Thanks to my good friends from the Korros Ensemble I was invited to Chelsea Flower show this year courtesy of Lady Frances and Sir Jack Petchey (the sculptor Frances Segelmen and her husband) who were hosting a reception in Andy Sturgeons’ Gold award winning ‘Mind ‘Garden. Korros were there to entertain the guests – and …
Catch up
I am very aware that it is several weeks since I posted here – and that my image box is laden with pictures from Chelsea Flower Show, Queen Mary’s rose garden, the heath, the cemetery and even my developing garden here….. So, this is the start of a quick catch up. A family picnic a …
Set the Handkerchief Tree free!!
Have you ever met a Handkerchief Tree? They are relatively rare trees and in May they produce a profusion of large white bracts which look exactly like freshly washed handkerchiefs. The trees originate in China and were first discovered in 1869 by a French missionary/naturalist, Armand David. He found just a single tree way up …
Weeding the Heath
It is spring – and although there has been very little rain, that has not stopped the weeds galloping across the heath. Just flicking through my images from the last half dozen gardening sessions I realise that we have done very little apart from weed. Here is Keiran in the Golders Hill Park walled garden …
Highgate Cemeteries and the catacomb
The West Cemetery is looking especially beautiful at the moment, the headstones struggling to hold their own amongst the wild garlic, the three cornered leeks and the newly unfurling ferns. And it is in the West Cemetery that we were working today, back on the trail of lost graves. Lost because although each grave is …
The shire horses come to the heath
On a packed weekend at the end of February the England National Cross Country Championships returned to Hampstead Heath after two years of COVID – nearly 8,000 runners sploshing squidgely through the deep mud generated by recent heavy rainfall. This was not only extremely hard going for the runners but turned large swathes of the …