Biscotti all’arancia della nonna
I write this in a disguise worthy of Inspector Clouseau as sharing any patisserie related recipes with anyone outside the family isn’t very popular. You…
Daffodil: Book Review
Granted this review is embarrassingly long overdue and severely mistimed, as this book should have found itself in many a Christmas stocking. However, with spring…
Home grown raspberry macarons
There is really no contest. We grow early, summer and autumn fruiting raspberries, but despite the slightly more complicated maintenance routine, summer fruiting varieties are…
Out of the box: The Private Garden of Jacques Wirtz
Respectful of tradition and formality, yet modern. Challenging of convention, yet comfortably familiar. Fearlessly architectural, yet soft and billowing. Repetitious, yet idiosyncratic. Jacques Wirtz’s private…
Stock beds: the next home-grown revolution?
Dorothy sussed it. There’s just no place like home. Whether for health, the economy, environmental reasons, breaking the supermarket stranglehold, taste, seasonality or simply for that…
Broughton Grange: Attachment and Separation
Sways of dazzlingly Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’, yet surprisingly the man doesn’t like orange. ‘I am strict about colours’, he explained to Robin Lane Fox1 ‘No orange.…
The Great Hampton Court Bake Off: RHS Hampton Court Flower Show
With temperatures high enough for Mr Softee to retire, the high-summer, thirty four acre spread RHS Hampton Court Flower Show opened its doors,… and a…
Open the gates: 2013 NGS Garden Open Day
Guilty as charged. Despite having an array of brilliant excuses that would surely get me out of detention and shiny stars on my report card,…
RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2013: Review
Dare I say it? I missed Diairmuid Gavin’s habitually controversial design madness at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year. Chelsea is all about the…
RHS Floral Marquee: The Meticulous Process of Judging
And there it is. That terrifying question, conjuring up hot faced, school bench anxieties, ‘Right, time to show me what you’ve learned’. Oozing with horticultural…
Jo Thompson: Stop the Spread
She’s back, on Main Avenue with bells on, and the odd dead tree. The award winning garden designer and all round good egg, Jo Thompson…
Adam Frost: Sowing the Seeds of Change
The secret is all in the dough and the tomato sauce, he says. Pineapple is prohibited, but he assures me that Nutella and banana really…