Author Archives: laura

GARDEN FURNITURE

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With the Chelsea Flower Show having just finished, the Chelsea Fringe in full swing, the sun putting in the odd appearance and GROW London just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to think about sprucing up your garden. Here are some of the chicest tables and chairs to be found at the moment.

Fermob Bellevie Table from Barbed

COLOUR-POP TABLE TOP
We love this Bellevie Table from Barbed! A fun, modern design coupled with bright, vibrant colour options makes this an ideal dining table for the contemporary garden. Eight to ten people can comfortably fit around it, so there’s plenty of space for those summer barbecues, and as it’s made from electro-zinc coated solid steel, it will wear well against the British weather.

Broadwalk Table and Curved Seats from Gaze Burvill

AESTHETIC OVALS
This beautiful outdoor dining table is Gaze Burvill’s Broadwalk Oval Dining Table. Available in three different sizes (seating 10, 12 or 14) it’s perfect for large gatherings of friends and family, and the rotating granite centrepiece means everyone can reach the ketchup!

Croisette Table from Unopiù

CLASSIC CONTEMPORARY
For those who like to mix classic and contemporary design, we think this Croisette Table from Unopiù ticks all the boxes! The geometric base structure lends the table a strong edge, while the teak wood will suit any garden space. You could also opt for a glass tabletop, and Unopiù’s huge range of outdoor seating allows you to mix and match for your perfect table and chair combo.

Dedon Slim Line set from Leisure Plan

URBAN LOUNGING
Bring a bit of boutique hotel chic to your garden with this Dedon Slim Line set from Leisure Plan. Its understated design means it looks as good poolside as on an urban roof terrace, as here.

Viteo Slim Minimalist dining set from Encompass Co

MODERN MINIMALIST
This Viteo Slim Minimalist dining set from Encompass Co is chic, elegant and ideal if you like to keep things simple. Using high quality materials and ergonomic shapes, this sleek set has been built to ensure comfort, as well as a clean design.

Outdoor furniture from Green Oak Furniture

AU NATURAL
For something handcrafted and entirely unique, these beautiful pieces made by Marnie Moyle of Green Oak Furniture are just the thing. All are made from un-seasoned timber, and as the tannin found in oak is a natural preservative, you don’t need to maintain the furniture or hide it away during the winter months. A fabulous, natural no-maintenance option.

Qui est Paul’s ISO outdoor table and chairs

DESIGN JUNKIE
Qui est Paul’s ISO outdoor table and chairs are the ultimate in contemporary design. The beauty of this set lies in the concept: structured, strong pieces made with minimal material thickness.

AN INTERVIEW WITH TOM MOGGACH

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Tom Moggach is a gardener, food writer, teacher, author of The Urban Kitchen Gardener, founder of City Leaf – an organisation that trains people how to grow and cook with home-grown produce – and will be leading a talk at GROW this June about easy-to-grow edibles for small spaces.

In our quick-fire interview, we find out just how much time Tom spends thinking about food and he reveals the strangest thing he’s found in his garden…

Tom Moggach, who is speaking at the GROW London garden fair this June

Describe your garden/gardening style
Edible and adventurous - lots of colourful ingredients to spice up my cooking.

Favourite London garden/outside space?
The seaside-style garden outside Pentonville Prison, which sadly seems a touch neglected these days.

Guilty gardening pleasure?
Grazing as I garden.

Which tool couldn’t you be without?
Bottle-top waterer.

Most unusual thing you’ve found in your garden?
A small toy rabbit.

Your lucky break?
It’s all hard graft!

Biggest gardening disaster?
Too many to mention.

When you’re in your garden, what do you spend most of your time doing?
Thinking about dinner.

Life motto?
Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.

Tom’s talk, Irresistible edibles for small spaces, will take place on Sunday 22 June at 3.30pm in the GROW London marquee.

AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS BEARDSHAW

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Multi-award winning garden designer Chris Beardshaw will be divulging the secrets of planting with an artist’s eye at GROW this June in his talk, Painting with Plants.

If you can’t wait until then to hear from him, enjoy this quick interview in which he reveals the secrets of his own garden.

Chris Beardshaw, who will be speaking at the GROW London Garden Fair in June

Describe your garden/gardening style
A blend of formal structure overlaid with informal planting. All my schemes give plants the main focus and spotlight.

Which tool couldn’t you be without?
My Tina knife which I’ve owned for longer than I care to think about, it goes everywhere with me.

Which garden has had the greatest impact on you?
Hidcote Manor Garden in the Cotswolds, I visited as a boy and have returned many times over the years.

