Veg Plotting

I had a brilliant day at Lacock Abbey last Sunday with Justin 'Pinhole' Quinnell playing around with various traditional photography techniques including Camera Obscura, turmeric printing and pinhole photography. The latter was most apt as it was World Pinhole photography day  - the website is well worth a look with participants and a wide variety of viewpoints from around the world. Justin loves making unusual pictures using this technique and delighted in taking pictures up our noses and of our ears as well as more conventional views. Many of his techniques use recycled or very cheap materials and he has full instructions for various projects you might like to try on his website . We all got to have a go with pinhole cameras made using old beer cans and traditional wet chemical developing techniques. I was pleased when it came to my turn to pose on the bench in the botanical garden and the results are shown above. True to my Veg Plotting roots I was also pleased to take a ph...

Lacock village is always a good bet for a good door display and Christmas is no exception. Here's a small selection of various wreaths I found on a wet and windy day recently which really helped to dispel the gloom and provide plenty of festive cheer. I hope you like them too. Have a wonderful Christmas and a peaceful New Year. See you all again in 2026!

Last week I set a Sudoko puzzle with a difference, using the letters from Stourhead instead of the numbers one to nine. Here's the solution. How did you do? Did you find letters easier or more difficult than the usual Sudoko puzzle? Would you do one of these again? Other puzzles published previously on Veg Plotting : Connections   Cryptic Word Grid Garden Scramble  (the solution is here ) Garden Wordsearch  (NB no solution is given for this one as you'll know when you've found them all) Happy Families Shows of Hands special (quick ID quiz) What's in a Name? What's in a Name? Part 2

This puzzle has been waiting in the wings for a while and I'm pleased to bring you a letter based Suduko using one of Wiltshire's most famous gardens, Stourhead . In this case the letters of S-t-o-u-r-h-e-a-d are used instead of the numbers one to nine and your task is to add further letters to the grid below so that each line of nine both across and down, plus each box of nine only contains one instance of each letter. The grid is based on one published in the Radio Times which had a difficulty rating of 11/20. A printer friendly version can be found here . I'll post the solution next week, though you'll know when you've cracked it! If you enjoyed this puzzle, Sue Garrett over at Green Lane Allotments has another couple for you to try. Other puzzles published previously on Veg Plotting : Connections   Cryptic Word Grid Garden Scramble  (the solution is here ) Garden Wordsearch  (NB no solution is given for this one as you'll know when y...

It's time for a proper wander around the gardens at Avebury Manor and where better to start than in the Monks' Garden, where the sunshine on the day of our visit helps to dispel the gloom of today's wet and windy weather. Most people visit Avebury to see the stone circle , which is indeed our usual port of call; this time we sidestepped them as  I'd heard there's a sculpture exhibition in the Manor's gardens I was keen to see. A visit here is also worthwhile, as it's slightly different for a National Trust property. It's more hands-on than usual and you can even dress up there if you want to! I find myself increasingly drawn to glass art and the work of Yvette Green and Jeannette Therrien in the Monks' Garden didn't disappoint. Their work had been placed carefully to match the themed colours of the garden's beds and many of the designs were inspired by nature. The Manor's gardens consist of 9 'rooms' and visitors h...

Thanks dear Dee for posting this quote on Facebook this week. It sums up succinctly my recent thinking about this time of the year, also hinted at in my Blooms Day post last Sunday. I feel like I'm in an odd, twixt time; the meteorological calendar says it's autumn - since September 1st - yet  the horticultural calendar doesn't say so until the weekend. The current spell of warm, sunny weather is more summer-like too. I love the light in the garden at this time of the year. It has a softer, more translucent quality which makes the garden sing at any time of day. My chosen photo of the Monk's Garden at Avebury Manor echoes my feelings well. It looks like summer there, yet the chosen colours for this part of the garden are more autumnal in their hues. It turns out that the Manor's gardens are in a twixt phase too. Box blight has devastated the garden and much of the formal lines are in the process of being stripped out in the hope that the larger topiary it...

As well as plenty of heritage apples to explore, Rufford Old Hall had a scarecrow trail when we visited. The volunteers on welcoming duty were anticipating hordes of visitors during half term and made sure we had a leaflet in addition to the estate walks one. They sprang up in all kinds of places, including the Hall's vegetable garden, so naturally I grabbed this shot for my occasional  Allotment Folk strand. The sign says 'A Lady Gardener'. She wasn't the only woman toiling the soil in scarecrow form. The orchard area had a Land Army Girl too. She - and me as a bystander - was being bombarded by hundreds of ladybirds at the time. I wonder how many of them settled down for winter in her straw?

