Travelling in a Covid world: Follow the rules and have fun
We’ve just got back from a 16-day trip to Spain and England. So how hard was it, travelling in these Covid-scary times?Well, the first issue we had to deal with was literally making sure we could get on the flight out of Vancouver.
On the London Tube with masks in place.It's the safest way.
We were going to Barcelona via Munich,...
Beaty Museum is full of treasures and wonders
Some years ago, I was invited to see the Beaty Museum of Biodiversity on the University of B.C. campus. I never got there, but I always regretted not making more of an effort.
This week, Spring Break, I decided to remedy that and visit the museum with my grandchildren, Maya and Banks.
Lessons learned from walks to paradise gardens
Laskett, the garden of Sir Roy Strong
The decision to visit a garden is an important one. It's a commitment that starts deep in the soul, I believe, and it's a decision that is then manifested by the eventual physical walk to the garden.
The process of getting...
Sad and shocking debacle of Brazil’s brilliant Bernardo Paz
The recent devastating dam disaster in Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil, made me think back to our visit to the region in 2013 to see Inhotim, the fabulous garden/art complex, located in the same area as the dam, just a short distance from Belo Horizonte.
Dam disaster in Minas Gervais, Brazi
Here’s a taste of what we can expect at Chelsea in May
In May, I will be in London with a tour group, visiting the Chelsea Flower Show, which this year runs from May 21 to 25 in its usual spot on the grounds of the Chelsea Hospital by the Thames.
This is always an exciting event. Chelsea is the world’s premier show. There...
Want to buy this house . . . and save a beautiful garden?
It’s not at all unusual for gardeners to grow old and discover they are unable to take care of their garden as well as they would like.
It’s a sad but common eventuality. And what often happens is that such gardens - even very beautiful ones that have taken years and years...
Favourite moments in pictures from our tours in 2018
INDIA IN FEBRUARY
Palace garden, New DelhiGarden tomb of HumayunClaridges, New DelhiChandigarh Taj MahalUdaipurTea pickers in MunnarSunset in Kerala Kingfisher on Arabian SeaOn Lake Pichola in Udaipur.
ITALY IN MAY
Pretty view on ProcidaCaserta Garden, NaplesPizza at Piz, MilanOn Isola BellaHappy hour in BellagioBosco...
No darkness but ignorance: Old words, new insights
I have walked through Leicester Square in London many times over the years.
I lived in London for a time in the 1970s when I worked as a reporter for the Evening News and I’ve been a frequent visitor to London since I came to live in Canada.
Rejoice! My favourite tool was lost and now it is found
I love my garden tools. But there is one I love more than all the rest - my beautiful, multi-functional, never tarnishing, never deteriorating, never diminishing six-in-one hand-trowel.
I love, love, love it. And I’ve had it for years and years and years. So you’ll understand my alarm, my despair, my devastation when I stepped out into the garden...
Six great vines for spring planting
Here’s a quick look at six of the best vines to plant in your garden this spring. These will get visitors to look up. Raising their head will give them a positive feeling and you'll also be giving them something beautiful to look up at.
This list, of course, is just a start. There are many other vines worth...
Exercise your right to an easy morning work out
I know exercise is important. These days I'm content to walk the dog or go for a swim or a bike ride. That's about it.
My days of jogging and playing soccer are over. Not that I lack energy, but I know I don't have the same muscle strength to support knees and ankles and hips from being injured from...
Clever way to create an elegant privacy screen
Pleaching is a clever technique that involves twining together the branches of a row of closely planted trees to create a stylish, formal hedge-on-stilts.
It’s not something you see here in Canada or even in the U.S. much. But in Holland, and especially in France, you see it everywhere.
Some of the best examples I’ve seen include rows of pleached chestnuts in...
2018: What a glorious time to be alive despite the darkness
What did Darwin, Dickens, Monet, Bronte and Van Gogh all have in common?
Well, they all had the chance to listen to the music of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven and see a play by Shakespeare and see a painting by Rembrandt.
I feel even luckier to have been born this end of history’s timeline when we have antibiotics, classics at our...
Putting the garden to bed for winter and I need help
Oh my, time once again to put the garden to bed for winter.
Kew has mighty forklifts to place heavy citrus box planters into storage. But I have my own heavy-lifting apparatus - my son, Peter, who comes, without complaining every October, to help me lift heavy pots of tender plants into their winter quarters where they will be protected...
Garden Tour Reunion Party was a blast with lots of fun memories
The Garden Tours Reunion Party on Sept 2 - a celebration of the 22 garden tours I have led over the past nine years - was a big success.
Eight-two people attended the event at the Shadbolt Centre at Deer Lake in Burnaby, next door to one of the nicest gardens in the Lower Mainland, Century Garden.
The Cory Weeds Trio...
Protected: How’s retirement? It’s about time and making the most of it
It’s been a few months since I stopped working at the Vancouver Sun after 38 years - although it was closer to 50 years in journalism as I started in newspapers in 1968 in England - but I still get asked the same question all the time: How do you like retirement?
My answer is somewhat complicated.
First, I have...
Why I’m feeling glad all over because these flowers are all mine
Some friends brought us a huge bouquet of gladioli the other day - four bunches containing red, purple, orange and peach ones.
They were barely in flower when they arrived, but they have since started to open up and we have placed them in two tall vases and they actually look very good. In fact, the more the flowers open,...
Amazing art of stone balancing but is it garden sculpture?
Not sure what this has to do with gardening, except that I saw this demonstration at the Chelsea Flower Show in May and was quite amazed.
Here you see artist Adrian Grey balancing a very large, heavy stone at an impossibly acute angle on another large boulder.
At first, I thought he was just pretending to be a living sculpture, holding...
Return to Free Spirit to see old friends, buy new plants
It’s been ages since I last saw my friends Lambert and Marjanne Vrijmoed, owners of Free Spirit Nursery on 32nd Avenue in Langley.
I’m not sure why we haven’t seen more of each other over the past few years. I guess other things have been pressing in and we were away when they were here and they were away when...
This hummingbird was worth waiting for
When I got this fabulous echeveria Blue Rose hanging basket the other day from WIG nursery in Burnaby, Alfred Kwan, the owner, advised me to cut off the flower stalks.
"The beauty is in the colour and shape of the echeveria rosettes,” he insisted. “The flowers are a bit of a distraction.”
The red flowers with their yellow tips are not...
