Hit me with your best shot

An early-morning dog walk through the woods sees John Lewis-Stempel coming face to face–or skin to spider silk–with the industrious magic of a September dawn

When I was a child, we had a tortoise called Winnie who had belonged to my father when he was a boy in the 1950s. He called his pet Winston after Churchill, but this name had to be changed when he dis

The sixtieth anniversary ‘heritage’ edition of Ariel

I WAS a nightmare in the early days of my marriage, I admit it. I’d met Johnny on a skiing holiday in Courchevel, where we’d both gone with groups of chums. Johnny was the most daring of us and the be

Bathed in burnished hues, a Hertfordshire cottage haven is a marriage of formal and wild planting

The garden has given me much joy this year, though it’s not been without its challenges! Especially the weather, with so little rain for long periods. But those two months of drought made little impac