Category Archives: gardens

Gardening Notes number seven, some spring (and winter) flowers

Posted on April 5, 2020 by jonathan trustram

Previously on Gardening Notes – the intricacies of intimate weeding, the scorn of the radical ecologist, the disappointment of bare earth in Wiltshire, the possibilities for a garden for old age, the harmless vandalism of the Swiss cow, the wonders … Continue reading →

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Garden Notes number six, more hellebores

Posted on April 3, 2020 by jonathan trustram

I said I’d bring you more delightful spring flowers – they are on their way, but first, I’m still crazy about Helleborus x hybridus. (The ‘x’ by the way is put into a name to show that it’s a hybrid, … Continue reading →

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Garden Notes number five, Helleborus x hybridus (formerly known as Helleborus orientalis)

Posted on April 1, 2020 by jonathan trustram

It’s the plant of the month. Well, last month maybe. (April  does bring strong competition.) And the month before. They begin to flower in January and still look good in April; the petals keep their colour. No species is so … Continue reading →

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Gardening Notes number four, Gardening for Old Age

Posted on March 29, 2020 by jonathan trustram

Gardens for old age. I first wrote about this in good time, probably 25 years ago. It’s a bit late now. At a recent conference dedicated to praising the virtues of gardens and nature (spiritual, emotional, wellbeingall), only one problem … Continue reading →

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Gardening notes number three, weeding

Posted on March 29, 2020 by jonathan trustram

The original version of these notes was written in the context of my work in  public open spaces with  Putting Down Roots,  St Mungo’s gardening project for homeless people. I tell Chris (still the faithful volunteer at St John’s)  that … Continue reading →

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Garden notes number two, communities and bare earth

Posted on March 23, 2020 by jonathan trustram

To begin with a disappointment: we visited a garden in Wiltshire – Hele House in the Avon valley between Amesbury and Salisbury, a place I had ‘fond memories’ of, where the happy channels of the river flow through meadows planted … Continue reading →

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Garden notes number one, the sacred and the demonic

Posted on March 23, 2020 by jonathan trustram

The sacred and the devil’s own work, garden plants in the moral imagination. It’s often the way the bad plants multiply which causes greatest offence. they swarm, they suffocate, they uproot, they propagate by the million, they’re eaten up with … Continue reading →

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See also:

Posted on December 8, 2019 by jonathan trustram

see also: Deviations, Boundaries, Prohibitions, (revised) tracks, ribbons, edges and boundaries….. the dog tries to make sense of it all underground the worms and moles have their routes and channels In the mountain forest the path of the big ants … Continue reading →

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At St John’s, Waterloo, May 2018

Posted on May 13, 2018 by jonathan trustram

  I was coming round the corner of the church last sunday when all of a sudden I saw two little birds on the tarmac in front of the condemned box hedge. I was amazed.They looked like sparrows. They were … Continue reading →

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in Clissold Park again

Posted on March 17, 2018 by jonathan trustram

following meanwhile in Clissold Park… They’ve been dumping mounds of horse manure over the beds by the house in Clissold Park, the beds I wrote about last year which were being overwhelmed by bindweed, nettles, thistles and buttercup. Mostly bindweed, the … Continue reading →

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