Contents

Introduction i Trentham 1 New Perennials 2

Sissinghurst 4 Existentialist gardening 5

Small gardens 7 Dreadful 8

Garden ornament 10 Horticultural monomania 12

Plants and architecture 13

Personal questions 15 Love of plants 16

My week 18 Tom Stuart-Smith 20

Mikinori Ogisu 23

Sissinghurst again 26 Three cheers for colour 29 Duisburg Nord 31 American alligators 35

illa Gamberaia 38 Down with design 41

Ian Hamilton Finlay 43

Music and gardens 48

Great Dixter 50 The Sheffield School 53

What a way to go 55 RHS judging 57

Gardening clothes 58 The politics of self-sufficiency 60

Serre de la Madone 66

Ghosts 68 Landform 71

Chanticleer meets Great Dixter 76

‘Real’ gardening? 78 Robin Lane Fox in Oxford 80

Immersive not pictorial 82 Rosemary Verey 84 Lost heroes of gardening 88

Cycling to gardens 90