photographer, writer, sustainability campaigner
Blog posts from before July 2021 are available on Martin’s archive site…
Its early October, so the summer must be properly over. Surely? The weather forecasters aren’t so confident. Its still uncommonly warm even for an ‘Indian Summer’. But the darker evenings prompt me to look back on what has most certainly been an extraordinary summer, even if its not quite over yet. And while the drought, …
It rained last week. Quite hard. For half an hour. This pretty much counts as a news story what with rain being such a scarce commodity this summer. Lord Muck returned from a trip to Ireland at the start of the month, still a green and pleasant land though just as sunny as England, to …
So here we are in February, its pouring with rain – again, and the weather while raw and uninviting in the wind, could hardly be described as cold for the time of year. And it hasn’t been cold all winter. Not a single day of snow (nor last year) and only about half a dozen …
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 …