Please do browse my garden design blog; in it you’ll find garden ideas, inspiration and product reviews, reports from Shows including the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, pretty pictures from places I’ve been, a bit of arty stuff (paintings and drawings) and anything else I find interesting that I think you might enjoy too.
Last May I gave a talk at the Leconfield restaurant in Petworth which was followed by a delicious dinner! The evening was a huge success and they asked me to do another talk for them, this time on Winter Gardens. Many people believe that the garden should be ‘put to bed’ for the winter. The reality […]
Read More… from Talk on winter gardens coming up in February!
A garden I designed for a large Surrey house is nearing completion; here are some photos I took there last week (starting with a ‘before’!) The house as you can see was lovely but in need of modernisation and this view, above, was taken from the entrance of the drive – so there was no […]
I’ve just come back from a trip to Ohio where I was delivering a series of lectures at Lakeside Chautauqua on the shores of Lake Erie, was guest of honour at various events at the Governor’s Residence in Columbus and in between times was visiting gardens and natural habitats and meeting local experts including Guy Denny, […]
I have just a couple of spaces left for the Italian Garden tour taking place in April; this is an all inclusive luxury 5 night holiday where you can join me for an exclusive tour of some of the best gardens in Tuscany. From personal knowledge of the area, I have selected gardens that I […]
I spent last weekend on the coast at Rye, dodging the downpours for some inspirational walks and spending the evenings creating a small sketchbook of compressed charcoal drawings from photos taken during the day. Some of the drawings were from Camber sands, and some from Rye Harbour nature reserve, so I was able to explore […]
This morning I had a site visit to a large garden I’ve been working on over the last 6 months or so. The first major part of the garden to be tackled was the entrance; as you can see from the before photo below, it was rather uninspiring with a bank with a basic fence […]
Once a month I do a life drawing session with the Sussex Road Art group in Worthing and I thought you might like to see what I produced yesterday; I’ve been trialling working with compressed charcoal and am really enjoying the depth of tone you can achieve with it. These poses were three quarters of […]
I did a bit of painting at the weekend, exploring some ideas on light and seascapes. The canvases were small, just 200mm square, so I worked them all up at the same time. Still a long way to go on the learning curve, but it’s fun to do! […]
I’ve recently come back from planning and guiding a tour of Tuscan gardens for the Emerita First Lady of Ohio Hope Taft and her fundraising group for the Ohio Heritage Garden, which she created at the Governor’s Residence while in office. This is the third tour that I’ve planned for this group; the first being […]
A little while ago I designed a small Show Garden for Jackson’s Fencing to showcase their products in a new way. I took the opportunity to play with elements that are close to my heart, specifically working with nature to create areas of sustainable pseudo-naturalistic planting, what I like to call ‘modern natural garden design’. […]
