Willen Lake It’s quite hard to do justice to the 4 May BGT walk at North Willen Lake in 500 words. Tim Skelton, a surveyor who worked for Milton Keynes Development Corporation, and Chair of Milton Keynes Forum, aided and abetted by Pete Martin, local architect who also worked for MKDC, led 15 people around...Read More
Visit to Chenies Manor House, Tuesday 26 April 2022 Located on a south-facing slope overlooking the Chess Valley, Chenies Manor House makes a dramatic backdrop for its beautiful gardens. Beside an old Bramley apple tree, crowned with mistletoe, Charles MacLeod Matthews, the present owner, introduced the fascinating history of the estate. From its creation in...Read More
A Welcome to Chiltern Heritage Orchards In 2016 horticulturalist and lecturer Lindsay Engers started a traditional mixed fruit orchard in the Chilterns on a farm near St Leonards. He farms using traditional short, intensive sheep grazing and strict organic standards to establish over 250 different cultivars of fruit. The choice of fruit is mainly commercial...Read More
Historic England Launches New Map Revealing a Century of England From the Air 22 March 2022 – Today, Historic England launches its new Aerial Photography Explorer – which for the first time allows users to search and explore an online map showing aerial photographs of England over the past 100 years. Aerial imagery provides a...Read More
Snowdrop Gardens 2022 The snowdrop is most definitely a harbinger that winter is over and spring just aroundthe corner although I am lucky to have been given a few very early snowdrops which start by November 11th. Most years I manage to visit one or two snowdrop gardens or churchyards but 2022 I was determined...Read More
BGT, advising the Gardens Trust, has played a significant role in the refusal by Buckinghamshire Council of a planning application by the Ministry of Justice to develop a new ‘megaprison’ at Grendon Underwood. The Category C prison, intended to house up to 1468 prisoners, would have covered an area of 6.7 ha on a greenfield...Read More
March 2022 -Chandos Park Buckingham. Michael Hunt Stowe – New Inn Garden Tomkins Arboretum, Winslow 19th March 2022. This morning’s visit to see the emerging leaves of this Cercidiphyllum japonicum = the Katsura tree from Japan and China and introduced to Britain in 1881. The leaves will turn bright green for the summer, then turn...Read More
Evenly Wood Gardens in Northamptonshire stayed open for all of the lockdown. Great place for families, garden enthusiasts and special occasions. Excellent website http://www.evenlywoodgarden.co.uk Photographs by Claire de Carle on a recent visit.Read More
Buckinghamshire’s Forgotten Women in Gardening: Margaret Ursula Mee (1909–1988) Margaret Mee, a celebrated botanical artist whose exotic paintings of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest flora are exhibited around the world, started life in a modest but happy family among the farms and fields of early 20th-century Chesham. Born Margaret Ursula Brown on 22nd May 1909 in...Read More
Buckinghamshire’s Forgotten Women in Gardening: Alice de Rothschild Alice Charlotte von Rothschild was born in Frankfurt on 17 February 1847. She spent her early years in Vienna, and after the death of her mother in 1859 spent time with various European relatives including at Aston Clinton and Mentmore. When her brother Ferdinand’s wife Evelina died...Read More
