people
Emma’s place
I don’t think I’ve ever had a ‘girl crush’ before but I might be in danger of developing one. My friend Vicky and I stumbled across Emma’s hairdressing emporium (which … Read more
Tania’s green roof
I spotted Tania’s blue bike store with its green roof from the other side of a main road and felt compelled to make a beeline for it. Tania was working … Read more
Cinema Paradiso
When I studied garden design a few years ago, my friend Mark used to sit at the class Naughty Table, while I was on the Smutty Table. This was due … Read more
Colin’s garden
Colin is a man after my own heart – he’s greenfingered but he rents his flat, and is limited to gardening in containers. This he does very well, as the … Read more
The Yellow Book
I met a French woman at a party earlier in the year. She was married to an English chap and said that she’d heard that in Dorset (where her husband … Read more
Salady Saturday
I went for lunch at my friend Naomi’s house today. She’d made a salad entirely out of leaves from her garden, plus nasturtium and borage flowers (which taste like cucumber). … Read more
From little acorns…
A couple of months ago our upstairs neighbour knocked on our door, visibly shaken. Some baby oak trees that he’d been nurturing on his balcony had been dug up by … Read more
Gwyneth Paltrow
My mum always used to say that if the Queen went past the bottom of our road, she wouldn’t wouldn’t so much as leave the house to give her a … Read more
Chelsea – the verdict
What to say about the ‘greatest flower show on earth’ (as Alan Titchmarsh says year after year)? For what it’s worth, I liked Cleve West’s garden best (and not just … Read more