An Afternoon at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival

Every summer, in early July, the Royal Horticultural Society presents a celebration of gardens and flowers at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival. It's a magical collection and I jumped at the chance to catch up with my friend Bonny when she invited me to go.

We met bright and early on Saturday morning at Hampton Wick rail station and walked down Kingston Road and Hampton Court Road to Hampton Court Palace. On arrival, we pottered around the craft market and then made our way to the Floral Marquee where we saw the most divine array of flowers and plants.

The Floral Marquee at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival

Lilies

I took a long time to admire the lilies. I sadly can’t have lilies in my house as they are toxic to cats but I do like to admire them when I can.

Fuchsias

Fuchsias are one of my favourite flowers and will be the next purchase I make for my fledgling garden. My father was an incredible gardener but I am not and can count the number of plants I’ve kept alive in my garden (currently 18 with 3 cat mint plants in a critical condition due to every cat in the neighbourhood rubbing up against them).

Bougainvillea

Bougainvillea grew everywhere in Johannesburg. I miss the flora of South Africa a lot.

Dahlias

One of my favourite cousins is called Dahlia and I just love their spiky petals.

Alliums

I only discovered alliums this year but I enjoy looking out for them now.

Dahlia varieties

I never knew there were so many varieties of dahlias.

As you pass through, ask yourself, how do you feel today?

Clematis

Also known as Italian leather flowers for their big floppy petals.

Baby Sage

Also known as Salvia. I like these flowers a lot and think I will add them to my garden too.

A Break for Lunch and Pimms

It was hot and humid in the Floral Marquee and we stopped to enjoy a glass of Pimms and some lunch in the outdoor eating area. We were lucky to get a table and even luckier to do so undercover because it soon started pouring with rain. We met a fascinating couple who had travelled down from Yorkshire for the festival and who told us all about their lives, grandchildren and travels abroad.

The minute it stopped raining, we took the chance to admire the glorious show gardens. These were my favourite sights.

Show Gardens at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival

RHS Resilient Garden by designer Tom Massey

Oh, how I wish my garden was big enough to feature a walkways leading over a pond.

I coveted this giant apple sculpture a lot.

The Lunar Garden by designer Queenie Chan

I loved Queenie Chan’s homage to the Moon.

I loved this giant bee sculpture, dedicated to our bee population in the United Kingdom, although I did mistake it for a giant ant at first!

The Landform Mental Wealth Garden by designer Nicola Hale

This is my idea of a perfect garden layout with shade, seating and abundant greenery. I hope Ms Hale doesn’t mind if I use this as a blueprint for the future design of my garden.

Festival of Roses at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival

You can't visit the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival without seeing the exquisite Festival of Roses. This small marquee featured scores of different rose varieties including several prize winner. It is not surprising that it was so busy!

Roses are my favourite of all flowers and I love the scent of them. Two of my plants are climbing roses and I’m delighted to say that Rose no 2 began to climb this year after a very reserved first year.

A Long, Beautiful Summer Day

It was a long, beautiful summer day out in London and to be honest, I’m glad it rained as it cooled down and otherwise hot and humid day. We arrived early in the morning and were among the last to leave in the evening and managed to walk over 18,000 steps by the time we got home.

Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival
East Molesey
Surrey
KT8 9AU

Booking opens in Autumn of each year. Our Saturday tickets cost £36.85. Entrance on Thursday and Friday was £28.85 for the public and RHS members pay £23.85 for weekday tickets and £31.85 for weekend tickets.

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I cannot believe this is only my third post of 2023. This year has not gone the way that I anticipated and I am trying my best to slow things down. In addition to being busy, I struggled to find my muse. I’m going to try my best to start posting on a schedule again but I also might dig into my archives and try tempt my muse into creating some exciting posts.

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Visiting the Tulip Festival at Pashley Manor Gardens

A year ago today, I saw a post on Instagram about the tulip festival at Pashley Manor Gardens in East Sussex and I knew that I absolutely had to go. After a year of planning and looking forward to it, we finally went today and it was every bit as exquisite as we expected.

The history of Pashley Manor is quite fascinating. The house above, with its original Tudor facade, was built in 1550. Almost a century before, Anne Boleyn's great-grandfather Sir Geoffrey Boleyn had owned Pashley. The original house was located on a moted island (which you can still explore) and was most likely a hunting lodge.

The tulip festival runs each year at the end of April and beginning of May. This year, the festival is running from April 19 to May 3 and an impressive 46,000 tulips have been on display.

Naturally, I lost all semblance of self-control on entering the grounds of Pashley Manor and tried to take photos of each and every single tulip.