Sunday's Apple Day post delayed my customary postcard on return from holiday, but I think it's worth the wait. We've concentrated mainly on the eastern side 'oop north on previous cottage holidays, and the western side - namely Lancashire - proved just as rewarding last week. Storm Callum didn't prevent us from having a great time at Moseley Old Hall in Staffordshire on the way up (and down - I think I've become addicted to the National Trust's cheese scones as a result), then we found ourselves staying at a mere 5 metres above sea level in the 'lettuce capital of England' (my words) where we were surrounded by hundreds of acres of lettuces, cabbages, glasshouses, and other market gardening activities. Elsewhere in the village, the West Lancashire Light Railway was the friendliest heritage railway we've ever visited, and I've fallen in love again with Booths, the northern based supermarket. We had time to see family and friends;...

We've been in Lancashire for a few days where I had the opportunity to discover some apple varieties which suit more northern climes. I'm delighted I wasn't that familiar with most of these and there's just enough time left to write this post for today's Apple Day  celebrations. The larger picture shows ' Lemon Pippin ' with its unusual yet giveaway shape. Its site description says (which differs in some details with the one given in the link): An old apple of the 18th or 19th Century, origin either Norman or English. A dessert/cooker with a crisp flesh and slightly tangy in taste. Pick October to December. The other unnamed apples shown are ' Duke of Devonshire ' which resided in the basket of one of the scarecrow trail's figures. Judging by the crop in the orchard and on sale in the courtyard, this looks to be a prolific russet variety. Here are the links to descriptions of the named varieties in the photographs: ' Pott's Se...

Regular readers know I love clematis, but I wasn't sure about the Clematis heracleifolia I planted in VP Gardens a while ago. In fact, I'd mentally decided to replace it with something more garden worthy earlier this summer. Of course that meant it's since pulled out the stops and is flowering beautifully for my slightly later than usual Blooms Day this month. I guess like many of its clematis cousins it subscribes to the Sleep, Creep, Leap method of garden establishment. This clematis is herbaceous rather than the more familiar climber grown, and flowers late summer and into the autumn. The leaves are quite different too, and it's only when the individual flowers in each hyacinth-like cluster are examined more closely, that its clematis heritage is seen more clearly. The RHS describes it as a sub-shrub, and the true-blue flowers are borne in clusters on stems of around 3 to 4 feet in length. These are currently threading through and filling in the gaps in m...

I was struck by the quotation I found for Friday's Thresholds post, and thought it worthy of a repeat for today's Muse Day . What a prescient notion in Fox Talbot's words. This time I've superimposed it on a photo I took at 2014's Illuminating Lacock Abbey exhibition. The projected image is another of Fox Talbot's and a similar one was on display in Thresholds . It was a spine tingling feeling to 'hold' this image in my hand via the magic of Virtual Reality. I wonder what's next?

I've been to another world! It's probably the closest I'll ever get to time travel... ...Thresholds is the brainchild of artist Mat Collishaw who's recreated the world's first public exhibition of photographs in Virtual Reality (VR). Lacock Abbey is a fitting venue seeing it's where the creator of those images - Fox Talbot - lived and many of the photographs he exhibited in 1839 were of the Abbey or plants in his garden. Here you can see me all kitted up with battery back pack, wired for sound via the headphones, and peering into the blue screen of the VR headset. National Trust volunteer Bill is ready to guide me into the room where the action takes place... to take me over the threshold as it were. Artist Mat Collishaw poses in the room where the VR magic happens. Before you get to this point you're guided up a slope and just as you enter the room, the screen suddenly changes from blue to another world. The room's layout is synchronised w...

Events conspired to put Christmas on hold for us last year, so it was a treat to have a a few days in Yorkshire with my brother-in-law and family last weekend. Having subjected me to a day at the Sentinel steam weekend at Elsecar  (willingly I admit, and with a bonus find of some must-have plants at the farmers market), NAH kindly invited me to choose our stop off on the way home. I'd often wondered about the imposing grandeur of Hardwick Hall which is easily seen from the M1 on our frequent travels up north, and it turned out to be a good place for lunch and a bracing walk around the grounds for a couple of hours. The Hall itself was closed on the day we were there, which in some ways was a blessing as we would have been tempted to stay for much longer than our journey time allowed. Hardwick refers to Elizabeth of Hardwick (also known as Bess), who in Tudor times rose from relatively humble origins (a minor gentry family at Hardwick) via 4 marriages to be one of the wealth...

