Category: Environment
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Gathering seeds of hope – on a train trip from Scotland to France
The ugly dark hulk has a daunting bulk. A grim legacy of the Nazi occupation. The old submarine base still occupies the Bacalan district of Bordeaux. So many tons of concrete – 600,000 cubic metres of them – would be difficult to remove. But walk round it and there’s a surprising softening in an imaginative…
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Pond Cottage nature notes – making a happy mess.
Too hot to do the outside work I had planned. I stay indoors with windows open to invite a cooling breeze while I tweak at words for next year’s Pond Cottage entry in Scotland’s Gardens Scheme 2026 Yellow Book. Is it right?
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Galanthus “Trumps” at Pond Cottage
Here we are. At the start of our visiting season I’m not in the best of moods but I stop reading the news to take a walk round the garden and I can’t help smiling when I find the snowdrop given by a dear, gardening friend last year. Perky, eye catching, Galanthus “Trumps” could do…
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Rewilding: or how to be led by Nature
It’s been ploughed and cultivated for perhaps 200 years. How to turn an acre of field into a wild garden?
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A blossoming welcome to The Pond Garden
After a hard winter it is good to see signs of new life. As climate change blows hot and cold, spring feels both fragile and determined. Winter storms destroyed our oldest wild plum tree. But she has left us a promising legacy.
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Here’s to a new season of unruly gardening
Which season are we in, exactly? Looking through old blogposts it’s almost quaint to note how I marked the comforting rhythm of the four seasons. Four seasons? More like two now I often think: winterish and summerish.
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Standing against the storm
Don’t despair, ‘doomism’ prevents action. Get into the garden. Plan and plant for today and tomorrow. That’s where hope grows. But I can’t keep politics out of mine. In an election year we can put pressure on politicians to get their cross-party act together, finally treating climate crisis with proper urgency.
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Look this way: the glass is half full
A proper winter morning for a change. I’m birdwatching by the window with a cooling coffee. There’s a cluster of blue tits on the birch tree feeder, chaffinches catching crumbs on the ground. One robin, two blackbirds, three red squirrels frisky in the snow. Sights for sore eyes and sad hearts this grim December when…
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Life is just a bowl of bullaces
In other words, we’re a wild garden adapting to the challenges of climate change: – mulching, replanting, learning from plants and wildlife.
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Blowing in the wind
So I tried to tell the BBC how owning a windmill helps you rediscover the wonder of electricity.
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The Pond Garden in June
Blue skies again. Sunshine sparkling on the pond. A friendly breeze ruffles new leaves and turns the wind turbine merrily. What kind of killjoy would complain about the promise of yet another glorious summer day? It does seem perverse. How often have I moaned about waking to endless cold, wet midsummer days? Now, we open…
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Rebellion in the garden
The benefit of hindsight: a sometimes comforting blurring of the vision in the rearview mirror. Scrolling through Wikipedia timeline it’s unnerving to see how much trouble was piling up for the 21st century.