2025: The Year in Review – part 2

Posted on January 12, 2026 by johnshortlandwriter

2026 has come in with a bit of a blast quite literally for we are experiencing a blast of cold air and snow that has swept down from the Arctic. Here, in our part of the Cotswolds, the snow and ice are more of a nuisance than anything else for there is very little snow cover and the roads have been quite treacherous. The country folk of yesteryear always said that if the snow hangs around there’s more on the way – time will tell. It’s been some years since we had deep snow blocking the lanes.

*It’s been a few years since we had snow like this*

In part 1 of the review (link here), I reflected on the first six months of the year. It had been quite a successful year for me researching my family history. I’m fortunate for I can trace them back very many centuries – at the moment I’m reading a book about them in the 1400s! I also took the opportunity to finally visit the chapel (link here) where one is buried and nothing had prepared me for the splendour of it or how strangely moving the experience was. I also met with Canadian cousins (this time, living ones!) for the first time and we all commented how strong family bonds can be. That, and a prompt from you, one of my readers, made me reflect on those other great influencers in our lives, mentors.

*The Beauchamp Chapel, named after one of my ancestors, Richard Beauchamp*

In June I had written about my first pair of mentors, Dick and Lorna French who lived on a remote farm in Exmoor National Park. Their story can be found here. The following month, I wrote about Cyril and Pamela Heber Percy who I first met in my early thirties. How different they were from Lorna and Dick but how equally valuable were the life lessons they taught me! The Heber Percy’s had both been brought up by wealthy, landed parents. Cyril, who was born in 1908, had come from a background that we now associate more with Royalty: it was a house with liveried footman and a strict regime. Pamela’s family were very different for she was brought up in Ireland where the discipline was far more relaxed. Both had a deep love for nature and a huge interest in people. They, like most mentors, had the ability to make you feel very special. It was with Cyril that I first learnt to fly fish, and it was he that gave me the ability to recognise where the fox had lain and the badger pushed through a hedgerow – more of them in this link here.

It was back to Exmoor for August (link here) to explore the three churches where according to local rhyme and legend no priest would ever go to. Was it due to them being so remote or was it due to witchcraft? Or bandits? Or lepers? Whatever the reason, they are well worth visiting today for they sit in some of the most stunning countryside that you’ll find in England, and in August the hills are cloaked in a purple haze of heather flowers. One of the three churches is world famous for it was at Oare that Lorna Doone was shot as she stood at the altar on her wedding day. As with all my blog posts, there are lots of photos to demonstrate what a beautiful area I have been lucky enough to have spent so much time in since my teens.

*Oare Church on Exmoor where Lorna Doone was shot on her wedding day*

September found me writing about the chance contact by a Cheltenham art gallery asking me for help with a series of watercolours of London street scenes they had acquired. It turned out that they had been painted by yet another ancestor of mine (they have since been sold and are now in the United States). My own artistic talent is restricted (as one kind person described it) to painting with plants – I can visualise garden design and create it but I could never offer clients an artist’s impression! In the blog I explored the various connections I have to people that are skilled artists ranging from present day to those in the past. It was a fascinating task and not one I’d ever thought much about until I received the prompt from Cheltenham. To see the London paintings as well as the others I found click on the link here.

*One of the four paintings of London that are now in the USA*

It was very much back to the Cotswolds for Halloween. We live very close to the Rollright Stones, parts of which date back six thousand years – so older than Stonehenge. It has long been a place of ritual and superstition and Rollright and its surrounding villages have an equally long association with witchcraft. In 1875, a ritual murder was committed. Poor, elderly Anne Tennent was harmless enough but accused of witchcraft with brutal consequences. In my research for the blog, I came across a hand-written eye-witness report and had email correspondence with her 4xgreat-grandaughter. What I hadn’t expected to find was that a similar murder was committed very many years later although the connection to witchcraft was not disclosed until the late 1960s, so well within my lifetime. And then there are the tales of the mysterious black, headless dog being seen… When I visited the stones in October offerings had been lain upon them. Intrigued? Click on the link here to find out more.

*The mysterious Rollright Stones, over 5000 years old and a centre for witchcraft*

It had been some time since I last wrote about gardening which is, of course, my hobby turned profession. One of the constant questions I’m asked – and often a tricky one to answer – is how to screen an unwanted view. November would be the perfect month for dealing with a problem like that so in Hide that Ugly Wall I looked at the various options. In the blogpost (link here) we looked at trellis, climbing plants, and ideas for planting in front of the wall, fence or whatever else needed screening. At the end of the post there is a list of plants of all types and sizes to help with selection.

