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...
Japan 2018 Tour: Join us on this wonderful adventure
My next garden tour will be an exclusive 13-day adventure to Japan to see spectacular fall foliage colour, visit picturesque temple sites, famous and historic locations as well as enjoy seasonal festivals and other cultural highlights.
If you've never been to Japan, this is the perfect tour for you - rich in content and diversity, safe; well-planned; professionally guided and designed...
We’re making big plans for a sensational sunflower patch
My son, Joel, has been an enthusiastic gardener for a few years now. He has a love for echinops and eryngium, shasta daisies, Austin roses and hydrangeas.
When he was a kid, he wowed us all by planting a garden composed entirely of plants with either black foliage or blue flowers. It was terrific.
Now, he is a father with two...
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...
Call it quirky or eccentric, but this all looks like fun to me
Quirkiness is defined as something “peculiar” or “unexpected” although I have always tended to interpret it as harmless, mostly humorous, eccentricity.
Growing up in England, I found people were invariably labelled "eccentric" for being a little unusual, odd, different or peculiar.
Eccentric was the word people chose to describe you if you did or said things that were unexpected...
Why not plug gaps with great plants you already have
If you're anything like me as a gardener, you have probably hugely over-planted your garden.
At one time, you might have thought - as I did - that you needed every lovely plant in the book. As a result, you bought too many, planted too many, planted too closely and overfilled the space available.
Now this does sound like a problem....
Do you have a plant sale coming up? Let me know.
Is your garden club having a plant sale this spring? Tell me about it and I am more than happy to provide a free forum here for your listing.
The idea came to do this when I got an email from Jocelyn Wade, of Park and Tilford Garden, asking me if I was still compiling spring plant sale lists and...
Three’s company: Fibonacci knew all along it would add up
Who knows why things always seem to look better when they are arranged in threes.
I always tell people it has to do with Fibonacci numbers. Fibonacci was the 12th century Italian mathematician who figured out that a certain sequence of numbers somehow mirrors patterns that happen naturally in nature.
The numbers are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21,...
Gorgeous green walls: They do more than look beautiful
Green walls not only look fabulous, they can save energy as well as pump oxygen into the air and suck out pollutants.
The most impressive green wall I have ever seen was the “vertical garden” designed by Patrick Blanc at the Branly Museum in Paris.
Considered the world’s first great green wall, it was completed in 2004, and is still a...
How we’ve been preparing for our upcoming trip to India
In a few weeks, I will be going to India to lead a 14-day tour of mogul gardens as well as many of the iconic sites and other highlights of northern India followed by time cruising the Kerala backwaters around Alappuzha in the south.
In preparation for this tour, I’ve been suggesting that my group spend some time watching a...
Fall foliage tour to Japan to be launched in January
In January, I will be announcing details of the long-awaited fall-foliage tour to Japan.
This will probably be a 12 day trip to Japan in November to see the fabulous fall foliage colours in major centres, such as Kyoto, Takayama, Hiroshima and Kanazawa as well as the beautiful island destination of Miyajima.
The tour will start in Tokyo and will visit...
How to put the focus on all that is beautiful in your garden
Clipping a hole in a hedge to frame a view is one of the easiest ways to add drama and interest to a garden.
English writer Vita Sackville West had a gift for creating these artistic, focused views in her famous Sissinghurst garden in Kent.
She often placed a bench or statue in a key position where it would be...
Why getting on the right path can make all the difference
At its most basic, a path is simply a route from one place to another, sometimes the shortest distance, sometimes taking you on a more scenic journey.
But a path in a garden is also a metaphor for transition - it can take you from darkness into light, from shade into sunshine, from a low point to higher ground, and...
Serenity of green-on-green landscaping
Green-on-green is a style of planting that aims to create an elegant landscape by putting together a variety of plants with different shades and textures of green leaves.
An example would be a low boxwood hedge in front of rhododendrons or a row of blue-green hostas in front of a hedge of Japanese holly, skimmia or sarcococca with a neatly...
The transforming power of arches, pergolas and tunnels
Arches, pergolas and tunnels create exciting transitions in a garden, inviting you to step into an opening that promises to transport you to a new space and new experience.
These attractive, structural features also serve other functions. They get you to lift your head and look up, always a good thing to get visitors to do.
Lifting the head and...
How to make a grand entrance because first impressions matter
What kind of first impression does your garden make?
The entrance is an important first feature. Being the first thing visitors see, it sets the tone for what is to come.
Like all first impressions, an entrance can say a lot about who you are. In a glance, it give ups clues to the kind of style and detail likely...
All for the love of a beautiful, clipped hedge
Every year, Daniel Truong and Nina Nguyen come to my garden to clip hedges. They do a wonderful job, shearing, clipping, trimming and shaping cedar and boxwood hedges, leaving them with super-straight lines, razor-sharp corners and wonderfully flat and even sides and tops.
Daniel and Nina pick up every last shred of clippings, so there is never a mess at...
66 OF THE WORLD’S BEST GARDENS
There are many wonderful gardens in the world. Over the last 10 years, I have travelled to see some of the best in England, Italy, France, Wales, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Scotland, Spain and other parts of Europe as well as in Japan, China, Brazil, South Africa and Morocco. Here's a look at 66 of my favourites, from the lovely...
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...
How beautiful to sight those beams of morning play
Don’t you just love seeing heavenly beams of sunlight.
I started taking photos of them when I was in South Africa recently and have not stopped snapping shots whenever I see them.
The beams always remind me of evocative Turner skies or the swirling spiritual skies of El Greco.
But I also always think of these wonderful words by Housman...
