Garden news

In September, 2015, I led two tours back-to-back in Italy, starting in Venice and moving to Tuscany before continuing on to Puglia (in the heel of Italy) for the final days. When we decided to launch this tour, we told our booking agent that we were only interested in doing one tour, even though we realized it might be popular....

In September, 2014, we went to Spain, where we first gathered for a few days in Madrid before heading south to Toledo, Cordoba, Seville and Granada, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into North Africa to visit the key towns and cities of Morocco. Early fall is the perfect time of year to be in Madrid: Not too hot during...

The hard part of doing back-to-back tours is that you have to say goodbye to one group and hello to a new group and show no loss of interest or energy or enthusiasm. This is, of course, not that hard, since we were in France and we were going to retrace all the steps we did with the first...

After the success of our England West Country Tour and our two back-to-back France/Paris/Loire Tours, it only seemed natural to think about going back to Italy. We love Italy and have never had a bad time there. But which part of Italy to go to? That was the question. In 2004, Loraine and I had been to Milan and gone...

After the success of the England West Country tour, it seemed only natural to look over to France and think about next doing a tour there. In 2011, we launched a spring tour that started in Paris and then moved into the Loire Valley and slowly returned to Paris after we visited various gardens and wineries It was a total shock...

In September, 2013, we went to Brazil for the first time to lead a tour from Rio de Janeiro to Belo Horizonte and ending in Iguazu Falls, bordering  Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. This turned out to be one of our most exciting tours, yet, surprisingly, only 12 people opted to do it. We are still mystified why more people were...

In October, 2012, we went for the first time to South Africa with an ambitious plan to take the Garden Route from Cape Town before moving on across the Little Karoo to Knysna and George and then on to Durban, Swaziland and Johannesburg. In addition, we had a stopover at Kruger National Park for a game-drive. Forty people came with...

In 2012, I hit on the idea of doing a garden tour in Holland to coincide with the huge Floriade event that is held there once every 10 years.I figured it would be a popular tour because of the appeal of Floriade but also because I intended to include a visit to the famous Dutch flower-bulb garden, the Keukenhof. I...

In May, 2015, I led a 10-day tour to England. This adventure was promoted as The Best of British Tour and was a little different to previous tours in that the itinerary was entirely based on day trips in and out and around London. The idea of staying in one hotel for the duration of the tour allowed us the...

On Sept 26, I arrived back in Venice for the second Italy - Puglia Tour after the first of the two back-to-back tours concluded in Ostuni, Puglia. It was a strange feeling arriving back in Venice to start the same tour again. But there were differences. Firstly, we were not in the same hotel. This time we were located on Calle...

On Feb 25, 2016, I was in Hong Kong with a group of people heading off on a tour to Myanmar (formerly Burma) and then to Singapore before returning to Vancouver via a last-days shopping trip in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, our hotel was on the Kowloon side, looking over to the downtown core. We started with a casual stroll...

In April, 2015, we went to China to lead a 16-day garden/culture tour, from Shanghai to Beijing, stopping on the way to visit Suzhou, Luoyang, Xian and Guilin. This included a boat ride on the Li River, time at the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Terracotta Army and time tasting and picking tea in Guilin. Our adventure began in...

In 2009, when I was working for The Vancouver Sun as the garden columnist and New Homes editor, my publisher called me into his office and asked if I would like to take a group of people around gardens in Italy. At Padua Botanical Garden My response was...