The grounds at Pashley Manor Gardens are exceptionally well kept. We loved walking around, choosing hidden paths, crossing bridges and spotting new things to see.

This was one of my favourite views of the day, with the right pink tulips in the foreground and the fountain and Pashley Manor in the background.

While we were exploring, we were delighted to see a sign for the Bluebell Walk. I thought I'd missed bluebell season this year, so this was a big treat.

Pashley Manor is home to a large collection of sculptures and most pieces are for sale. The exhibition changes every year, which is exciting because Pashley Manor also has multiple festivals a year, including a rose festival every June.

Stephen had a lot of fun using the Picture This app to find out what many of the trees were. We tried it on a yew tree, with their bottle-brush branches, as well as on azaleas, camellias and other plants.

This was my second favourite view of the day: Pashley Manor in the background with tulips curving in front.

We'd walked around the walled garden, down the Bluebell Trail and alongside the stream but we finally came to the gates of the walled garden.

Our entire visit had been beautiful and life-affirming but the walled garden was something else entirely.

As I stood there, I realised how loud the birdsong was in the garden. It was really moving and beautiful to hear how the garden walls seemed to amplify their calls.

Pashley Manor Gardens
Ticehurst
Near Wadhurst
East Sussex
TN5 7HE

Tickets for the tulip festival cost £15 for adults, £6 for children aged 6-16 and children under 6 go free.

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This is the part where I apologise for being scarce this year and I don't even know where to start! Work was super busy from January to mid-March and again since we returned from South Africa. It's been great for my career but not so great for my personal and social life. It seems to finally be calming down now and I can't wait to tell you about all the adventures we've been on in the past six months.

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Gravesham Light Festival Lights Up January

The wonderful Gravesham Light Festival returns this week thanks to additional funding from Arts Council England. We really enjoyed our visit last year so read on discover what to expect, where to eat, a famous album cover and the true story of a Disney princess.

What to Expect from Gravesham 2023: Voyage of Light

The festival will take place on Friday 27 January and Saturday 28 January, between 5.30pm and 8.30pm in the historic town of Gravesend. The whole town will be lit up with light installations, exhibitions and experiences taking place at a range of locations including St George’s Arts Centre, Town Pier Square, St George’s Church Gardens, St Andrew’s Arts Centre, St Andrew’s Gardens and Gravesend Borough Market.

The Gravesham Light Festival 2022: What We Saw

The High Street: Greg Stobbs The Dream Mirror installation

We started off at Marie's Tea Room and explored the High Street area. The illumination in the window depicts Pocahontas, the subject of the Disney film. The true story of Pocahontas is quite incredible and many aspects of the film are disputed. What we do know is that Pocahontas' encounters with English settlers proved disastrous and she fell gravely ill after being brought to England. She died in Gravesend in 1617 at the age of about 21 and was buried at St George's Church.

The High Street was home to Greg Stobbs's The Dream Mirror installation, a series of illustrated window light works.

Greg found his inspiration in Gravesend itself, saying that "walking through Gravesend's Heritage Quarter in the dark is a magical experience".

Duncan Grant's That's Entertainment installation

This telephone box is very famous! It featured on the cover of The Jam album Sound Effects which released in 1980. Artist Duncan Grant took inspiration from this and dressed up the telephone box in a series of images that paid homage to both Sound Effects and Giles Gilbert Scott who designed the original phone boxes. Duncan's installation was called That's Entertainment.

Swan Yard. All of Gravesend's nooks, crannies and alleyways were lit up for the festival.

St Andrew's Art Centre

We spent ages at the St Andrew's Art Centre installation, watching as the full projection played out. The work was a collaboration between The Projection Studio's Ross Ashton, a double Guinness World Record holder, and sound artist Karen Monid.

St George's Church Gardens

We cut through the grounds of St George's Church and I saw the statue of Pocahontas for the first time. The statue was erected in 1975 and enjoys Grade II listed status. It was relisted in 2017 to mark the 400th anniversary of her death.

Richie Moment's Love Conquers All installation

Our penultimate stop on the Light Festival trail was to see Richie Moment's Love Conquers All installation with its collection of cherubs and uplifting messages of love.

Strange Cargo's The Owl and the Pussycat installation

Edward Lear's grandfather, Jeremiah Lear, lived in Gravesend and Edward spent many happy times there. Strange Cargo created these beautiful sculptural lanterns based on Lear's famous poem, The Owl and the Pussycat.

