She has a Heart of Stone but…

She certainly has a heart of stone, the rest of the body is stone also. Her nose was broken at some time and there is a crack on her neck showing where she has had some "work" done so her appearance is, obviously, just a little less than perfect. However, I was still taken by …

The National Botanic Gardens of Wales

There is a tremendous sense of space, of openness, of great skies and distant views at the National Botanic Gardens of Wales. Shortly after entering the gardens one comes to a circular pond with fountain, fed by a meandering rill which has run downhill for over 100 metres. The temptation is to follow the rill …

Peep, Peep, The First Glimpses!

Pheasants have been part and parcel of our garden for several years. We kept hens and ducks for years and it seems that their presence attracted them to the garden. When we began providing food for them they continued to visit and even became quite tame, some even eating from the hand. They seemed to …

We Made a Wildflower Meadow

Just Doing It! We may be daunted by the ever more dire warnings about the damage we have caused to our environment, global warming, decline of wildlife etc and it can seem beyond us as individuals to do anything to remedy the situation. We may admire people such as Jadav Payeng who over thirty years …

The National Garden Scheme at Little Ash Bungalow.

The National Garden Scheme provides a wonderful resource - either online or through their Yellow Book - to garden visitors to the United Kingdom. Before any visit to the U.K. I check the online listings of NGS gardens open in the area we are visiting. These can be extraordinarily interesting gardens and very often gardens …

It Irritates Me!

There are things which irritate me when I visit gardens - but, I must confess, that I am easily irritated. Nonetheless, oftentimes, these are things which could easily be avoided and it is the fact that it would not have taken any great effort on the part of the garden owner or gardeners to remedy …

A Beautiful Obsession

In his seventeen years at Huntingbrook Garden, Jimi Blake has cut a dash through the traditional herbaceous border, the shrub border, the woodland garden and is leading the way in Irish horticulture with his innovative approach to gardening, with his new plant trials and introductions but, most of all, in the manner in which he …

The Consolation of Wildflowers!

There was a report on Facebook last week of a finding of one of our more uncommon native orchids. Hammarbya paludosa, Bog orchid, had been found on John’s Hill, outside Bunclody, Co. Carlow for the first time since it was last recorded in 1990. It is a tiny orchid which requires very specific conditions – …