GA Landscapes

17/10/2026

Autumn at Savill Garden, Windsor Great Park

A wonderful visit to Savill Garden, with spectacular autumn colour amongst the mature woodland and an extraordinary collection of trees and shrubs.

Particularly impressive was the enormous Vitis coignetiae climbing high into the canopy of a mature oak, a remarkable old wisteria with its twisting woody stems, and the magnificent cascading foliage of Podocarpus salignus. Other highlights included the golden autumn colour of Carya ovata and Juglans nigra, and the brilliant red foliage of Sassafras albidum.

A real highlight was the Dry Garden, developed following the great drought of 1976. Almost a garden within a garden, it has a wonderfully distinctive, Mediterranean character.

The planting combinations are superb, with architectural pillars of Juniperus chinensis ‘Savill Sentinel’ and Pinus sylvestris ‘Fastigiata’ providing strong vertical structure amongst drought-tolerant shrubs such as Cistus, ornamental grasses and perennials.

Delightful little gravel paths meander through the planting, giving the garden a wonderful sense of intimacy and discovery. A beautifully considered piece of naturalistic planting, and particularly relevant as we look towards more resilient gardens for a changing climate.

A particularly lovely discovery was Zauschneria californica ‘Western Hills’, a name that immediately brought back memories of visiting Western Hills Nursery in Occidental, California, during my horticultural study tour in 2000. A wonderful and unexpected connection, 26 years later.

12/10/2026

Betula lenta RHS Garden Wisley . I remember John Grimshaw showing me this tree at York arboretum a few years ago 🙏😁

11/10/2026

Cockcrow Heathland Bridge

Spanning the A3 at M25 Junction 10, this remarkable new bridge reconnects the heathland habitats of Wisley and Ockham Commons.

I’ve known and walked this beautiful landscape for many years, and the changes associated with the road improvements have been enormous. Not everyone welcomes them, understandably.

What I hadn’t appreciated until visiting was that the bridge also accommodates vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists, raising interesting questions about balancing practical access with wildlife protection.

Nevertheless, the ambition is impressive. There’s some thoughtful landscape detailing too. Sandstone boulders soften the changes in level between the access road and raised planting, while sandy soils, heathland vegetation and deadwood are repeated throughout the scheme. Even the 600mm depth of growing medium has been carefully engineered.

It reminded me of Thomas Heatherwick’s abandoned Garden Bridge across the Thames, a project I was initially sceptical about. Perhaps we need more imaginative thinking about how infrastructure can accommodate nature.

What makes Cockcrow particularly convincing is its simplicity: heathland on either side, connected by heathland above the road.

The loss of mature trees and established habitats shouldn’t be dismissed, but neither should the potential of what is being created.

It’s challenged my own thinking about landscape design. Perhaps ecological function deserves greater importance than immediate visual appeal.

I’ll be fascinated to see how this landscape develops over the next ten years.

HabitatRestoration

09/10/2026

The older generation out in force today! Margaret’s neighbour enjoying the autumn sunshine with her 17-year-old dog, while Toby gets on with the brickwork. 🧱🐾

Margaret Ferris

04/10/2026

An early October morning at Bedgebury National Pinetum.

After yesterday at the Great Dixter Plant Fair and an evening around the bonfire in Northiam, Dave Ford and I spent the night nearby in our camper vans with the dogs, before heading to Bedgebury early this morning for breakfast and a walk through the Pinetum.

Beautiful October sunlight and plenty of autumn colour beginning to develop. A few things particularly caught my eye — Araucaria araucana planted amongst the pampas grass near the entrance, the striking upright form of Picea abies ‘Cupressina’, and the stunning autumn colour of Fraxinus americana (white ash).

Also looking particularly good were the brilliant yellow foliage of Ginkgo biloba, the distinctive leaves of Quercus variabilis (Chinese cork oak), and Acer saccharum beginning to colour up.

A particular highlight was the Leyland cypress avenue — an unusual and surprisingly effective use of such a familiar tree.

A lovely October morning to explore the collection, with plenty more autumn colour still to come.

21/09/2026

Rust Never Sleeps

Four years of owning this rather distinctive green tipper, and inevitably the rust is beginning to show in places.

A weekend spent cleaning it back, treating it and repainting the underside. Maintaining the vehicles and machinery may be a largely unseen part of running a landscaping business, but keeping on top of it makes all the difference.

Hopefully a few more years left in the old truck yet ! And of course us too 😀😀

20/09/2026

17/09/2026

The Plantation Garden, Norwich

After the scale of Sandringham, this could hardly have been more different.

I only found the Plantation Garden by chance. My friend Dave Ford suggested it that morning and, when I looked it up, I immediately recognised it from an article I had seen in The Garden magazine over 20 years ago. Somehow the images had stayed in my memory.

Created within an old quarry, it is a remarkably complete little landscape. Enclosure, changes of level, winding paths, planting, water and wonderfully eccentric structures combine to create a world entirely of its own.

For me, it encapsulates much of what good garden design should do: stimulate the imagination, allow room for a little eccentricity and not take itself too seriously. It makes you excited to explore what comes next — almost returning you to that childhood instinct to investigate a landscape.

A small garden, but a very special one.

13/09/2026

With the recent coverage marking 25 years since 9/11, I found myself looking again at these photographs of my best friend, Stewart MacNeill, and me arriving in New York—with the Statue of Liberty on one side and the Twin Towers on the other.

It is also now 30 years since, aged 22, we cycled approximately 3,000 miles across America in 42 days. We had both quit our jobs and found ourselves with a short window between July and September to do something adventurous before deciding what came next. We chose to cycle across America.

We flew into Seattle without bicycles, slept for the night and woke the following morning to look for a bike shop in the Yellow Pages. We bought our bicycles and equipment and, by that afternoon, were cycling out of Seattle on our way across the country.

We camped wherever we could and ate extremely frugally—which perhaps explains why there wasn’t much left of me by the time we reached New York. Our equipment was fairly basic too: no Lycra and when it rained, large bin bags served as our waterproofs.

It was an important turning point in both our lives. Soon afterwards, I began studying landscaping at Merrist Wood, while Stuart embarked upon his career in accountancy/ finance.

Faded photographs from a different time, but memories of quite an adventure.

12/09/2026

Sandringham — a garden in transition

Returning to Sandringham for the first time since July 2019, I was struck by just how much the gardens have changed.

I began by turning left into one of the older woodland walks — mature trees and shrubs, wonderfully peaceful, with very little demanding attention. From there I emerged into the new Long Borders, with their much richer perennial planting. I enjoyed them, but the contrast made me realise just how much I value the quieter passages in a garden.

In 2019, Sandringham felt remarkably calm and spacious, particularly the relationship between the house and its great expanse of lawn. Today there is considerably more horticultural interest, with new gardens, borders and extensive tree planting. There also seems to be an obvious enthusiasm for acers, oaks and magnolias, judging by the multitude of newly planted specimens.

Much of the new work is interesting, and I thought some of the formal areas worked particularly well. But I do wonder whether, with so much being introduced, a little of that former sense of space and calm is gradually being lost.

It reminded me slightly of the way RHS Wisley has evolved — an extraordinary concentration of horticultural ideas and experiences, but sometimes leaving me missing the quieter spaces between them.

Of course, historic gardens cannot stand still. Climate change, rising costs and the need to engage today’s visitors mean these places have to evolve. Perhaps that is one of the great challenges facing our historic gardens: how do we allow them to move forward without losing the character and sense of place that made them special in the first place.