This website is about gardening and painting 

I suppose my painting highlight of 2021 was the 2021 Wylye Valley Art Trail. It seems a long time ago now, but you can see my paintings from the trail on the link below :

Click for the Wylye Valley Art Trail 2021

As far as the garden is concerned, opening for the National Garden Scheme in June was the highlight. The sun shone, lots of people came and sat in the garden and we sold lots of plants and tea and cakes. Altogether we raised over £1,500 which was fantastic! Clicking on the link below will take you straight to the page of photos taken around the time we opened.

Opening for the NGS

As you probably know, the National Garden Scheme raises millions of pounds every year for Nursing and Healthcare charities and you can find out more about them at:

​www.ngs.org.uk

Why do I paint and why do I garden?
I came to painting relatively late (aged 47) and I still feel something of a fraud. When a painting goes badly, it makes me weep  - but when it goes well, I feel alive. I still play the piano better than I paint, but, whereas I don't play the piano as well as I did when I was 20, I paint better than I did last year. 

Gardening is like painting, but very slowly, and with even less control. The most important garden featured on this site is Burton Grange in Wiltshire, which was a totally blank canvas in 2013 and is now very much a reality.  The other important garden in my life was Crescent Lane in Clapham which gave me huge pleasure and was responsible for getting me into gardening in the first place. It still feels part of my life, because I still have some of its plants and many of their descendants in Wiltshire. I keep its photos here because the real garden has been changed/destroyed by its new owners and I want to keep  the memory alive, if only on this website. 



​