I’ve long agreed with William Morris when he said that “…have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” When I say agree, I mean in a theoretical sense of course. The amount of clutter we appear to own boggles the mind. But I digress. Most of what […]
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Hello, my name is Catherine and I’m a topiary addict. After planting our six foot topiary rabbit for the children, I just keep thinking of different things in our garden that should, if possible, be made of living materials. We really want to make our smallholding a haven for wildlife and one of the easiest […]
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Life in the UK has recently been brought to a standstill by the revelation that we on this Northern European island have had some snow fall on us. It was admittedly something of a shock for us ex-Londoners to see just how deep snow falls out in the rural countryside and we woke yesterday to […]
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Overgrown herbs Scarily shorn herbs I’ve found it so rewarding having a large herb garden outside and have started to plan our weekly menus (because that’s the kind of geek I am) around what might be ready to use in the garden. The herbs have also acted as a lovely lure for all kinds of […]
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Ladybird in situ The day the aphids came back was a dark one. There they were, hordes of them swarming and pulsating all over my innocent strawberries and mint. I was beside myself in rage and frustration at their sheer numbers (previously I’ve always pulled aphids off by hand before their populations reach critical levels) […]
Read MoreGarlic towers is ready for our first feathery patrons A rainy weekday afternoon and an overexcited toddler with energy to burn combine brilliantly to mean one thing – bird feeders! We had a birdfeeder outside our sitting room window before we embarked on our harebrained scheme to gut and refurbish our entire house last year. […]
Read MoreMy tiny front garden has always been a problem, not least because it’s been paved over and used as a driveway. Parking in London is a problem, and so having our own driveway does make life much easier. I’ve planted bulbs and wildflowers in large troughs lining the driveway and finally moved the birdfeeder from […]
Read MoreI don’t blog much about my front garden, although I have replanted it recently (more details soon) but today I was able to snatch a couple of minutes for a quick project where the GarlicBaby agreed to play in his travel cot. The Scandis have some very good ideas, chief amongst them swaddling a baby […]
Read MoreA while back I asked our neighbour (the King Of Ivy) to please trim the Buddleia in his front garden as it was starting to invade our space and to cut out all of the light to our sitting room. I was slightly aghast to come home yesterday and find that he’d hired someone to […]
Read More…The trick? Divided areas. The GarlicCats are much loved members of the family and, as such, we’re eager for them to share our little outdoor patch behind the house. However, I don’t believe that any home is complete without cut flowers and although most of the garden is going to be devoted to edibles, it’s […]
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London to Land Girl 