Google Translate will tell you these mysterious gardens are the ‘fishing walls’ of Paris. Do not believe Google Translate, though arguably, being 600km of nearly 3m-high ‘peach walls’ in Montreuil, at the eastern edge of the city, they were once only marginally less surreal. What they are now, is a joyous outdoor shrine to the…
Category: Secret Gardens
A Year at Warley Part V: Things that just fetch up…
Garden archaeology doesn’t come much more exciting than finding something pretty much every time you dig. I’ve been visiting Warley Place for thirty-odd years and every time I go something new has been uncovered by the dedicated team of volunteers. Sometimes it’s a bit of brick wall, sometimes a cobbled path. It might be yet…
A Year at Warley Place, Part IV: Daffodils
Miss Willmott had a thing for daffs. No, really, she was crazy about them. On joining the male-dominated Royal Horticultural Society she promptly invaded the all-male Narcissus Committee and won gold medals in four consecutive years. Warley Place would have been sunshine-yellow with prize hybrids, named for her sister and brother in law, and a much-missed sister…
Growing Underground
Back in the 1930s they had foresight. London’s population was expanding and capacity was severely limited by surface area for the future. The city’s great and good planned for the future. They just didn’t know which future. The boffins had a great idea. Why not build an express line, a sort of ‘cross-rail’ affair, parallel…
The House of Dreams
A garden is, perhaps more than any other part of our homes, a reflection of ourselves. Whether going for formality, cottage-style, practicality, potager, rubbish tip, wildlife haven or simply abject neglect, it tells the world something about our inner soul. Artist Stephen Wright’s soul is on painful, beautiful display in every inch of his living…
The Event Gardener 