I was sad to hear that the Gardener’s Hut at the Prebendal Manor Medieval Gardens was demolished on Saturday 10 February 2018. It had been a favourite project of mine and I had spent many hours constructing and maintaining the…

There are many lists of tools from the medieval period, none of which include a tool specifically for hand weeding. There is no mention of weeding trowels or small hand forks, although there are pictures mattocks of various shapes and…

  Heritage is ephemeral and is easily lost. .. I was the Head Gardener at The Menagerie, Horton, Northamptonshire when Gervase Jackson Stops was creating a garden to suit the building. The Menagerie was originally a part of the Horton…

The Georgian period was one of great advances in gardening, but also one of changing fashions and taste. The formality of the grand parterres in the French Style were soon to fall out of favour and be grubbed up as…

Although we are celebrating Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown this year, he was not without his critics. One was the poet William Cowper who lived in Olney – famous for the Pancake Race- and later Weston Underwood, a short distance away. Cowper…