Posted on

In Praise of Punk

I don’t care how nice a person you are, I don’t mind betting you occasionally have a bad thought. What distinguishes us is how we deal with the feeling: how we expend it.

Back in the day, while working on a supermarket cash register during my school holidays, I noticed that the well-to-do lady I was serving was visibly sneering at a couple of punks who had joined the queue behind her. They were a boy and a girl obviously in love: classic, charismatic punks, with torn clothes and spiky hair.  Continue reading “In Praise of Punk”

Posted on

Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra Of Kent’

Rosa 'Princess Alexandra Of Kent' covered in dew
A dewy Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra Of Kent’

An English Rose that pretty much has it all. The flowers are huge, fragrant, and very distinctive because of their deeply cupped flower form, although you can’t really appreciate the depth of the bloom from this angle. The colour is classic rose pink. It’s a shrubby type of rose, but fairly compact, with stems sturdy enough to bear the weight of the flowers. Continue reading “Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra Of Kent’”

Posted on

RHS Chatsworth’s Mandala Mindfulness Garden

As news broke that this year’s flower shows have been cancelled, I found myself gazing at a pile of dry, leafy debris, cleaned from my hens and chicks, wondering whether making a mandala would sooth my mind. It wasn’t the best of ingredients, being a uniformly dull beige.

Overhead view of hens and chicks mandala
Mandala made from hens and chicks in contrasting colours

My thoughts turned to last year’s RHS Chatsworth Flower Show. The Mandala Mindfulness Garden had been designed as a quiet space to allow an urban school to provide wellbeing sessions for small groups and in one to ones. A sense of rest (from the seating areas) and calm contemplation (the mandalas), was balanced by flow (the airy planting and the oval path). Continue reading “RHS Chatsworth’s Mandala Mindfulness Garden”