Most unusual thing you’ve found in your garden?
We found a horse shoe and as it’s supposed to be lucky, we hung it up over our door.

Your lucky break?
I think it’s all about being in the right place at the right time.

Greatest gardening disaster?
Not having enough time to tend to my own garden!

Favourite London garden/outside space?
Currently Greenwich Park – I’ve been visiting a lot over the last year whilst designing a herbaceous border for the royal park. It’s given me the opportunity to visit and appreciate a park I didn’t know very well and the views of London are simply stunning.

When you’re in your garden, what do you spend most of your time doing?
Tidying away things my children have left out!

Life motto?
Don’t be afraid to tread your own path.

You can catch Chris’s talk at GROW London on Friday 20 June at 1.30pm. For more details, our full programme is listed on our Talks page.

CLERKENWELL DESIGN WEEK

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Clerkenwell Design Week, the award-winning independent design festival, is hosting its 5th edition this month, from 20-22 May. To help celebrate innovative design within the UK, GROW has joined forces with Urban Spaces and The Gin Garden to bring you Portal to The Urban Gin Garden!

Portal to the Urban Gin Garden flyer

The event will be every bit as wonderful as it sounds. Over the three days, in the fabulous setting of the Portal Restaurant and Wine Bar on St John Street, Clerkenwell, GROW will be helping to create a beautifully blooming space using plants and products from GROW London exhibitors Boskke, Capital Gardens and The Urban Botanist.

The urban oasis will also be used to show work from an exciting mix of artists, as well as hosting an inspirational programme of workshops. Discover how Clerkenwell’s history is intertwined with gin, or learn how to grow your own cocktail with urban gardener and GROW London speaker Tom Moggach. All to be enjoyed of course whilst sipping on a bespoke gin cocktail. What better way to spend an afternoon?

Places are limited – and free! – so book early to avoid disappointment.

MAY IN LONDON

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As summer approaches, gardening season is also bursting into full swing as the grande dame of the gardening world, the Chelsea Flower Show and her exuberant little sister, the Chelsea Fringe, return to London this month.

Although only in its third year, the Fringe will host a heady mix of over 200 public spectacles, horticultural happenings and community celebrations in and around London, as well as as far afield as Brighton, Bristol, Glasgow, Vienna and even Ljubjlana.

The Fringe runs from 17 May – 8 June. Here are a few of the highlights tickling our fancy:

Athenaeum Hotel's living wall

GROW YOUR OWN VERTICAL GARDEN
20 May
6:30pm - 8:30pm

The Athenaeum Hotel is home to one of London’s first vertical gardens - an impressive 10-storey green wall designed by Patrick Blanc. It is also one of London’s most diverse living walls, featuring a glorious fusion of yucca, lavender, jasmine, fuschia, rosemary, junipers, mosses and self-seeded wild flowers.

Which makes it the perfect setting for a vertical gardening talk with Daniel Bell, who first brought the concept to London. Daniel will guide you through the basics of starting your own green wall, sharing his passion for biodiversity whilst you enjoy the discussion sipping on an exclusive gin cocktail inspired by the botanicals from the hotel’s wall.

£15

THE FLOWER THEATRE
Recurring event from 17 May

Petersham Nursuries (whose horticultural manager Tom Broom is giving a talk at GROW London) has been inspired by Victorian auricular theatres in this novel floral ‘peep show’. Enter the darkened booth and press the button to see a marvellous display of flowers revealed as never before.

HIDDEN GARDEN ART SHOW
Recurring event from 24 May

The smallest outdoor sculpture gallery in the UK, the lush little private garden of the Maureen Michaelson Gallery is living proof that sculpture can enhance even the tiniest spaces. Drop in to see how to it can complement the natural beauty of your shrubbery, with an added element of surprise, humour, or wonder!

Fenton House, London

THE HANGING HERB GARDEN OF FENTON HOUSE
Recurring event from 17 May

Spend a sunny afternoon enjoying the gardens of Fenton House, just a stone’s throw from the GROW fair site. There are formal walks to wander, a beautiful sunken rose garden to admire, a kitchen garden to marvel at and, tucked away in the apple orchard, a unique display of hanging herbs to surprise and delight the senses.

£2

THE GUERRILLA GARDENER’S RIVER OF FLOWERS WALK FROM LAMBETH NORTH TO THE ELEPHANT
18 May
11am – 12.30pm

Proving you don’t have to have a garden to be a gardener, Richard Reynolds, author of On Guerrilla Gardening, will lead you along a one mile stretch of guerrilla gardens between Lambeth North tube station and Elephant & Castle. En route, he’ll recount the stories of these renegade creations and the different approaches taken to public gardening without permission.

