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Garden Stories

By Jeremy Francis

The Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley

In 1878 George Ferguson Wilson purchased a small farm near the little Surrey town of Ripley, with thoughts of turning it into a garden. Wilson was a man of many parts, a scientist/inventor and canny businessman who, on developing a new insecticide, made himself a fortune.

Sissinghurst - A Garden in 47 Photographs

Sissinghurst is a garden made from the ruins of a substantial Tudor house of around the time and layout of Hampton Court. Almost all of it was pulled down in the 19th Century apart from the entrance range, a number of high walls, two fragments of the old house, and the central tower.

Two Bloomsbury Gardens

For anyone visiting Great Dixter and with an interest in the Bloomsbury group (and dare I say I seem to have collected several bookshelves of their voluminous writings!) it is tempting to allow an hour or so of driving in the lovely Sussex countryside to also visit Charleston and Monk's House.

Great Dixter

In early June this winter, Michel Harbke began the massive job of clearing up the Cloudehill ‘Woods’ and for those first couple of weeks I was popping down regularly checking on progress, trying to imagine what might be the end result.

On Landscape - Fireflies

Last month Valerie and I visited my sister Jenny in the French farmhouse she restored back in the 1990s, in the mountains north of Nice. This ambitious retirement project on the part of my sister and late brother-in-law, Philip Clairs, is in the lovely village of Sigale.

The Cloudehill Woods are now open

Back in 1990 and the Sunday after Melbourne Cup, the ‘Rangeview’ woodlands happened to be open to visitors as part of Victoria’s Open Garden Scheme, and with time to spare, Valerie and I thought we might pop along.

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