Quiet essays, occasional pieces, and notes from the garden — written slowly, published irregularly, and almost always while something is in bloom.
Every year the same thing happens. The first warm week of April arrives, the daffodils open, and every one of my clients picks up the phone. "When are you coming to start?" The honest answer, most years, is: not quite yet.
Read the piece →There is a particular kind of plant that I find myself reaching for more and more as the years pass. These are not the showstoppers of the nursery catalogue. They don't trend on Instagram. Nobody in a Chelsea garden has ever drawn a crowd to a bay tree. And yet…
Read the piece →A short piece welcoming our new third member of the studio, Ivy Marchant, who spent five years at Great Dixter before we tempted her down from Sussex. She's already rearranged the entire plant library and will almost certainly make the rest of us better at our jobs.
Read the piece →We drove down to see the Mediterranean garden at Olive, Stone, Salt last week. Fourteen months on from the final planting. It's a joy when a garden lives up to the design, but it's something rarer when it surprises us with what it's become on its own.
Read the piece →Every few months somebody asks us if we're planning to move to 3D software, or if we use a CAD package, or whether we're interested in the new AI planting tool somebody is touting at a trade show. The short answer is no. The longer answer is more interesting.
Read the piece →Occasionally we write a longer letter — four or five times a year, never more. If you'd like it, leave us your address.
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