SHOWS OF HANDS
Recurring event from 17 May

This project moves the act of gardening into the virtual sphere. Hosted on Michelle Chapman’s blog, Veg Plotting, it is a celebration of the gardener’s most precious tool – their hands.

Anyone can participate by sharing photos of their green fingers in action - the muckier, the better! At the end of project, Michelle will create a clickable Google Map (and possibly a collage) showing the locations of everyone who took part.

AN INTERVIEW WITH DAWN ISAAC

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Dawn Isaac, award-winning garden designer, writer and horticultural advisor on children’s television, tells us all about her gardening style, habits and practices, and why she would like to hire Sherlock Holmes.

Dawn Isaac, who will running children's activities at the GROW London Garden Fair in June

Describe your garden/gardening style
Family-friendly meets shabby chic.

Which garden has had the greatest impact on you?
My first garden. Within 12 months it had inspired me to complete an RHS course, quit my job in PR and sign up to study garden design.

Your lucky break?
The producer for Mr Bloom’s Nursery coming across my blog and inviting me to act as horticultural consultant for the show.

Guilty gardening pleasure?
Spring bulbs. I buy more each year despite the fact I ran out of space some time ago. And every time I try to find a spot to plant a new one, I dig up three already there.

Which tool couldn’t you be without?
My thermal wellies for winter – gardening with cold toes is just plain wrong.

Who or what makes you laugh?
Pretty much anything Caitlin Moran writes.

Favourite book?
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

Most unusual thing you’ve found in your garden?
An owl. Or to be more specific, a dead owl, buried feet up beneath bulbs in one of my pots. If Sherlock Holmes wasn’t a fictional character I would have enlisted his help long ago to discover who, how and WHY?

Flowers or veg?
Edible flowers (see what I did there?!).

When you’re in your garden, what do you spend most of your time doing?
Chasing after children. Just my own you understand – this isn’t a new sport.

Life motto?
If you’re not having fun, you’re just doing it wrong.

If you fancy hearing more from Dawn, then come along to the fair where she will be leading our kids’ workshops on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 June.

GROW LONDON’S FABULOUS NEW CAMPAIGN

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We are delighted to reveal our brand new campaign images and we hope you like them as much as we do!

GROW London Garden Fair Campaign Image

A big thanks to everyone who helped us create these fabulous images. In the image above, Harrod Horticultural provided the Haws watering can, Habitat supplied the yellow ‘Sasha’ pot and the ‘Vieques’ side table was kindly supplied by Kettal. The Sneeboer tools were courtesy of Harrod Horticultural and Clifton Nurseries.

GROW London Contemporary Garden Fair Campaign Image

To get this image perfectly balanced we used a Boskke Sky Planter, a ‘Leaf’ chair from Arper, Harrod Horticultural provided the Sneeboer rake and Burford Garden Company kindly lent us the apple picker, which our MD fell in love with and promptly purchased!

GROW London Garden Fair Campaign Shot

The final image we shot features an Aztec ‘Gem’ terrarium from The Urban Botanist and Sneeboer tools supplied by Harrod Horticultural and Clifton Nurseries.

Look out for these striking images in our extensive ad campaign appearing nationwide in magazines, newspapers, and around London in the coming weeks!

GROW LONDON IS IN THE NEWS

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As June approaches, the anticipation in the GROW London offices is growing daily - we can’t wait to launch on leafy Hampstead Heath! It’s nice to see the excitement about our new event spreading too… here are a few more fabulous stories that have appeared in the past few weeks.

Elle Decoration featured GROW London as one of its must-see events!

Elle Decoration, May Front CoverElle Decoration article featuring GROW London as a must see event

Gardens Illustrated announced the moment our tickets went on sale:

Garden's Illustrated feature on new garden fair, GROW London

Flowerona, flower blogger extraordinaire, recently published this lovely article on her blog.

Article about GROW London on popular gardening blog Flowerona

Local Hampstead group, Hampstead Shops Campaign, wrote about us recently on their website too.

GROW London article on the Hampstead Shops Campaign website

PLANTSMAN’S PICKS: MAY

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Todd’s Botanics does a little bit of everything – from garden design and construction to planting services, as well as lots of growing in the nursery! Specialising in drought-tolerant herbaceous and architectural plants and trees, Mark Macdonald shares the 6 plants he couldn’t be without in May.

Trachelospermum Jasminoides, Mark Macdonald from Todd's Botanics' plant picks for May for GROW London

TRACHELOSPERMUM JASMINOIDES
One of the few climbers that we grow in the nursery, this always makes me smile - even in winter, as the leaves turn a deep red colour with the cold. The small glossy green leaves at this time of year are so refreshing, and then along comes a mass of beautiful, highly scented, white flowers. Very easy to grow in a sunny spot, although it does need something to twine around (wires or trellis are ideal), and it’s nice and controllable so won’t take over the world.

