Marc's Gardens

I imagine every tradesperson has an association with his or her special tool. No doubt painters and decorators have their preferred type of brushes; hairdressers who’ll only use a certain manufacturer of scissors; bricklayers with their favourite trowel…. and so on! When it comes to us gardeners, without doubt the tool that becomes our most reliable friend is, of course, the trusty pair of secateurs. Permanently sat in their holster, resting on my right hip, they are a constant source of comfort and activity throughout the day. I must reach for mine over a 100 times a day… everything from cutting string, to dead-heading dahlias... pruning shrubs to opening bags of compost.   Felco #2's - the choice of the professionals . I’m forever advising students and clients to invest in the best pair of secateurs they can afford – easy for me to say of course! I believe the best pair of affordable secateurs on the market are undoubtedly made by Fel...

Having read Tim Richardson’s column in the Telegraph last week, I got to thinking. His subject was regarding the supposed health benefits of gardening. As always, his job as The Horticultural ‘Medlar’ was to scratch slightly at the veneer of a topic, revealing a base layer of healthy scepticism together with an alternative view on the subject. As always, he again did this rather too well, if you ask me. If the various contemporary approaches to health and well-being were to be ranked, a kind of therapeutic top ten, you would probably see the charts full of such hits as C.B.T, Mindfulness, M.B.S.R (Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction), the modern-day anti-depressant (SSRI’s) plus a whole range of Green Care approaches. Green Care could probably be summed up as any activity which uses the great outdoors (horticulture, agriculture and animal care etc) as a therapeutic tool, enhancing our mental and emotional well-being through social, as well as physical exercise. ...

The great man himself So, what’s so special about June 18 th ? Well, it kind of goes a little like this. I can never remember from where I heard it, and it certainly wasn’t from the great man himself, but I have often quoted the great Christopher Lloyd who believed that gardens reach their peak on June the 18 th .   In fact, myth has it that he actually gardened with this date in mind, spending the first half of the gardening year working up to this horticulturally picture perfect day. As I say, I can’t recall exactly where I heard or read it, but I’m certainly not making it up! I definitely heard it somewhere. To be teased by the teasels! Anyway, whether it be truth or myth, it certainly has Cristo’s stamp of wit and wisdom about it. It sounds like the kind of thing he would say, so I’m sticking with it! Think about it for a moment, around that time, perhaps the weekend closest to that date, go poke your nose into a few gardens and I...

A vision of London's Garden Bridge So anyway, it finally looks as though the Thames is to have its garden bridge after all. Ever since our very own Ghurkha girl, Joanna Lumley, way back in the late 90’s, raised the potential of crossing the Thames by way of a floating garden, there have been mootings and mutterings about a possible garden bridge.   Although the seed was sown a few years before, the idea properly managed to germinate around the time of London’s most recent renaissance, that of the 2012 London Olympics. During that time, and not since the BritPop era of the early nineties, had we as a nation felt quite so invincible, seeming to believe that any grandiose design idea – especially one based within the capital - could be midas-touched and blessed by the people. So it was that a few U.K top-trendies somehow found themselves to be straddling that rather fortunate, age-old axis, that of being in the right place at the right time. Again, with the echoes of Ol...