Perhaps every reader will have walked in one of the Royal Parks. I, for one, have often admired the striking planting in Regents Park and St. James’s Park as I hurry along. But I must admit that I have never given much thought to the care of the gardens or their history. The other day

Dr Richard Claxton has an enlightened view of the myriad benefits of gardening for both mental and physical health. The patients in his Tonbridge clinic are fortunate indeed. When working as a Junior GP in London he first realised how therapeutic gardening was for relieving his stress. ‘It was a brilliant foil, therapeutic and also

Lynsted Community Kitchen Garden

‘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 to put up the NGS signs. We used to get hundreds of visitors.’ The venerable

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 Community Interest Company working in partnership with the local Hertfordshire based charity Sunnyside Rural Trust.

Seduced by Stokesay Flowers’ ravishing Instagram pictures, I was excited about meeting Victoria Martin, who with her husband, Barney grow thousands of cut flowers every year in south Shropshire. I wasn’t disappointed. ‘It’s all about romance.  Everything we do is supportive to wildlife.  We don’t use any chemicals,’ says Victoria, a sensitive soul who has

Kent Wildflower Seeds, a recently launched offshoot of T. Denne & Sons, the largest processors of grass seed in the country has caught the zeitgeist and responds to the rapidly changing face of agriculture. Innovation, and no doubt a canny business acumen, has ensured the survival of T. Denne & Sons for nearly 150 years. 

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 garden,’ says Sean Harkin, the Head Gardener. But it’s barristers not diplomats that are to

This article is reprinted from www.favershamlife.org The 2023 Chelsea Fringe Festival will be held from Saturday 20 May to Sunday 28 May and our local events will be held at Doddington Place Gardens,  just outside Faversham. Doddington Place has 10 acres of magnificently planted gardens including a woodland with towering technicolor camellias and rhododendrons, an

All walled gardens undergo a renaissance at some point in their history.   Just such a case is Water Lane near Hawkhurst, Kent.  Its last incarnation was the Walled Nursery (see blog post September 2017).  This wonderfully atmospheric 2 acre walled garden of what was the Tongswood estate is no longer a purveyor of plants but