Category: Tales from Pond Cottage
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Sunshine on Rachel House
This year the Pond Garden is fundraising for the inspiring work of CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland). We were invited to visit Rachel House hospice and garden in Kinross and discovered an intriguing link with Pond Cottage
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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.
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Wanted: a deep mulch of money
”Pond Cottage is an acreage of weed, rot and litter but Fay Young intends to turn it into a Scottish horticultural paradise”. That was The Herald almost thirty years ago in a quirkily offbeat introduction to my new dream commission: a Weekend Extra series about Scotland’s gardens and gardeners…
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Snowdrops greet Pond Cottage spring in a hard hat
And here they are. Almost incredibly, undaunted by digging and draining and ditching and dumping, the first sharp green shoots have poked through the rubble and hardcore round our cottage. That’s hope for you. Hope in a hard hat.
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Nature makes a happy mess at Pond Cottage
‘But it’s the right kind of mess,’ she says, as I apologise for the tangle of wayward weeds tumbling across the path. ‘It’s so liberating. I’m going home to release my free spirit.’ Our garden visitors at the end of the season have been very kind. After a summer of unforeseen events the Pond Garden…
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Tread softly in the bluebell woods
Depending on the weather, the show can last a month or more. This May it feels more precious than ever. We need to tread softly…
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Welcome to The (lily) Pond
It’s not possible (and I think not right) to avoid the wider world news of death and destruction. And yet it also feels more important than ever to celebrate what Nature brings us, the turning cycle of life. Renewal and recovery. People and plants. We need each other.
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One snort for hello?
At no risk to ourselves we can make our own surrounds much greener, safer – and a lot more pleasant.
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Keep people safe: keep gardens open
If we want our grandchildren to enjoy the thrill of a thriving woodland – a living landscape – we have a lot of work ahead.
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Welcome to The Pond
This is a new adventure for us but we are looking forward to welcoming visitors to our first autumn ‘season’.
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Swan watch: a parents’ guide to survival
After almost 20 years of sharing the pond with generations of swans we are gradually learning to expect the unexpected. But this year brought a humbling discovery for human parents.
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Fine weather for flamingoes?
Nature is the boss. At best we manage to infiltrate here and there with splashes of colour and dashes of ideas. Some of them even work out well. Check the flamingoes…