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May Vidacovich’s Garden, Louisiana

May Vidacovich's garden with trees, potted plants and shed

Earlier this year we seized the opportunity to visit plantswoman May Vidacovich’s fascinating and beautifully cared for private garden in Louisiana. The garden is a heady mix of plants I know well with others I’d never seen before, or only ever at flower shows.

Normally I’d avoid being out in hot sun and I was tempted to describe it as a fleeting visit. In truth I lingered for longer than it felt at the time and pretty much had to be dragged away in a sorry state of heat exposure and reluctance to leave this piece of paradise.

I’m sharing these pictures with hardly any commentary other than to note that they only skim the surface of what was flourishing there. Continue reading “May Vidacovich’s Garden, Louisiana”

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Pebbles Along The Path

Pebble decorated with a flower and Be Kind

Walking on your own is an acquired skill for many of us. I can’t claim to enjoy walking for exercise, though I do it. I’m more motivated by the things I might see. A kestrel is way up on my hoped-for list. Right now, in our damp climate, it’s fun to look for miniature forests of mushrooms that spring up seemingly out of nothing and have vanished without trace next time you pass. Continue reading “Pebbles Along The Path”

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Poisonous Red and White Spotted Toadstools: Fly Agaric

Red toadstool with white spots

Early autumn is a great time to hunt for fungi, so I have spent some time searching for the most atmospheric of all, red and white spotted toadstools, in all the likely and less likely places I could think of near where I live. As often happens, when I was not searching, I glanced up and had the thrill of seeing twenty or thirty of them growing on a hillside in a narrow strip of mixed, light woodland on the edge of peaty moorland.

Toadstools are the fruiting bodies of underground mycelial networks. Happy to return to earth, they emerge only briefly after a rain, swelling rapidly to full size then rotting back after releasing spores from white gills on the undersides of their caps.

Fly agaric growing in moss and leaf litter

Continue reading “Poisonous Red and White Spotted Toadstools: Fly Agaric”

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Wilde Weelde, Floriade: a Partnership Between Humans and Nature

Wilde Weelde flower border with heleniums

While your eye may naturally pick out the flowers, when I was face-to-face with this memorable landscape, I marvelled at that long, structured wall of tree trunks and re-purposed construction materials in the background. The fauna wall was by far the biggest insect hotel I’d ever seen.

Ash logs and reclaimed material in the fauna wall

Broad swathes of the Wilde Weelde garden’s boundary are made from small sections of logs of different diameters, stacked leaving gaps between them – the log version of a dry stone wall, you might say. The effect reminded me of the ramparts of a castle, except these walls have gaps that a raider could saunter through. Continue reading “Wilde Weelde, Floriade: a Partnership Between Humans and Nature”