Happiness?  Health? The concept of happiness as a steady achievable state of being is comparatively modern (look at those meek medieval madonnas, dour Dutch citizens, proud Renaissance magnates,).  Aristotle understood the search for happiness but later it was neither particularly sought or admired, particularly by religions, which state that suffering is humanity’s daily fare.  Then came the eighteenth century and the US declaration that all men have a right to the pursuit of happiness, and Alexander Pope declaring ‘Oh Happiness, our being’s end and aim!’ Today books, CDs, lectures, and...

PREFACE When the Hampshire Magazine, for which I wrote a garden column for over thirty years, folded, I spent a few years writing a book about the history of gardening which (amazingly, to me) was accepted and published by In the Garden Publishing (ITG) in the USA.  Fine, and it sold quite well.  Then ITG too folded. Then, I gradually wrote a book about easy gardening – I mean gardening that’s not onerous and doesn’t take too long.  In it I touched on the fact – which I had never been able to discuss in the highly practical  and factual Hampshire Magazine – that...

Below’s blog is by American blogger, Paul Denikin.  It’s about sprucing up the garden before putting your house on the market.   After all, the garden is the first thing a potential buyer sees, and therefore needs, as he puts it, ‘curb appeal’.  Here are his suggestions! ________________________________________________ How to Create Curb Appeal That Packs a Wallop by Paul Denikin A house that really feels like a home begins with what you see on the outside. In fact, your yard should be a place of pride and joy, since the first thing anyone notices about your home is the...

Do Plants Think? I read an article in the New Scientist (Smarty Plants, 6 December 2014) about the intelligence of plants by Anil Anathaswamy.  (I had already explored this concept in my book LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND GARDENING.)  Plants respond to touch – mimosa pudica quickly, but others more slowly, heavens a lot more slowly – they respond to light and shade, they can hear (we saw orchids swaying to music in Thailand, yes, I am not joking), they can smell and communicate.  ‘They think, they react, they remember.’ Now it’s being explored scientifically.  With plants, ‘you get...

THE BEST Our first Landmark holiday was at Ascog on the Isle of Bute, when Dexter was four months old – now he is nineteen.  With Dexter, Bob and me, Bill and Margot with Geordie three years later, Ann who was at school with me in the 50s and Mike, and others from time to time, we have been to a Landmark property almost every year since.  Margot says it’s how she’s got to know the countryside. Every Landmark whether castle, farmhouse, townhouse, stable or mansion is a dilapidated historic property renovated by the Landmark Trust and then let for holidays.   Without exception, each is...