We, quite naturally, associate gardens with plants. The Oxford English dictionary defines a garden as “a piece of ground adjoining a house, used for growing flowers, fruit, or vegetables” or the plural gardens as “ornamental grounds laid out for public enjoyment and recreation”. It is difficult to break the association between the concept of the… Read more »

What do you know about the Greening Grey Britain initiative? Well I knew nothing either till a few days ago when I happened across it on the Chelsea Flower Show website. There I was at home messing about online when I decided to check out Chelsea to see what design delights it has in store… Read more »

There are three major Drivetime radio shows on between 4.30 and 7.00 pm each weekday. If you are interested in current affairs you probably listen to Mary Wilson on Radio 1 or Matt Cooper on Today FM. If however, like me, you are more interested in listening to two and a half hours of a… Read more »

In the garden, just like any other setting, there are things that we do automatically. Things that happen without being questioned and that perhaps we should be subjecting to a bit more deliberation. It’s easy to lose sight of whether the done thing might or might not be the right thing for you.  It’s the… Read more »

It’s never a bad idea to plant a tree.  We plant trees principally for their looks and we all know on an instinctive level how important they are but have we ever really stopped to ponder all that makes them so great?The list is so long I’ve split it into three sections. Let’s call the… Read more »

Have you ever noticed how our newsreaders like to give us a sense of the scale of the particular catastrophe that they are describing? For example” a sinkhole as deep as two double decker buses has opened up in a supermarket parking lot in Ohio”, or “a fire covering the area of ten football pitches… Read more »

Hard to believe but it’s almost that time again. There I was last February at my kitchen table filling out the Application Form, pressing send and thinking no more about it. Two days later the first call came; can you make yourself available for a phone interview on Friday at 3.00pm? Definitely. At 3.30 pm… Read more »

A few days ago I drove past a newly built house out in the country, a tasteful Regency style bungalow with a Laurel perimeter hedge. Everything was grand. And then I saw it. Stuck to a gable at the driveway end up on lintels supported on 4 inch solid blocks the awful eyeful of forest… Read more »

Like any piece of design, it all begins with the research. Bearing in mind just how forcibly and traumatically these people have been separated from their homeland I have been keen throughout this process to produce a design which provides the residents with an emotional link to their native land. To that end I have… Read more »

When I was younger I was afraid of dogs. Diamond Dogs. Which by extension meant that I was afraid of David Bowie. What uncontrollable forces, ungovernable energies were running riot in the mind of a man who could produce characters, imagery and sound of such unsettling, beautiful strangeness? Diamond Dogs Album Cover The last week… Read more »