Home · Notes from the garden ⸻The Garden Designer’s Journal
A light-hearted but informative blog on gardens, garden design and gardening – from opinions on the Chelsea Flower Show to the quality of tea and cake at open gardens. "...she is always available for an interesting conversation..."
Plant labels explained
When faced with a new plant, even I can find the label completely baffling. The small forest of symbols, abbreviations and numbers mean absolutely nothing to most people and, frankly, not always all that much to the person who wrote them either.
Plant labels are trying to do an impossible job: compress everything you need to know about a living thing onto a strip of plastic the size of a bookmark. Some do it well. Some are actively misleading. Nearly all of them assume you already know what they mean. So here's the decoding.
What does sustainability actually mean in garden design?
Before I start, I don’t want to go all “hair shirt” on you. This is an article about practical ways to make your garden more sustainable and also about what “sustainability” in garden design really means.
"Sustainable" is one of those words so over-used that it has probably lost any real meaning for many people. It appears on compost bags, paving slabs and artificial lawns (yes, really).
Climate change and the challenge for London gardens
I think we are mostly agreed, climate change is happening and it’s having a big effect on our gardens. Many times I have been asked for a climate resilient garden. The only thing about certain about climate change is that it is uncertain, and most undoubtedly it will continue to change.
Mental health and well-being benefits of garden design
Recently someone asked me what the health and well-being benefits of a designed garden actually are. It took me a moment to articulate something I'd always taken for granted. Everyone knows gardens are good for you, right? But why?
Queen Elizabeth II Garden
The Royal Park’s new garden opened on 27 April 2026, on the site of the old glasshouses. The rubble became the paths, over 40 trees were chosen for a warming climate, and the planting nods to the late Queen’s life.
Sir Harold Hillier Gardens in winter
Hilliers have been growing plants near Winchester since 1864, and the winter garden here rivals Wisley. Coloured bark, scent, stems worth planting en masse, and a warning about what b=nurseries mean by “dwarf”.
Snowdrops at Welford Park
Better known for the Great British Bake-Off, but the snowdrops came first: five acres under the beeches, a reputed 73 cultivars, and a queue for the car park that made the pub a mile away look very appealing
My favourite garden books
It’s winter. I’m not a great one for curling up by the fire with a seed catalogue. Ten books instead: three I reach for at work, three worth reading for the writing alone, and four I look at with deep-seated envy.
The joy of allotmenteering
Ten rods, roughly 250 square metres, and on the site I visited an eight year wait to get one. A short history of the English allotment, and what three of our South Park Gardens volunteers have made of theirs.
Waterperry Gardens
Horticultural, edible, cultural and shoppable, and once a residential college for women gardeners, run by the formidable Beatrix Havergal. Allow several hours, and take a pcinic.
Winter flowering plants
A garden is better for having peaks and quiet times. What flowers in the cold months, what is going on under the leaf litter, and the best argument I know for doing almost nothing in the garden in winter.
Commissioning a garden designer
Most people are surprised by how long a garden takes and by what it costs. Here is one Surrey garden from first phone call to the third year of aftercare, seven manholes included.
Le Chateau du Lude
Having done Villandry, Chaumont and Chenonceau, I went looking for a hidden gem on the other Loir. Not quite hidden, but the unpublicised organic kitchen garden was worth the pidgin French.
Project Giving Back - Chelsea 2024
Remember the rewilded beaver garden? It went to a mental health chaity in Buckinghamshire. Where Chelsea’s best show gardens end up, and who finds £250,000 a garden once Project Giving Back stops after 2026?
Isabella Plantation
It is very easy to visit Richmond Park regularly and miss this altogether. Deer kept out, azaleas kept in: the National Collection of Wilson 50 Kurume azaleas, at its loudest in late April.
Crocus time
when you come across a lawn of crocuses in their tricolour array of white, yellow and purple it can stop you in your tracks
Snowdrops galore
A tiny white flower, and yet. Where snowdrops want to be planted, why I lift handfuls in the green from my father’s clumps, what to grow with them, and five places to see them done properly.
2023, a year in photos
Twelve months, twelve photographs: a brutal January on Wimbledon Common, Wakehurst in February, the ancient laurel forest in Madeira, Sarah Price at Chelsea, and the year I finally learned to design gardens in 3D.
Gifts for gardeners
The only reasonably sensible list for gardeners: no cashmere pyjamas, no pink suede gauntlets. Felco, Showa, Silky Fox, a day out with lunch, and one bespoke cedar greenhouse for the ambitious.