*Screening an ugly wall – in gardening, there is a solution to every problem!*

So the year came to an end with reflection upon what had been and 2026 begins a new year of blogging. As Life in the English Cotswolds enters its seventeenth year all that is left is for me to thank you all for helping to make it such a success. When I began in 2009 it was to be a short-lived experiment in combining text with images. I never anticipated that it would be read let alone develop into this! Now, I hear from people all over the world and have even met a few of you. It has received awards and featured in national newspapers, and it led to my being involved in setting up a literary festival. It was through this that I was approached to write my book on gardening, Why Can’t My Garden Look Like That? Who would have thought it?!

*Book signing – the publishing contract came as a direct result of blogging*

With every good wish for a happy, healthy and peaceful 2026. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what adventures arise and sharing them here. If you have any thoughts on topics, ask questions or just fancy a natter I can be contacted through the Get in Touch tab at the top of the page.

2025: The Year in Review – part 1

Posted on December 28, 2025 by johnshortlandwriter

So another year has gone by and I find that one of the benefits of ageing (yes, there are some!) is being aware that time is running out. I say it is a benefit for I don’t find the thought at all depressing, instead it gives an urgency to achieve what I can whilst I can. There is so much more to do, to see and to learn in what time is left. It is possible that I may live to be a hundred for many of my family have lived well-into their nineties and beyond but even allowing for that, it still doesn’t give me too many years to waste.

One of my ancestors, Richard Beauchamp died at the age of 57, which although not a great age by modern standards probably wasn’t too bad for someone dying in 1439. He had a busy and well-documented life but perhaps his biggest achievement was carried out after his death. In his will he left various bequests, the largest portion to the Collegiate Church of St Mary in the town of Warwick for the building of a chapel. Upon its completion his body was transferred there to lie beneath his splendid gilt-bronze effigy. The effigy, along with the chapel’s medieval stained glass and other decorations are considered to be the finest in Europe. In March, I finally visited the tomb where both he and his parents lie, a remarkably emotional moment perhaps because nothing had prepared me for the chapel’s magnificence. To judge for yourself, click on the link here which will take you to numerous photographs as well as the story of my ancestral grandparent’s lives.

*Richard Beauchamp, my ancestral grandfather lying in the splendour of the chapel he commissioned for the benefit of his soul*

*detail of the tomb of Richard Beauchamp dating from the 1400s*

Spring arrives late in our part of the Cotswolds for the secret valley, although very beautiful, nestles in a ‘frost hollow’. As a result, the bluebells that flower at the foot of the ancient hedgerow than borders our lane are always a couple of weeks later than in many other places. However, when they do bloom, the intensity of their colour never fails to delight. Pretty as they are, they are nothing compared to the bluebell woods of the Cotswolds and the Chilterns, the range of chalk hills where I was raised and lived until I moved here twenty-five years ago. In May, when the bluebells had reached their peak of flowering, I wrote a blog In Praise of Bluebells. Apart from photos of the bluebell woods (including one of me as a much younger man with my two Scottish Deerhounds), I explored the bluebell in history and poetry, link here.

*the magnificence of a bluebell wood in May*

*Occasionally, a white or even a pink bluebell appears*

In June, on my Facebook page, I had a casual discussion with a follower about mentors and mentoring. She asked me if I’d ever had any mentors and my answer was ‘yes’: two couples, both of whom came from very different backgrounds to one another as well as my own. She wanted to know more and so I promised to write a blog about them, a post which would honour their contribution to my life and demonstrate the great enrichment such mentors can give. Mentors – part 1 (link here) tells of my chance meeting at the age of sixteen with Dick and Lorna French, who farmed on Exmoor, a National Park in England’s West Country. The farm is very isolated, and the post explores how I ended up living with them after turning up one day unannounced on their doorstep. Regular visitors to my blog or Facebook/Instagram pages will know what a love they imparted on me for this wild and rugged landscape, a place I still visit very frequently. The blog has numerous photos including some of me from early childhood to that gangly sixteen-year-old that Lorna and Dick first knew.

*My first mentors*: *Dick & Lorna French of Brendon Barton, Exmoor*

*Exmoor National Park: Aged 16, I suddenly found myself living and working in remote countryside*

Find out about my other pair of mentors, Cyril and Pamela Heber Percy, who came from privileged upper-class families in 2025: Part Two (yet to be written but coming shortly!). The blog will also explore what happened in the last few months of 2025

In Praise of Bluebells

Posted on May 7, 2025 by johnshortlandwriter

Can there be a more delightful spot to linger than a bluebell wood in spring? The intensity of their colour when seen growing in their tens of thousands would hurt the eyes if not offset by the citrus green of the beech trees they favour growing under. With early morning sunlight filtering through the branches to strike the woodland floor below, both leaves of beech and ‘bell shimmer and sparkle in the clear light. As the forest warms the bluebells release their scent but not the heavy, redolent perfume that one might expect. Instead, a fragrance so soft and gentle that for a moment it seems to come from elsewhere; all too quickly it melts away, dispersed by the increasing heat.

