I love living in Surrey. Historic villages interspersed with pockets of verdant countryside. Houses huddled around village greens. Busy cobbled high streets with hills rolling in the background. The best of town and country. Over and over.
One of the brightest jewels in Surrey’s crown is Shere, near Guildford. Every corner is beautiful.
I last visited Polesden Lacey in Surrey a couple of years ago in the middle of Summer, when the gardens were heaving with the smell of pink and white roses and the sky was a potent Azure blue.
I went to visit The Medicine Garden in Cobham for a bit of a rest and relaxation.
Picture Credit: RHS/Helen Yates
I went to the first day of the RHS Wisley Flower Show and Mary Berry was embracing her new role as the latest RHS Ambassador by opening the show.
I went back to the Tate Modern to see a black square.
I wrote this for the Essential Surrey website – essentialsurrey.co.uk.
Our choice of make-up reveals interesting little things about us, while paradoxically covering us up. Trends in cosmetics reinforce current beauty ideals, social attitudes and economic conditions. With this truism in mind, an exhibition that explores the evolution of make-up and its shifting form and function is surely the most glamorous way to track and digest these changes.
Continue reading Glamour On The Go Exhibition
Movement was very important to artist Henri Matisse (1869-1954). His art has a particularly playful energy, and none more so than in his later works. Health problems in the early 1940s meant that his physical mobility was limited, but he would not let his creativity be held back in the same way. He created a new method of working by using cut out shapes from painted paper to produce a new form of art. The exhibition at the Tate Modern explores Matisse’s development of this technique: The Cut-Outs.
Let me take you to a very special place. A beautiful eighteenth century landscaped park in Cobham, Surrey called Painshill Park.
I fully expected to see a cabal of otters to amass in front of my camera!
I went to the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show on the Press Day – the very first day of the show.
Yes, that is Monty Don holding a hedgehog.
I am reliably informed that she was very wriggly!
Private gardens in Shere are opening their gates to the public this Sunday 29th June.