photographer, writer, sustainability campaigner
Blog posts from before July 2021 are available on Martin’s archive site…
This autumn marks the 100 anniversary of the birth of Ian Hamilton Finlay, creator of one of my favourite gardens in the UK, Little Sparta. It is about a decade since I last visited, but throughout August the Little Sparta Trust ran minibus trips out to the garden from Edinburgh every Sunday and my daughter …
A few weeks ago Lord and lady Muck paid a visit to an exhibition about plants in the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. Called ‘’Those who do not smile will kill me: decolonising Jamaican flora’’. The title comes from the proverb about the Jamaican fruit Ackee. When the fruit does not split or ‘smile’ it …
There are plenty of blockbuster exhibitions on in London at almost any time of the year, heavily promoted, busy, expensive. But on a visit last week I came across, thanks to being alerted to it by a lovely review in The Observer, an almost hidden away exhibition in Somerset House on Soil. I had a …
I have visited Kelmscott Manor, the country home of William Morris and family close to the Thames in rural west Oxfordshire, quite a few times over the past 40 odd years. It is always a delight, even on the summer boat trip up from Oxford in 2019 when it poured with rain the entire day. …
Sometimes on wintry days I turn to my gardening books for inspiration and a sense of what might be possible in Spring. But over the past couple of years my attention has been drawn more often to my copy of Gerard’s Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. Published in 1597 it is the oldest (and thickest) …
It is eleven years to to the day since I was issued with my share certificate for 1,000 ordinary shares in a newly formed co-operative ‘Cultivate’, promoting sustainable farming practices and the production and consumption of locally grown food. Their strap line ‘people-powered food’. What not to like! The prospectus was soooo enticing, a group …
So tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and salad crops are all in short supply right now in Britain’s supermarkets. Indeed Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and Morrisons are all rationing customers to a single item or bag of these valuable vegetables. Why? Allegedly because of adverse weather conditions in Spain and Morocco. Some unpatriotic people on seeing supermarkets across …
When things get serious the images of drought that the media come up with are generally empty lakes, rivers, or reservoirs, the dried mud of their normally unexposed beds cracked into a crazy-paving of distress. Or if it is really bad, images of the skulls of cattle staring hollow-eyed up at the camera, scattered over …
It was the one decent afternoon on what was otherwise a very rainy, windy, and stormy mountain walking and trekking trip to Wester Ross and Skye – while the rest of the country was basking in warm sunny summer weather. But a visit to Inverewe Gardens on the shores of Loch Ewe was always going …
It’s well over two years since the Covid19 pandemic started. During the first lockdown the allotment was a place of solace and ‘socially distanced’ company, as well as a chance to engage with and listen to nature under that memorable clear blue sky. I escaped Covid. Until I didn’t. Which had of course – sods …