Bluebells are one of the key indicator plants of ancient woodland, a term that refers to woodland that pre-dates AD1600, for their bulbs prefer to remain undisturbed where they can slowly establish huge colonies. Here, in the secret valley where they grow in hedge banks, they can be used to trace the line of an equally ancient drove road for it is thought that the hedgerows and trees that line it are remnants of Wychwood Forest. Over centuries, the boundaries of the Forest have shrunk as fields were created and the trees cleared for arable land or pasture. By leaving the field edges untouched the early farmers saved themselves both time and labour and in doing so preserved the bluebells that give me so much pleasure each spring. The drove road – primarily used for herding livestock long distances to market – passes our little stone-built cottage before diverting across open country. It is still used as a public right of way.

*Bluebells line the old drove road that passes my house*

Unsurprisingly for a plant that has been around from time immemorial, the bluebell has numerous regional names – Common Bluebell, English Bluebell, Fairy Bell, Wild Hyacinth to name a few. Perhaps the best has to be Granfer Giggles. In Scotland they are known as harebells although to an Englishman harebell would be a completely different plant that grows later in the summer when the bluebells have long ended. Even the Latin name which is supposed to prevent confusion has changed over time – it is now known as Hyacinthoides non-scripta. I much prefer the earlier name of Endymion non-sciptus, it sounds more attractive as well as having a romantic Greek legend attached to it. Illegal to dig up plants from the wild, bluebells are sometimes offered for sale from cultivated stock under either of these names.

*Occasionally you may find a white, or even a pink bluebell*

For such a well-loved plant – it has been voted England’s unofficial national flower – bluebells do not seem to feature much in poetry. They are frequently mentioned by name but no-one, as far as I can tell, seems to have written poems specifically about the plant. Perhaps it is because they are such a common sight and have none of the delicacy of the wild rose, the scent of the honeysuckle or the diminuity of wild thyme. Shakespeare, who seems to have written about absolutely everything (including thyme), only mentions it once: “the azur’d harebell” in Cymbeline. The Brontë sisters both wrote of bluebells but I’m not sure they weren’t describing later flowering harebells. Emily’s description “waves in summer air”, and Ann talks of a single flower and of its trembling. Bluebells are quite a stiff flower that don’t wave or tremble that readily whereas Campanula harebells fit the description nicely. I can’t recall even my beloved Richard Jefferies, the Victorian naturalist, waxing lyrical over them as he did over so many other things. I may be wrong about this for I can hardly call myself a Jefferies’ scholar, more an enthusiast. However, Cicely Mary Baker created a delightful illustration of the flower in her set of Flower Fairies published in 1923 where she describes the bluebell as the king of flowers.

*The less-common Harebell – Campanula rotundifolia*
*It flowers later in the summer and in more open places*

It is to the Georgians that I have turned to illustrate our love of bluebells for I have found frequent references to them in old newspapers and periodicals not just in published poetry but also in their fashions. This description of the sumptuous gown worn by the Princess of Wales when attending the King’s Birthday in 1795 is worth reproducing here: “A gown of superb, embroidered crepe imitating the rays of the sun and intertwined with embroidered white lilies. Over which a cape of Venetian net embroidered with laurels and Diana’s (presumably the Goddess) crescent”. Finally, there was another over-cape “embroidered with bluebells (yes!) and held in place by rich cords and tassels”. As if this wasn’t splendid enough there was “a long train of silver gauze bordered in purple and silver”. Having spent twenty years in the world of fashion (before I switched careers to horticulture) this has sent me into overdrive! Sadly, I haven’t found any illustrations for this ensemble but I do have photos of the ‘draft’ for equally exquisite embroidery designed by Norman Hartnell for a robe for Queen Elizabeth II.

*Embroidery design by Norman Hartnell for Queen Elizabeth II*

Even earlier, in 1786, Mrs Charlotte Smith was publishing her sonnets. A remarkable woman for the age, she left an unhappy and violent marriage and campaigned for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery. She wrote fiction and poetry to financially support herself and her children. This sonnet reminds me so much of my youth where I roamed the bluebell beechwoods of the Chiltern Hills, for which they are renowned.

“Ah, Hills belov’d! where once a happy child,
Your beechen shades, your turf, your flowers among,
I wove your bluebells into garlands wild,
And woke your echoes with my artless song.
Ah! Hills, belov’d! your turf, your flowers remain;
But can they peace to this fad’ breast restore?
For one poor moment soothe the sense of pain,
And teach a breaking heart to throb no more?