Arbutus Unedo, Mark Macdonald from Todd's Botanics' plant picks for May for GROW London

ARBUTUS UNEDO
The wild strawberry tree gets its common name from the small, edible fruit it produces late in the season. While it’s certainly not grown for its crop, it does have the most wonderful coloured leaves with a great contrasting red stem, and delicious-looking cream coloured flowers that hang in great clusters. Add to this the fact that it’s an evergreen that provides much-needed structure, as well as being an understated specimen in its own right, and I don’t understand why more people don’t grow Arbutus.

Agapanthus 'Peter Pan', Mark Macdonald from Todd's Botanics' plant picks for May for GROW London

AGAPANTHUS ‘PETER PAN’
May is a great time of year for flowering plants and Agapanthus never fail to make me happy. From the monstrous africanus varieties through to the dainty ‘Silver Babies’, they are such an exciting range of flowers that really do last, and so earn their space in my garden (well my wife Emma’s garden - she does the work and I just get to enjoy it!). Native to South Africa ‘Peter Pan’ grows well for us here in Essex and will do even better in London.

Citrus Trees, Mark Macdonald from Todd's Botanics' plant picks for May for GROW London

CITRUS TREES
Never mind May, I need these in my life all year round! The scent is just intoxicating and for me has great memories of family holidays in Portugal. Beautiful, evergreen trees with the most amazingly scented flowers and fruit as well – could we ask for anything more? (Well, someone to come and water it for us would be nice).

Olea Europea, Mark Macdonald from Todd's Botanics' plant picks for May for GROW London

OLEA EUROPEA
I have to have my trusty staple of an olive tree in my line up. May brings fresh growth after the long winter wait and the new green leaves makes the older silvery/grey foliage look even more striking. Soon we will have some blossom and then fingers crossed…a crop. I can practically hear the olive barons of Tuscany quaking in their boots!

Rosemary Officinalis, Mark Macdonald from Todd's Botanics' plant picks for May for GROW London

ROSEMARY OFFICINALIS
Like the Arbutus, the common rosemary is often overlooked and neglected. I think that’s why I like it so much. It keeps growing and gives a beautifully aromatic depth to the garden – and it’s up there with the citrus in the memory stakes. I always put some rosemary stems on the last of the barbecue embers; the scent while finishing off a nice cold beer is unforgettable.

You can buy Mark’s picks from the Todd’s Botanics website, or why not visit their stand (C5) at the GROW London fair in June where they will have a fabulous range of plants on show!

AN INTERVIEW WITH JAMES ALEXANDER-SINCLAIR

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Renowned garden and landscape designer, writer and television presenter, the multi-talented James Alexander-Sinclair joins GROW London’s fabulous list of expert speakers. At the fair this coming June, James will be introducing new gardeners to the best plants to begin with.

We caught up with him to find out how he runs his own Northamptonshire garden, Blackpitts.

James Alexander Sinclair, who will be speaking at the GROW London Garden Fair in June

Describe your garden/gardening style
Disciplined anarchy: I like the plants to be able to stretch their limbs and do their own thing, but there comes a point when I have to step in and say ‘No’ in a very loud voice.

Favourite London garden/outside space?
I like the 9/11 memorial garden in Grosvenor Square very much.

Guilty gardening pleasure?
Sometimes I just say ‘sod it’ and lie on the grass when I should be doing something horticulturally useful.

Which tool couldn’t you be without?
My Felco secateurs. They have been with me for more years than I care to remember. They are one of the very few things that I have failed to lose. I also carry a scar where they cut deeply into my hand when I was taking them out of the packaging so we have a blood bond, my secateurs and I.

Who or what makes you laugh?
My wife, my children, Joe Swift & Cleve West, PG Wodehouse, the Turnham Green joke and random internet videos about cats.

Most unusual thing you’ve found in your garden?
A pair of baby hedgehogs was probably the cutest.

Biggest gardening disaster?
So many, but the skill is in either turning them to your advantage, or successfully hiding them so nobody finds out!

Life motto?
Never let your braces dangle.

When you’re in your garden, what do you spend most of your time doing?
Oddly I really like weeding. I listen to strange historical podcasts on my iPod and can sit there for hours happily digging, pulling and fossicking. I also love pruning roses.

See James speaking at GROW London this June, 20 – 22. Details will be confirmed soon, so do check back to see what will be on at the fair.