It’s Chelsea. And if there’s one thing to tear me away from my beloved garden, this is it. It’s almost impossible to describe the pure magic of it. At 7am this morning the sun was shining over the Royal Hospital and there wasn’t a place in the world I’d rather be. Continue reading
After three years of super hard work, today is the end of an era. Assuming I pass my final module, today I completed the very last piece of my master’s. Phew. Continue reading
Oh, Chelsea, Chelsea, you really shouldn’t be distracting me so. But you are, and I’ve admitted defeat. Chelsea it is. Continue reading
Us humans are complex things. And if there’s one thing my Master of Horticulture analysis has taught me, gardens are not lacking in that department either. Put them together and you’ve got a real muddle. Continue reading
In 2011, Paul and I considered buying The Old Bank in sleepy Bungendore, New South Wales. A stunning stone building, developed through the 1800s, its history not only spans uses as a residence and bank, but also one of a blacksmith’s, solicitor’s, bakery, stock and station store and a bicycle maker, where the first bike in Australia is said to have been made. Continue reading
Peckerwood Garden, just outside Houston, is a garden fuelled by passion. John Fairey, a former professor of architecture, put the first plant in the ground in 1971 and still lives and gardens here today, albeit with considerable help now the garden has grown to some 40 acres. Continue reading
What images spring to mind when you think of Texas? Perhaps dry, cracked soils, a few scrubby, grey-leaved shrubs and the odd towering cactus? Continue reading
Sadly, for me at least, I’ve just two final places in South Africa to share with you. Until such time as I manage to get back out there again, of course! Continue reading
‘We had to call in the chicken consultant’, roared Constance. ‘You know, if you’ve got a problem with your business you call in a business consultant; well we had problems with our chickens. They stopped laying’, she boomed. ‘You see these salad leaves dangling from the beams? That’s our chicken gym. Now the chickens have to jump for their food, they lay every day’, she bellowed, with a beaming smile. Continue reading
If you are anything like me, you might at this point be sitting, brow furrowed, wondering how on earth you pronounce ‘Vergelegen’. It’s almost impossible to even have a go at it. And after hearing the word many, many times, I still had to just cheat and watch a youtube clip to be reminded. It’s something like, ‘Fair-ke-lear-ken’. Obvious, really. Continue reading
