Down The Garden Path

Thank goodness for a bit of sunshine at last, doesn’t it do the heart good?
It is hard to stay indoors when the garden beckons and a recent visit from an artist friend from oversees proved the perfect excuse to revisit Tatton Park.



You may remember my interview with Celeste from not so long ago?
It was fun to meet up again and the hours flew by as we chatted non-stop about gardens and art and everything else besides!



The walled and knot gardens are perhaps my favourite, I love the repetition of form, the patterns made by brick and box hedges and the way that the herbs and plants therein appear like tiny embroidered jewels. I was so inspired by the garden that I decided to create a new notebook called “The Knot Garden” It contains decorative endpapers and twelve small illustrations scattered about the pages and you can see it here-





The gardens at Tatton and the surrounding parkland have always been an inspiration to me. I based lots of my illustrations from “The Acorn’s Story” on the trees and deer, insects and flowers to be found here including this fallow deer painting. I am in the process of converting this book to make it into an application for the iPad, and other digital readers but before I can send the images to Auryn Inc I need to prepare the files, a long but necessary job.



The lovely town of Knutsford is very close by, childhood home of Elizabeth Gaskell and the setting for the town of “Cranford”.
It also has the very best charity shops, possibly because it has a very affluent catchment area. I have been busy buying up old picture frames and finally got around to framing my print collection, it took so long to arrange them, what a difficult task it proved to be! up a bit, down a bit, left a bit etc….



So you can see I am torn between my garden and my computer and never quite manage to get the balance right. There are so many jobs to be done, all the rain and now the sun’s warming rays have caused a huge growth spurt and everything is bursting with life. The aquilegias are particularly pretty at the moment and have spread into every available nook and cranny. It has been lovely to see the return of the bumblebees and butterflies, including a Yellow Brimstone, I haven’t seen one of those in ages. My cup floweth over!

Time to say Goodbye.

Over the last few months our lives have been dominated by boxes, all around us people are on the move. One son moved house, the other moved office and my mum is moving from the former family home into a smaller retirement property within walking distance of our house. Amidst the chaos it has been difficult to keep up with work, blogs, housework and all the other myriad of things that demand my attention.

There have been some tough decisions to make, what to keep, what to give and what to recycle and everywhere memories. Memories, which stop you in your tracks and cause you to ponder on your own mortality. We come into this world with nothing and we go out with nothing but we don’t half accumulate some stuff along the way!

So yesterday I said a tearful goodbye to the garden my father tended for the last fifty-five years, the primroses, the quince, and the flowering aubrietia all looked lovely in the spring sunshine. I now carry his spirit, along with my late brother and sister, here in my heart. Home is, after all, where the heart is.

Miniature gardens

I recently read “Jane in Winter” by Elizabeth Wix who many of you may already know from “About New York” Elizabeth grew up in England in the fifties but now resides in New York. Although the book was originally written for the 8-12 age group I found it fascinating, a sort of escape into a slightly disconcerting fantasy world with fifties nostalgia. It is both cosy and scary in equal measure and I know that I would have devoured such a story when I was young. It reminded me very much of Edith Nesbit.

There are many things to love about this book but for me it was being reminded of childhood pastimes, some of which I still have not entirely grown out of; that of making gardens in miniature. When I was a girl this was “all the rage”, in fact most of my childhood pastimes involved lots of imagination and no expenditure! We used mirror pieces for lakes, stones and rocks to create paths and mountains, mosses and small plants became gardens, fir cones became forests. I dare say many of you will have done much the same thing?


Today my miniature gardens are in shallow bowls rather than trays, I still make use of pebbles, shells, and pieces of ceramic, whatever takes my fancy. One of my favourite plants for such environments is a clover -Trifolium Repens “Purpurascens Quadriphyllum” which was given to me by a gardening neighbour. It has reddish/purple leaves edged with peppermint green and white flowers. It can be invasive so living in a dish suits it fine! Interestingly Judith Glover has a similar plant featured in her garden notebook, see post below.

An artist's garden

click for a close up.

I would very much like to pretend that the beautiful, well kept garden above belongs to me but I am sure you know better, having already confessed to a multitude of gardening tasks to attend to. It actually belongs to the artist and gardener Judith Glover.

Judith opens her garden for charity and this year raised an amazing £1,100 as part of the NGS Open Garden scheme. Her garden is the source of inspiration for the many delicate, detailed watercolours she produces, many of which are reproduced onto greeting cards and stationery. You can see more of her work and read about her inspirational garden on her website.

And now, if you will allow me to indulge in a bit of maternal pride… our son James has written the music for her latest e-card called “Toy Box” and I have to say that it is my all time favourite. The music and images are a perfect match, please have a listen and see if you agree by following this link. I have watched it umpteen times and it makes me smile on each occasion. He has written music for some of her other cards on the site including Little Angel and Little Snowman but I think I like this one the most.

The Joys of Spring!

This weekend brought sunshine, family and great joy into my life.
The sun shone, the skies were blue, the birdies sang and flowers opened. What more could a person want? I hope your days are joyous too.


Grandson George played on his "Nestled in Springtime" quilt. The days were bright and clear, perfect pram pushing weather and in the garden the crocus bloomed.

December activities.

The weather has now turned, today has been frosty and bright, a welcome change from the damp and dreary days of last week. I have been busy in much the same way as most people, trying to organize shopping and present wrapping, card writing, housekeeping, working and party going.


I bought some mistletoe at the supermarket and decided to do some studies of it before it dried up too much. I had forgotten how nice it is to draw a subject just for pleasure.