Dinner at Rico Sabor

We'd certainly worked up an appetite during our exploration and headed off to my favourite restaurant in Gravesend, Rico Sabor. Situated in the Grade II listed former courthouse, you can enjoy dinner in one of the old jail cells if you wish! The menu is a mix of Latin American cuisine and Spanish tapas.

Can you believe that the first month of 2023 is almost over? I always say I want time to slow down but that's not happening any time soon. Life is really busy too - I know I worked so hard to qualify to be exactly where I am with my career but that doesn't make year end reporting any easier. How is your 2023 going?

2023 brings a new theme to Emm in London. I needed to update it for various reasons but I have a lot of work still to do before I'm happy with this theme. Sadly, all Intense Debate comments have disappeared from the site but I still have them all saved down.

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A Year in the Life... 2022

Seasons greetings everyone! I hope that you're having a peaceful time and enjoying the festive season. My family is a mix of faiths, none of them very observant, but my mum and my brother always come over on Christmas Day for a big dinner, games, gifts and lots of belly laughs. It's become one of my favourite days.

2022 has been an exciting year for Emm in London. After a five-year hiatus, peppered by a few attempts to post in-between, I finally revived the blog in earnest and have been publishing a post every fortnight since May. I'm taking things slow this December, so there will be just this post, but I'll be back to fortnightly posts in January.

Here are some of the highlights of 2022:

January

We started off the year with a visit to the Banksy exhibition in London. Later in the month, we went to the Winter Light Festival in Gravesend, which I'll be blogging about in January.

February

We started off the month with a visit to the Francis Bacon: Man & Beast exhibition at the Royal Academy, London. I wrote about how I first fell in love with Francis Bacon at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. I enjoyed the London exhibition but the New York exhibition back in 2009 gave a more nuanced insight into the man himself.

I ended the month by taking my mum to the Eventim Apollo to see Shen Yun, a beautiful performance of song and dance showing China before communism. We enjoyed it so much that we'll be returning in April 2023.

March

We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary in March with dinner at Parsons Seafood Restaurant and an overnight stay at NYX Hotel London Holborn. It possibly sounds a bit subdued, but wait until you see what we did in November!

We also went to the Doctor Who: Time Fracture immersive experience, which was a lot of fun and went to Eagle Heights Wildlife Foundation which I'll tell you about next year.

April

April started off with a bang as I took my mum to see Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds at the O2. There was much excitement when we discovered that Kevin Clifton was playing the artilleryman.

April was the month that I took my friend Sarah on a 5km walk around Cobham that turned out to be a 5 mile walk. I still haven't blogged about it because I am still so embarrassed. At least we had a lovely Sunday lunch afterwards to make up for it.

We also attended the Van Gogh immersive experience that month and I finally took my mum to see the Carol King musical Beautiful which was marvellous.

May

May began with a visit to Northern Ireland where we attended a wedding at Mussenden Temple and explored the Giants Causeway.

We also saw Luke Jerram's Gaia at Rochester Cathedral in May.

June

June was a bumper month! I travelled to Barcelona to see Nick Cave and Bauhaus at Primavera Sound.

We also visited the Gunpowder Plot. Stephen's parents arrived at the end of the month and we visited Rye and Hastings.

July

July began with one of my favourite days out: a visit to the Battle of Hastings battlefield and Battle Abbey.

We also visited the Dartford Big Day Out and the church in Kent where you can see Marc Chagall stained glass windows. I previously blogged about the Dartford Vintage Car and Steam Rally and All Saints Tudeley in 2014.

August

We went to Cakes & Bubbles in August and I saw Bauhaus at Brixton Academy.

We also saw the Frida & Diego immersive experience. It was okay but made me promise myself to go to more actual museums and galleries in 2023.

September

We went to Whistle Punks Urban Axe Throwing in September and saw Arcade Fire in concert at the O2.

We went to the Bournemouth Air Festival and visited Corfe Castle and Tyneham.

Finally, we went to Loch Monzievaird for my mum's 70th birthday celebrations where I got lost on Laggan Hill

October

October was quiet. I took my mum to see Deep Purple at the O2 for her actual birthday and spoiled her with lunch at Miller & Carter on the actual day.

November

November was pretty epic because we flew to the Maldives to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. Let me tell you, choosing one photo to represent our trip was not easy but I'll be telling you all about it in January and February!

December

December has been all about finishing work for the year and completing my impossible 520 mile run / walk target for the year. I'm spending new year in Dublin and Courtown, County Wexford and will tell you all about that next year.

Wishing you all the best for a happy, healthy 2023 and I'll see you next year!

Follow me on Instagram for real-time updates on my adventures.

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