Genius loci

In ancient Rome, a genius loci was the spirit which protected a place, a territorial guardian angel of sorts. Nowadays, it is a phrase used in reference to garden design and was first enunciated by Alexander Pope. He contended that garden or landscape designs must always be adopted to the location for which they are …

A Snowdrop and Hellebore Extravaganza

This project at Mount Congreve Gardens was started only last year so it was both a surprise and a huge delight so see it is an immediate success and has already made a huge and beautiful impact on this area of the garden. I had expected it to take a few years to develop but …

The Dillon Garden 2003/4/5

A blast from the past: photographs of visits to Helen and Val Dillon's garden in 2003/4/5, came up unexpectedly today. A publication has asked me for photographs of another garden and the search took me to an old external hard drive with photographs dating back to my first digital camera. Browsing such collections inevitably leads …

The Great Escape!

Of course, I have been dramatic with the title but there are occasions when small interludes can feel like just that, a great escape. We had days of the most miserable weather; days when we not only had incessant rain but rain accompanied by bitingly cold wind. There were days of being confined to the …

The Excluding Eye – A Visit to The Garden House, Devon.

Why do we seek beauty and prettiness and exclude the unappealing, distasteful or unattractive when we photograph a garden? I have just looked back over an album of shots from a visit to The Garden House in Devon and find the photographs strongly contradict my thoughts and impressions of the garden on the day. They …

Mount Usher

Mount Usher, in Ashford, Co. Wicklow is one of my favourite gardens and, indeed, it has regularly polled as one of Ireland's top visitor attractions and has often been described as Ireland's most romantic garden. It is very much an Irish garden, a garden of softness and naturalness, a garden which lies at ease in …

Marwood Hill Garden

On retirement, my late friend, John Riley, spend some time in Devon before moving to Ireland. John was an East-End boy, of Irish parentage, and there were regular recollections of his evacuation during the Second World War, of summers with his mother hop-picking in Kent, of his days in the Posts and Telegraphs, of fishing …