View from Lacock Abbey grounds towards Bowden Hill   The warmer weather and afternoon sunshine tempted us out for a walk around the grounds of Lacock Abbey yesterday. I didn't know this extraordinary sight greets visitors in March, even though I've lived in Wiltshire for over 30 years. In the Botanic Garden, Head Gardener Sue Carter writes: "Our carpets of Cornus vernus have spread from a few corms planted by William Henry Fox Talbot*. We leave them to seed, so they are still colonising new areas, making the display bigger each spring. It means we can't cut the grass in our crocus meadows until late June or even early July, so there are a couple of months of scruffy grass, but we think it is worth it for one or two glorious days in March." I quite agree. The display extends well beyond that gap   * = William Henry Fox Talbot lived at Lacock Abbey in the early 19th Century, so we're looking at almost two centuries of naturalisation. It'...

It's great when my interests collide, as happened with my gardening and stamp collecting obsessions yesterday. This is the Landscape Gardens  First Day Cover I received, which commemorates the tercentenary of Capability Brown's birth. I know I've admitted to doing something a bit nerdy, but in my defence I've been collecting them since I was 11 years old. To fuel my inner nerd even further, I've opted for the special handstamp to go with my cover; in this instance it's Kirkharle, Northumberland, where Capability Brown was born. The eight gardens featured were selected for their different ways in which they illustrate Brown's work (summarised from the descriptions in the accompanying card): Blenheim Palace: where Brown decided to half-submerge Vanbrugh's 'Bridge in the air' Longleat: where he re-engineered the canals and serpentine into a mile-long series of lakes Compton Verney: working alongside Robert Adam, Brown softened and remo...

A selection from the Elements of Capability exhibition at Lacock Abbey on show until May 22nd 2016 Keen garden historians are spoilt for choice this year with plenty of events lined up to celebrate 300 years since Capability Brown's birth. With around 250 commissions over his extremely busy lifetime, there are plenty of his landscapes to view around the country. Instead, I've learnt recently about the intriguing 'lost world' of Capability Brown, as not everything he did has been preserved. I have a sense of irony here as he did exactly the same with many of his commissions. It's quite hard to find any gardens which pre-date Brown and his contemporaries as they swept away the past so they could fulfil their vision of what landscapes should be. As mentioned previously , Lacock Abbey was one of Brown's commissions here in Wiltshire, so I was keen to learn more by visiting the Elements of Capability exhibition last week. However, to my surprise Lacock Ab...

I'm trying something a bit different for May, by starting each day with a 20 minute walk. It's something I've thought of doing for a while, then I found out it's  National Walking Month . It's time to stop thinking and start doing! There's a nice leafy little route through our estate which takes around 25 minutes, so I have the daily satisfaction of beating my 20 minute target*. Around a third of the way is uphill, so it'll be interesting to see how puffed out I get at the end of the month, compared to now. It may be a familiar route, but I've found some surprises along the way. There are English bluebells along the line of one of the old hedgerows, and I can see a bright red stripy Big Top over at Allington Farm from the top of the hill. To help ring the changes from my regular route, I've also got details of the National Trust's Stonehenge and Avebury Walking Challenge . This is a series of 8 walks, ranging from 2 to just over 6 miles,...

Part of the extraordinary 2 mile long Lime Tree Avenue at Clumber Park near Worksop Once again I've found a garden visiting road trip is the perfect way to cheer up February, my least favourite month of the year. I reprised part of last year's Snowdrops on Tour and added Clumber Park to my itinerary on Karen 's recommendation. Just seeing Lime Tree Avenue, the longest in Europe with over 1,000 trees, ensured this part of my trip didn't disappoint. Our refuge from storm Imogen at Easton Walled Gardens My trip started with storm Imogen flashing and rumbling a warning at me, and thankfully a swift escape north and eastwards meant I missed the worst of her ravages . Despite that, Naomi and I were mightily pleased Karen had arranged for us to take refuge in Easton Walled Gardens ' summerhouse for a picnic before we toured the garden. As we were with Karen we were able to have a nose around doors which are usually kept closed, including the flo...

The Courts , Tuesday 24th March 2015, 15:28:22 ~ a fresh view of the garden I'd hadn't noticed before Now we're at home, NAH and I are busier than ever and it's got to the point where we have to try really hard to make time for each other. Last Tuesday afternoon was just such a time. What made it remarkable was instead of our usual foray to the local farm shop for a cuppa NAH said: "Let's go a bit farther, I need to get out somewhere where I can clear my head. How about that garden in Holt? They have a cafe there don't they?" In over 31 years of marriage, NAH has never initiated a visit to a garden. And so The Courts conspired to serve up a perfect afternoon, with sunshine and the most wonderful light. The coffee, cake and company was nigh on perfect too.