These days a visit to Sir John Soane’s great masterpiece, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, starts the moment one steps into the garden. (The original entrance has recently been reinstated.) The day I visited it was brimming with people, including a
’I love it here’ says Dan Luscombe, Curator of Bedgebury National Pinetum and Forest. ‘I came as an apprentice twenty five years ago and have never left. I live here too.’ Wandering round this remarkable place it is easy to
The Garden Museum’s recent acquisition of the Nesfield family archive is a thrilling coup. ‘It’s the first time a historic garden archive has ever come up for sale’ says Christopher Woodward, the director of the Garden Museum. William Andrews Nesfield
‘I’ve known about the National Garden Scheme all my life,’ says George. ‘My mother used to open our garden Goodnestone Park Gardens in Kent half a dozen days a year. She would despatch myself and my brothers on our bikes
Anyone interested in gardens and the therapeutic benefits of gardening needs no introduction to the dynamic husband and wife duo of Tom and Sue Stuart-Smith. Drawing on their prodigious knowledge and expertise they have started the Serge Hill Project, a
The delightful Inner Temple Garden deserves to be better known. It is a tranquil 3-acre haven, brimming with horticultural interest, between the Embankment and Fleet Street. ‘I used to look through the hedges and think that it was an Embassy’s
To visit the intriguingly called ‘No Name Nursery ‘in East Kent is an exhilarating experience. In just three years Steve Edney and his partner Lou Dowle have established a veritable horticultural tour de force. The scope of the enterprise is
The delights of the South London Botanical Institute, based at a Victorian villa on the busy Norwood Road, are myriad. ‘School children often gasp when they walk into the building. It reminds them of Harry Potter, says Nell Gatehouse, the
An attractive dilemma for garden lovers pondering where to go for a staycation is to choose between renting the Wayside Byre at the internationally renowned plant nursery, Marchants run by Graham Gough and Lucy Goffin in Sussex,or the Potting Shed
That an extensive 800 year-old garden is hidden just behind Canterbury’s St. Peter’s Street is, I suspect, virtually unknown to the scores of shoppers and tourists strolling along the bustling thoroughfare. The Franciscan Gardens date from 1224 when the first
Over the years, White House Farm, near Sevenoaks, has become a mecca for plantsmen the world over. Home to more than 200 different kinds of magnolia, hundreds of hydrangeas (many of them bred by Maurice), an outstanding collection of climbing
If you love visiting gardens you are in for a treat on Sunday 30th June, when an astonishing tally of 30 gardens are taking part in Faversham Open Gardens Day. The attractive ancient market town in East Kent has much