , and think life for its elite was comfortable and easy. I suspect our view of the past is always rose tinted but  perhaps a look at some charming but quirky, almost cartoon-like paintings done by  the daughter of one landowning family in Essex will help challenge some of those  illusions.

Diana Sperling’s sketch books were   drawn between 1816 and 1823 and show a different side of  life  in a country estate. Yes there are servants, yes there are nice possessions  and plenty of time and space to roam – but there’s  also plenty of inconvenience, myriads of flies and lots and lots of mud!

“The Lord of the manner and his family going out to a dinner party at 5 o’clock with a tremendous stile before them”

Continue reading →