The final croak | One Bean Row
A dark day in the sun The heron ate my frogs. Not “a heron”, but “the heron”. In Ireland, serious threats are accorded the definite article: the fox, the blight, the whoopi…| One Bean Row
When I started this blog over ten years ago, nearly everyone in my trade — which was writing about gardens — had a blog. We settled down every evening (and several times a day) to read each others’ blogs. Other people read them too, which was gratifying. Blog posts were short and took no more […]| One Bean Row
Let’s talk about tomatoes: the fruit of love. The Spanish conquistadors brought the tomato from South America in the 16th century, and in Italy it was known as pomo d’oro (golden apple). In France this became distorted to pomme d’amour — which duly led to the tomato being declared an aphrodisiac. John Parkinson, the English […]| One Bean Row
When I was in art college studying woven textiles, I won the Lillias Mitchell award for hand-spinning. I got a nice letter and a small cheque. That was decades ago, and I never won anything after that except for two raffle prizes. Until yesterday. Yesterday, my book, The Irish Garden, won the Inspirational Book of […]| One Bean Row
A couple of weekends ago, about forty garden people travelled from all over Ireland to Baltimore in west Cork. Some, such as Gerry Daly from the Irish Garden magazine, and myself, were members of the garden media, but most were those who open their gardens to the public. We had come to the 97-acre […]| One Bean Row
Around this time of the year, I regularly have a battle with florist’s wire, lumps of foam, lengths of ribbon, green tape, pliers, spray paint and bamboo skewers. It’s all part of my annual attempt to wrestle greenery, cones and berries into garlands and other decorative whatnots. The fruits of my labours are satisfying and […]| One Bean Row
One of the ten candidates for the Royal Horticultural Society’s “Chelsea Flower Show Plant of the Centenary” last year was Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’. Although it didn’t win (the prize went instead to Geranium ‘Rozanne’), I was delighted to see the perennial wallflower on the list, as it has nearly dropped out of sight in recent years. […]| One Bean Row
On the night of Monday, March 3rd 2014, Ireland’s most respected botanical artist died, a month before her 99th birthday. Wendy Walsh (née Storey) was born in Bowness-on-Windermere in Cumbria, but she came to live here in 1958 when her husband, Lt. Col. John Walsh, originally from Edgeworthstown in Co Longford, retired from the British […]| One Bean Row
Ask any gardener their favourite plant, and they pause . . . think . . . pause . . . and then come out with something indefinite or general. They like “what’s in flower now”, or “plants that do well in my soil”, or “old roses”. But, ask them what plants they hate, and there […]| One Bean Row
I’ve been up to my oxters in garden-related books for the past couple of weeks in order to bring you my pick of the crop for 2013. First though, I have a plea. I have noticed that an increasing number of books now contain no index. Negotiating a book without an index is like navigating […]| One Bean Row
A dark day in the sun The heron ate my frogs. Not “a heron”, but “the heron”. In Ireland, serious threats are accorded the definite article: the fox, the blight, the whoopi…| One Bean Row
