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January 24, 2012 | If you go into the woods today, you're in for a big surprise not quite fly agaric Serried timber trees, broad trunked with fly agaric mushrooms poking through dead leaves. Why is this the popular image of a wood? Should we blame Racey Helps or Beatrix Potter? Apparently not. According to Oliver Rackham, (the historian of the English countryside) this woodland askew view is to be blamed on [...]  November 22, 2011 | St Catherine's Hill and St Cross The top of the hill was an Iron Age fort. Stand there and look around. The beech woods slide down the earthworks and delve you down into the valley of the river Itchen. Tributaries of chalk streams of the tickled brown trout and some of the best fly-fishing in England. Behind the hill the traffic [...] October 22, 2011 | A quick gallop through some garden history Chatsworth gardens as laid out in 1699 The first gardens that archeology uncovers are those made by the Egyptians. Walled cool courtyards carved out of the arid desert and based round water, the formal planting of date palms, papyrus and figs in rows. Since the making of the earliest gardens, there has been a [...] September 11, 2011 | Do not throw stones: a love affair with Palm Houses In a new city, the beeline I make is to the Botanic Gardens. Once there the homing in is on the palm house. A building that smacks of such self confidence and an era when we were on the march upwards. In the 21st century with all the advances in construction technique and glass science, [...] October 3, 2010 | Oh lovely Damascus. Damascene rose, damask fabric and as the guidebook would have it, Dimashq. The old town is an ellipse – bounded more or less by walls and divided up into different districts – the original pattern is christian, jewish, muslim. The oldest inhabited city in the world, perhaps. The Romans came and went, Tamerlane shot through, [...] September 2, 2010 | Il Sacro Bosco. The Garden of Dreams. Il Sacro Bosco is a wierd and perplexing garden set in a ravine below the town of Bomarzo in the Sabine Hills. The Orsini palace, scowling above, is built on an outcrop of tufa, the local volcanic rock. Below it, hidden in a fold of the land, a collection of giant statues carved out of [...] August 20, 2010 | Ancestor Worships starts with Mordecai Cubitt Cooke We’d made a plan to go and look at some graves. A little eccentric perhaps. But in the spirit of humoring the quirks of others, I went along with it. It was my mother’s firm wish to visit the place that her father’s family had come from. And so we went to Norfolk. and [...] May 20, 2010 | Pattern of the DAY early 14th century church roof Scissor-braced, seven-canted roof constructed round about 1330 at Westhall church, Suffolk. Like it? Click to share, tweet and save Hide Sites $$(‘div.d348′).each( function(e) { e.visualEffect(’slide_up’,{duration:0.5}) }); May 20, 2010 | An unusual way to wean a pup
15th century angel roof but the formula works. Take a three day walk out of your door and into the landscape. The dog goes too. Leave the puppy behind in good hands. This is the east coast of England – it is falling into the sea, quite literally and makes small wave and local newspaper [...] May 20, 2010 | Victorianarama at Chelsea Cattleya Orchid and 3 Hummingbirds. 1871 oil on panel MJ Heade. c National Gallery of Art, Washington DC Victorian influences will converge at the Chelsea Flower Show next week. The Royal Horticultural Society was given its charter by Prince Albert in 1861. The forerunner of Chelsea, the Great Spring Show, was held that [...] |
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