Category: Scotland’s Garden Scheme
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A gift of hope
Green shoots of hope – I’ve just had a lovely message from a generous man, a rare philanthropist, who is offering to match the money we raise this year for CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland) through our Scotland’s Gardens Scheme openings. He means it, he was so impressed by what he learned about CHAS when…
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Plants, pollinators, people: welcome to the Pond Garden
How to plan and plant for wildlife in our new climate of uncertainty? I’m searching for ideas in the era of adaptation. There’s great advice from experts but I can also learn a lot from close encounters with the pollinators feasting on self-sown flowers at Pond Cottage. Great opportunists. True survivors.
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Tree stories stir hearts and perhaps a sense of hope
I hadn’t expected to be quite so engrossed. For the next two hours I never once thought about taking my phone out of my pocket
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Every Tree Tells A Story
It begins in Glasgow but Every Tree Tells a Story is an inspiring project that could, should, spread anywhere and eveywhere
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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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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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Welcome to the Pond Garden and a splash of sunshine
This year our Scotland’s Gardens Scheme openings at The Pond Garden are supporting the extraordinary work of Children’s Hospices Across Scotland (CHAS). Sunshine and showers I’ve been walking round the garden through sunshine and showers. Mostly showers, it has to be said, some of them torrential. The sunshine blooms in borders at the top of…
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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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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.