My poor garden has been sadly neglected but I did manage to trim the overgrown Virginia creeper and made a simple wreath out of the twisted stems. I saw a television show about bird feeding, which was rather alarming, until now I have been hanging up fat balls for the sparrows but it seems that they can injure their feet on the nylon mesh! I have now purchased a fat ball holder and the birds seem to like it.



Tony and I have now consumed three Christmas dinners, not all at the same time I hasten to add! The most recent one at Keele Hall, a rather grand old house which now belongs to the university in Staffordshire. There was a huge log fire, carol singers, a library decorated in Victorian splendor, all of which proved to be a good excuse to change out of my usual dog walking attire!

December festivities.

All we need now is a light sprinkling of snow and we are all set!

Our nearest major city and favourite place to shop is Manchester, now at its busiest. Festooned with lights and crowded with shoppers, museum goers and theatre lovers, the streets are filled with Christmas markets and delicious smells. We managed to buy almost all of our presents over the weekend and had time to fit in a bookbinding exhibition and an evening dining with friends.

The illustration above is taken from my "Gardener's Scrapbook Calendar" 2010, which has reprinted this year and am told will also be available for 2011. I have a very limited supply now in my shop, they are also available in UK high street shops, I even spotted some in our local Post Office!



click the photograph to see more detail.

Dreams and Elderberries

There are a great many elderberries around at the moment, beautiful, shiny and resplendent. It is said that the elderberry is the Englishman's grape, not only is the fruit used but also the flowers make flavoured drinks. The illustration above is taken from "An Illustrated Address Book" and shows a corner of the first garden my husband and I ever owned.

I was reading on another blog, about dreams and the number seven; the house number was seventy seven which made the connection in my mind with painting. The garden was a typical terraced house garden, very long and narrow. At the end of garden was an allotment and tall elderberry bushes and hawthorn trees formed a hedge making the garden very private. A blackbird sang there in the evening, it was our little piece of heaven. I often dream that I am back in that house, the dream always follows the same pattern. I walk down the garden and discover outbuildings, rooms, extensions that I did not know I had. I make elaborate and exciting plans to transform these buildings into studios, guest rooms, potting sheds, all manner of things. I continue my journey down the garden and discover pathways, streams, ponds and lakes, sometimes I find the sea shore. When I wake I am always rather disappointed that these things do not actually exist, I could make such good use of all that space!

I read somewhere that dreaming of rooms means unfulfilled potential, I have no idea what the water connection is, perhaps someone can enlighten me?

The saga of the garden saggars.

I thought I would share with you a little bit of local history which will be familiar to any visitor from Stoke-on-Trent, sometimes referred to as "The Pot Bank". Over the course of the last ten years many of the world famous ceramic companies in our area have closed or relocated. A friend of ours, from one such pottery, gave us some old saggars - these are the rectangular containers, now acting as plant pots.

Believe it or not there was once such an occupation as "a saggar maker's bottom knocker". In case your wondering, a saggar is a special fireclay container for protecting pots during firing and a saggar maker was a skilled craftsman. Sometimes a lesser skilled person made the bottom part by placing the clay in a metal hoop and knocking it into shape, hence the name. ( you can read more about the history here.)

As you can see, they make rather nice containers for small plants such as sedums, alpines etc. Sadly, over the course of a dozen or so winters, the frost has taken its toll and I am now afraid to move them in case they fall apart all together. As you can see, my trusty garden helper has once again got in on the act, I have never known such a nosey dog!

Longest Day

I always feel slightly sad when I find that we have reached the longest day. The long daylight hours make me feel that I can achieve so much more, as I get older this effect on my spirits seems to be stronger. I am sure when I was young I never paid much attention to such matters. 

The painting below shows my passion flower and my neighbour's cat, both now deceased I'm sad to say. I bought the plant at a church sale for ten pence, it was a tiny cutting in a plastic pot. I planted into my garden and it scrambled up the wall in no time at all. For the next two summers it was a delight. I'm not sure where I went wrong but it never made it through the next winter. Maybe I should have taken cuttings and brought them inside? Ah well, you live and learn.

Ballerina Rose

There are so many flowers in bloom at the moment it's difficult to choose which one to paint. I try to photograph as much as I can for future reference although it's always much nicer to draw from life. This Ballerina rose is a great favorite of mine, please ignore the aphids and blackspot, I hate to spray unless I have to. I cut a small piece of this plant and sat it on my desk, a multitude of creepy crawlies crept out!

My Herb Garden

Ever since I visited Erasmus Darwin House in Lichfield, I have been trying to grow herbs with varying degrees of success. The herb garden in Lichfield is exquisite, all the better for being enclosed, it reminds me of a secret garden.

My herb garden is tiny, I have mint, parsley, thyme, chives, basil (from the supermarket!) and sage. A campanula has crept in but I allow it to stay as it looks pretty. Chives do very well, they grow next to my Dublin Bay rose and I have just learnt a new saying; "chives next to roses create posies", it seems that they help prevent black spot. I planted sage last year and it survived the winter, it's now in flower, a lovely shade of purple.

Sometimes my garden, albeit very small, seems overwhelming, everything grows so fast and it is a constant battle to keep things in check. I do have one helper however, especially good at digging and that is my Jack Russell, Ted. I am not sure what he was looking for but he certainly enjoyed himself!

The nice thing about growing herbs apart from the fragrance and taste, is that they make very good subjects for my designs.

Dublin Bay Rose

I have a rose that climbs a trellis in my garden, it blooms every year in June, despite neglect on my part. It has the most beautiful deep red, velvety petals and is called "Dublin Bay". I wonder how it got it's name?