We are conditioned, in this sophisticated world of ours, to revere tastefulness, and tastefulness most frequently involves restraint— pastel shades and subtle hues. Orange and yellow, scarlet and magenta are frequently reviled.
Over the past few months, anything that lifts our spirits has become prized; bright flowers fall into that category. How uplifting is a large terracotta pot stuffed with scarlet geraniums? Somehow, white doesn’t quite cut it—not least because white geraniums (by which I mean pelargoniums) don’t age well. Their browning petals disfigure their virgin purity, whereas fading red flowers join the shadows among the scarlet blooms.
My love for pelargoniums goes back to my parks-department apprenticeship, where, with two or three other council gardeners, I would sit around a large sheet of hessian in the stone-floored potting shed each September— piled high with severed stems taken from the plants on roundabouts and traffic islands—and make my contribution to the several thousand geranium cuttings that had to be taken each year to fill the following season’s flowerbeds.
Esta historia es de la edición June 10, 2020 de Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
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A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
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Forever a chorister
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Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
