Monthly Archives: July 2013

A plea for palms

 Are there two kinds of people in the world – the ones who love palms and those who hate them? My diagnosis is that those in the second group have merely been infected by too many badly used cocos palms.…
Poppies Saint-Paul Asylum, St Remy

France in spring

 An armchair cruise this week to Van Gogh’s last poppy fields, a vertiginous cactus garden above the Riviera and the extravagant Villa Ephrussi Rothschild at St Jean Cap Ferat (even the address is over the top!). These are a few…
Slipper orchid Cloud Forest biodome Gardens by the Bay

Orchids in the cloud forest

 ‘A City in a Garden’ is the Singapore government’s catchcry, and it’s serious. Gardens by the Bay is the headline project, a 121-hectare, three-stage horticultural extravaganza on reclaimed land at the mouth of the Singapore River. It’s not just big,…

Oranges, Spanish style

 It’s orange season and we’re loving the fruit in salads and desserts, and in the particular case of my family, in steamed orange and whisky puddings. Oranges find their way into our fruit bowl, but less often into our gardens and rarely into our streets.  Wouldn’t it be lovely to take a leaf from Spain, where…