Mirabel Osler

"... pick up one of those superb books such as Private Gardens of England, by , on a wild, wet afternoon in February when the wind is shrilling outside, moaning through the gaps and spattering the window with rain. Turn to a picture of Saling Hall showing blues and silvers against the static severity of s, or see the black and white photographs of roses, cobbles and at , in which there's a table and chairs glimpsed through an open door in the garden wall. Books such as these are indeed a strong element of the whole pleasure of gardening; they need to be devoured and mulled over as well as those which are carried round in an earthy hand as vital advice flows out on what to do with five hundred s at the s."

"Ideally, should be approached from the heights of Whitcliffe Common for views of its and the among the cluttered roofs and chimneys, the rosy-pink bricks, the half-timbered houses and somber gray stone of the ancient town walls. The circling the town is spanned by the medieval and Dinham bridges — the latter immortalized in paintings by . From where I live, beside the renovated 12th-century chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a gnarled magnolia tree, I cross Dinham Bridge to wander alongside water meadows of s, , and grazing cattle. Swans glide on the river, the water roars and tumbles over the weir, and the mercurial flight of a appears like a hallucination."

"Living in after we married, where we had a small farm with neither nor and where each spring a stallion bedecked with ribbons walked the lanes servicing the mares, we often made the journey between the country and London, a slow and un-trafficky journey through the before the age of motorways."