Veg Plotting

Fun times with friends (thanks for the photo, Clare) and a festive Slovenia made for a very special time when we visited recently. As you can see Bled was both festive and green, and being a garden blogger it's natural that I should celebrate both with this post about my travels there. Let's see what I found... We loved the Christmas lights in Ljubljana, with each street having its own theme. One had musical notes to accompany the classical music being played there; another had planets, comets and galaxies which made the crowd go 'Oooh!' when they were switched on in the early evening. The pictured street was more intriguing, with it's double DNA helix, a sperm, a nucleus, and a female egg. Too bad we found out just a few hours before we were to leave that there's a guided walk around the lights , which reveals the artist Zmago Modic's intentions. I'm speculating that as a Catholic country, this represents the immaculate conception. There ...

Travelling across Europe by train from the UK often means a change of stations in Paris. On the way to Switzerland our walk from the Gare du Nord to Gare de l'Est was uneventful. The return walk was different: it held a surprise. There's a choice of routes available: turn right out of the station and an elegant staircase and a five minute walk is one option. Turn left and and the sign says it's a ten minute walk. In view of our suitcases, we chose to turn left. I'm glad we did because otherwise I would have missed Patric Blanc 's green wall on the Rue d'Alsace. It's turned a dreary alley way into something spectacular. At the time of installation (2008), it was the largest he'd designed, with a surface area of 1,500 square metres. In his book, The Vertical Garden , Patric Blanc says: "When Fanny Giraud and Michel Piloquet invited me to visit the project site, I thought I was dreaming: an endless dark alley linking the Gare de l'E...

I always try and multi-task with events when I go to London, and a planned side trip to Covent Garden last week held a surprise in the shape of this green wall next to the tube station. It's a double wall, so if you take the street you can see to the right of the photo (where you can just about make out the tube station)... ... you'll find Regal House is all wrapped up for Christmas. There were problems with the Piccadilly line, so sadly I didn't have time to fully explore Covent Garden's seasonal delights as I was late for my first appointment. Instead you'll have to imagine the dramatic notes of Nessun Dorma sung by a lady opera singer, and take the link to see the wonderful mistletoe lights decking the market halls. My morning's destination held another surprise. This is a great idea for creating a funky and stylish interior green wall on a budget. It would make a great room divider, and the use of plants such as the ferns shown in the middle ...

I came across the concept of green walls (aka living walls) at my first visit to Chelsea Flower Show in 2009 - you can see some of them here . It was interesting to see how they're displayed this time and how they've developed over the past few years. Green walls were a must-have for Nigel Dunnett's garden for Greening Grey Britain , so it was no surprise there were two of them incorporated into his design. The one which interested me most was found at the back, enlivened by Jo Peel's street art . This turned out to be a new-to-me type of green wall; low(er) in cost and lightweight, and designed to hang in order to hide ugly facades or fences. The wall contains a seed mix of fescue and wildflowers and was started around 4 weeks ago ready for the show. Unlike most green walls, this one is usually hung just after seeding and would initially be brown. Like other walls of this type it has an irrigation system at the top which could be run off a rainwater harves...

Adding my thoughts to the back of Au Pied du Mur I've heard loads about Chaumont International Garden Festival  previously, but I never thought I'd actually get to go there. You can imagine I gave a quick hop and skip of delight when I found it was a must-see on our itinerary for France. If you ever get the chance to go, do - it's quite unlike any garden show in the UK*. For starters the Festival lasts several months rather than days (from 20th April to 5th November this year), and each garden is surrounded by a beech hedge, housed in a permanent site which set aside from the rest of Chaumont's extensive grounds. It also pays to put any preconceptions to one side as applications are drawn from a much wider circle of potential candidates than usual with around 20 to 30 gardens selected from a pool of hundreds of applications. Artists are well represented as well as those from the world of gardening and landscape design. I could imagine RHS judges tutting behin...

It's a while since I posted about green or living walls, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about them. I pondered extending my search during our trip to London last week, but dismissed the idea as this time last year showed they weren't growing that well. However, nature took its own course and in the process of our walks around London, instead of me finding green walls, they found me. As well as the blossom I highlighted earlier this week, the new Paddington Central development provided a rich seam of green wallery [is that actually a word? ~ Ed ]. Here is my first find, which is one of the more unusual 'window box' styles of green walls, and is the largest example of this type I've found so far. I wonder if it's a temporary installation that will go when the development is complete? I haven't managed to find out much about this example online, hence why it didn't make my initial list of green walls to hunt for last year....

View from our table on the terrace overlooking the garden There's just over a week left to visit Wyndcliffe Court before it closes to the public for good and I'm pleased NAH and I took some much needed time out to hop over the Severn Bridge to see it earlier this week. I find a trip over water - no matter how brief - always feels like a holiday, especially as we went 'abroad' into Wales this time. We arrived just as a group of artists were finishing their morning of sketching and painting, and we enjoyed our view of one of them beavering away whilst we relaxed over our lunch. Much of the summer floral colour had finished and autumn was just beginning to show its hand, but Wyndcliffe Court is an Arts and Crafts house and garden, with plenty of structure and garden rooms to provide lots of interest for our visit. This is the sunken garden and summerhouse. The material and placement of this sculpture reminded me of a similar scene at Special Plants The g...