How to describe the city state of Singapore? Downtown is like an American downtown (with even more malls – yes really!), the suburbs like….well a kind of tropical multiracial version of Sweden with a rather bossy government – the same well-designed but rather bland housing estates of modestly tall tower blocks, all separated by amazing [...]
Written by Noel Kingsbury A visit to the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary in Wayanad region of Kerala in south-west India is a real inspiration and a very special place. Its basically a private trust who own a slab of virgin forest (in the Western Ghats bio-region, where only 3% of the original forest is left) and [...]
Planting up a client’s garden the day before yesterday. The third winter I have done this particular one. Good design jobs go like this – it’s an illusion, partly fostered by TV design and ‘make-over’ programmes that you can go in and plant up, and before you can say “Bob’s yer uncle” the garden is [...]
Written by Noel Kingsbury My office in rather more of the white stuff than we’re used to As a visitor to the US I am always slightly bemused by the discussions of hardiness zones, overhearing conversations amongst gardeners like “I’m 3a and I can’t grow lady’s mantle, but friend is just a few miles [...]
Recently I tackled the challenge of energizing an established blog. The back story: In 2007, garden author Nan Ondra and I launched Gardening Gone Wild. (Photographer Rob Cardillo introduced us.) Nan and I wrote passionately about natural, free-flowing gardens. We loved writing without publishers and editors hovering. When comments came in from all over the [...]