Category Things I love
When you work in east London . . .
. . . sometimes you see performance art with dough on the way home. The theme of the show was “folds” and literally every other person at the gallery was (a) a hipster and (b) French. Sooo artsy.
The neighbour’s flower box
I live in a neighbourhood of terraced Georgian houses, many of which have flower boxes in their window ledges. This is my favourite: I love the height and unruliness and how none of the plants are ones I’ve seen in flower boxes before.
The KC comes to London!
The great thing about London is that everybody comes here — including my friends from the Kennedy Center in DC! I worked with Jennifer, Jean, and Leslie fundraising there ages ago when I was a recent college grad trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Those eight months were an […]
Greys Court
One last house and garden in Oxfordshire before going back to London. This time an ancient house called Greys Court. It did not have the expansive landscaping of Blenheim, or the highly manicured look of Waddesdon Manor. Instead, it had a charming, somewhat rambling series of walled gardens that I absolutely loved.
Moms and gardening
On my last morning in Oxford, I was the only guest at the B&B, which meant I had the undivided attention of my hostess Sylvia as she brought me breakfast. We started talking and I learned she was originally from Mexico but had been living in England for nearly 40 years. She had a son […]
Oxford Botanic Garden
On my last morning in Oxford, I walked down to the famous Botanic Garden. It’s small and, dating back to the 1500s, is the oldest botanic garden in England. It sits on the bank of the river, across from Magdelen College, which conveniently provides for a wonderfully atmospheric tower to loom over the garden. I […]
Waddesdon Manor
After visiting Stowe, with its classical splendor and Brownian landscape design, I drove to Waddesdon Manor for something altogether different. This was the Victorian lair of Baron de Rothschild, built in the grand French style, he hired a French architect to basically cobble together the greatest hits from the Loire valley chateaux . . . […]
Stowe
As impressive as the gardens and park at Blenheim were, the ones at Stowe (which Capability Brown did early in his career) blew me away. I loved the vastness of the views, which were designed to give the impression of going on forever without interruption (kind of like infinity pools today). And I loved how […]
Blenheim Palace
The morning after the Chelsea Flower Show I drove out to Oxfordshire in search of some of the masterpieces of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, the 18th Century landscape designer who perfected the English “Landscape Style” and is considered by many to be the Shakespeare of gardening, so great has been his influence through the centuries. Before […]
Chelsea Flower Show
The thing I love the absolute most about the UK is the country’s deep cultural fondness for gardening. I see it everywhere I go — in the vines twining up the front stoops of Georgian row houses in the city, the charming villages in the country, the Facebook feeds of my English friends, and the […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 