Journal

The landscape of the Lake District has many different characters – the region is so vast spanning from coast to high mountains.

This is NT Stowe in Buckinghamshire one of the best known 18th century English Landscape Gardens. This type of garden is vast and really only accessible to the very rich who often created them as a statement as much as just because they could.

I recently visited NT Stowe, Buckinghamshire, a huge ‘garden’ full of ‘garden’ buildings, statues, dams and bridges, created by Viscount Cobham from 1717 working with several landscape designers and architects

I love the way the shadows of this sculpture play across the stone paving when the lights come on in the evening. It’s a focal point, art installation, meeting point, lighting and way finder.

All around the UNESCO World Heritage Site of medieval Siena you see these wonderful iron horse tethers fixed into the walls of buildings at about 6′ high. There are 17 different designs across the city each advertising which ‘ward’ or ‘contrada’ they represent.

Eyecatchers are a great way to draw people around a garden and to show them where you’d like them to go – that there’s something else to see. Not many of us have the space that they have at Chatsworth to play with eyecatchers on this scale, but they work on any scale.

I love taking photos of buildings in reflections and through old wonky glass. I love the way the glass distorts the building and how you view it. It brings another dimension to the scene. This image also plays with the scale of people

I love this path. It’s simple, fun, functional, pragmatic, suits its informal location, uses natural materials and looks really good. It just illustrates too that a garden and its features don’t have to be overthought or over-engineered – they can just do what they set out to do and job done.

You can make a garden seem bigger by ‘borrowing’ the surrounding landscape – many designers for centuries to great effect. Here are some ideas of how to do this:

This is a recreation of the Elizabethan garden, originally built by Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, to impress Queen Elizabeth I when she visited Kenilworth Castle (now English Heritage) in 1575.

I love the shapes in these stables at Kedleston Hall. The way that the roof domes bounce the sunlight through the building is magical. The tall ceilings make it airy and cool and the large, high windows make it beautifully light.

Kedleston Hall (National Trust, Derbyshire) has a very impressive ha-ha – I estimate about 3km long. It was part of the garden design by Robert Adam c.1759, and still stands, looking incredibly good for its age. Obviously very well cared for over the years.

The weathered curves, knobbles and cracks of this rustic fence just make me want to run my hand over them

Popped into Birmingham a few weeks ago and passed the library there – looks like a wedding cake. Far too beautiful to eat though. I love the subtle colours and the patterns that the layers of metal circles make.

I visited Chatsworth a few weeks ago to hear a talk about their forestry and landscape operations, plans and future strategies – a very interesting talk and a good excuse for a day out in the Peak District!

Another photo from the National Memorial Arboretum – this is part of the ‘Every Which Way’ sculpture by Maurice Blik, to remember the millions of British children evacuated from cities and separated from their families during WWII

This is a great design feature that plays with the surface water drainage turning it into a feature to be enjoyed rather than hiding it away underground to qquickly secret it away out of sight.

Popped into Lichfield recently and had some time to spare to tootled up to the cathedral for a look around.

It’s a magnificent building at every level. One that gets more and more interesting the closer you get

I think crosses won! Noughts must have been asleep. 

A lovely Victorian cast iron air vent on a hospital building in Lichfield.

St. David’s Cathedral in Pembrokeshire, this summer. I love the architecture of cathedrals and churches, their calm space and stately, solid presence in the landscape connecting us to the hundreds of years of community past.

I love a well woven and designed willow sculpture. They’re so sinuous, tactile and evocative. There are some incredibly talented sculptors around creating a myriad of different structures and styles. This one was elegantly draped over a small tree in Chatsworth a few years ago

This lovely bench is a thing of beauty on many levels – it’s a piece of art, a focal point, a meeting point, a social spot, a wayfinder, a piece of fun. The timber has weathered to a soft silver which is calming and sits well in its woodland location, and is soft and warm to the touch

Last week we visited Claymills Victorian Pumping Station, Burton-upon-Trent, to celebrate with them the first firing up of their fourth and last beam engine for the first time in 54 years

As the saying goes…”if a party leaves you with too many lemons, make limoncello!”. Or something like that.

My first homegrown apricot of the year and it was delicious! We haven’t got many on our tree, but they’re about the size of a tennis ball, are very juicy and sweet. I planted the tree in a greenhouse about

Today I’m visiting Powis Castle with the CLA Women’s Network to meet new some people and to hear about the history of the castle and gardens. It’s set to be an interesting day.

Door detail of one of the giant doors into the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. I’ve been here a few times and love it. It was designed by Antoni Gaudí and construction began in March 1882 and it’s not yet

This week is Chelsea Flower Show week. It is the most famous and prestigious garden design show in the world where the best (competitive*) designers hope to get recognition and a coveted gold award.

Hidcote in Gloucestershire is an arts and crafts property that is now managed by the National Trust. It’s a fabulous place and is rightly one of the ‘must see’ gardens for any designer. It was laid out by Major