I’m glad to say that my heart is no longer breaking so perhaps the bluebells worked their magic!

*A very old photo (hence the strange colour!) of me and my two deerhounds in a Chilterns beechwood at bluebell time*

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A Secret Garden

Posted on February 21, 2019 by johnshortlandwriter

I have noticed that even those that don’t show the slightest interest in things horticultural love exploring walled gardens, especially if they are overgrown and forgotten. Perhaps it stirs memories of the children’s novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett published in 1911 in which she shows that when something unloved is cherished and cared for it can become beautiful and healthy, be it a plant or the human spirit.

Houghton_AC85_B9345_911s_-_Secret_Garden,_1911_-_cover

Photo Credit: AC85 B9345 911s, Houghton Library, Harvard University

I have been fortunate over the years in caring for a number of walled gardens in different stages of development yet, regardless of their state, there is something magical in placing the key in the lock and pushing open the door – as nasty, little Mary Lennox discovered in the novel. As she returned the garden to its former glory so, she too, grew into a loving and loveable child.

Garden Border (4) watermark

Perhaps even more so than the plants and trees within, the beauty of a walled garden comes from the walls themselves. The brickwork over time has mellowed and seems to release the warmth of a hundred or more summers, even on the greyest of days. Search the walls and they reveal secrets – a date scratched into a stone, old lead labels revealing the varieties of long-disappeared fruit trees or, occasionally, the name of a much-loved pet buried at its feet.

The walls in this deserted garden date back to the late 17th/early 18th centuries

Recorded for posterity: the trees may have disappeared but the record of the varieties remain

One of the most rewarding to explore yet emptiest of walled gardens has to be that of Dunmore Park. The house no longer stands but the garden walls remain crowned by that most eccentric of British garden room follies, the Pineapple. Here the walls are hollow, fires were lit at its feet and the walls warmed to promote early growth. Sliding stone blocks could be opened to release the smoke which, filling the garden at night helped to keep frosts at bay. Clever, those early gardeners.

The Pineapple (11) watermark The Pineapple (31) watermark The Pineapple (34) watermark

Walled gardens when not open to visitors are more often a place of silence, the only sound to accompany the gardener is that of birdsong and the hum of insects. It can be a place where your mind can be free from the everyday cares of the outside world. It can also be a place where your design ideas can run riot either in your head or, if lucky enough, in reality. The images below show before and after photos of a border I created many years ago, the idea for the colour palette coming from an Imari plate belonging to the owner of the garden. The border is living proof of an imagination run riot!

Blue & White Border - before watermark Imari Plate watermark.jpg Blue & White Border - after watermark

Far from the Madd(en)ing Crowd

Posted on February 11, 2018 by johnshortlandwriter

The title of this blog is actually rather a misnomer for the picturesque village of East Hendred is, in reality, quite close to both London and Oxford. Nestling at the foot of the Berkshire Downs, its charm and ancient houses give it the appearance of a place far from civilisation and today’s frenetic pace of life.

East Hendred (13) copyright

East Hendred (9) copyright

A traditional English village centres around the ‘big house,’ the pub and the church and East Hendred can boast that its manor has been owned by the same family, the Eystons, for over six hundred years. It has three pubs thereby bucking the trend in recent years of the many pub closures elsewhere that often sees the social heart of a community destroyed. East Hendred (18) copyright

East Hendred (2) copyright

There has been a village shop for very many years for a book published in 1922 (English Country Life & Work by Ernest C. Pulbrook) shows it in a photograph. Today, the shop is still “thriving and well-accustomed” although it is doubtful if it now sells the wooden hay rakes that are lined up outside on the early photo! The building has remained unchanged over the years although the village changed allegiance in 1974 and is now in the county of Oxfordshire. The shop is easily recognisable in my photograph as being at the far end of the row. East Hendred (1) copyright

East Hendred 1(a)

The church, dedicated to St Augustine of Canterbury, dates from the late twelfth century although its tower is later, built around 1450. East Hendred (17) copyright

East Hendred (21) copyright

At the other end of the village is the former Chapel of Jesus of Bethlehem also built around 1450 by Carthusian monks. Now known as Champs Chapel, it houses a small museum dedicated to the history of the village. It is opened and maintained by volunteers.

East Hendred (6) copyright

Despite its historic past, the parish of East Hendred which is crossed by the ancient Ridgeway path (now a National Trail) is also firmly fixed in the modern day for it also houses the Harwell Science and Innovation Centre where the Diamond Syncrotron Facility is located.