This is a bonus post to celebrate the fact that it’s now 5 years to the day that I started this blog,  to let you know how its been doing in 2018, and to give you the chance to test your memory with the annual quiz.

Readership  has continued to rise: about 73,000 hits in 2018 compared with 46,000 hits last year,  37,000 in 2016,   25,000 in 2015 and about 7000 in 2014.

There are now 377 signed up subscribers, and this is the 256th post which means I’ve probably written about half a million words of wisdom.  [And with apologies for the terrible captions today].

 

The biggest disappointment is that moving the blog to a new home on the Gardens Trust website and away from Parks and Gardens UK in May was accompanied   by a technical disaster of my own making so the intended automatic transfer from the old to new web address didn’t work.  This  has meant that a sharp drop – aound 50% – in the number of visitors on a daily basis.   Overall there were around 23,000 compared with 27,000 last year,  21,000 in 2016, 10,200 in 2015 and under 3,000 in 2014

Since the blog started there have been a grand total of about 189,000 views from 84,000 visitors.

 

In terms of popularity, there is a much wider spread than has previously been the case. Carters Tested Seeds  has topped the list with 935 viewings.   Next comes  Nun Appleton with 823  and Night Soil with 803. The various posts on  Humphry Repton also attracted a lot of attention with around 600 each.

Other regualr favourites have incuded  Harry Wheatcroft, The Wheelbarrow,   A Pineapple & Mr Rose,  Stumperies,  Beatrice Parsons.  and from this year posts on Mary Delany.

Thank you  for the nice comments & for telling your friends about the blog….

And now … just what you’ve all been waiting for – the annual quiz to test your powers of recall from posts over the course of the year.  Answers at the end.

Happy New Year!

As usual there are 50 questions…

WHO IS THIS?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHERE’S THIS ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 WHAT IS THIS?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phew…. almost there!

1. Who sold himself best in 2018?
2. What stood on the whatnot by the ‘atstand in the ‘all?
3. What did John Baptist Jackson do for a living?
4. What were the Earl of Peterborough and Lady Anne up to in the shrubbery?
5. Who is to blame for our knotty problem?
6. Who put Mount Parnassus and a Fruit Stall on their head?
7. What is named after a Moravian missionary to the Philippines?
8. Where can you see the Earl of Morley’s white elephant ?
9. Who was Faustina Gwynne?
10. Who thought “the journey to London presents now no terrors to the country squire…”
11. What is the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion?
12. Which archbishop was ” agreeably terrified with something like the rubbish of creation…”
13. Which nurseryman links Thomas Jefferson with Catherine the Great?
14. Where can you find Poppyland?
15. What would have surprised you at the bottom of the garden at Marybone House?
16. Where this summer could you have found “fairground-freaky, upscaled giants”?
17. Who “invented a new way of imitating flowers”?
18. Which flower was “worth a journey of a thousand miles.”
19. What is pollinated by low flying gnats?
20. Where could you have found Aislabie’s ting?
    

    English nurserymen unercut again!

 

 

ANSWERS!

Click on the links to go to the relevant blog…

Who’s this?

1. A gardener from William Britain’s minaiture garden range
2. Mary Delany
3. Arthur Hellyer
4. Victoria Woodhull Martin
5. John Honeysuckle
6. St Fiacre
7. Ada Salter
8. Sybil Sassoon, Marchioness of Cholmondley
9. John Adey Repton
10. William Caparne

Where’s this?

1. Abbotsbury
2. The Poultry Pyramid, Tong Castle
3. Cothele
4. Rousham
5. Beaudesert
6. Inside James Turrell’s Skyspace at Houghton
7. Chinese Bridge and pavilion, Shugborough
8. Tintern Abbey
9. Charlton Park, Nr Cheltenham
10. Bolsover Castle

What’s this?

1. The Echo hedge in the Tuileries Gardens
2. The perfect shape for pansy flowers  as decreed by George Glenny
3. Aspidistra flowers
4. One of the replacement dragons from the pagoda at Kew
5. Flowers of the Glastonbury Thorn
6. A stomacher designed by Mary Delany
7. Chinese wallpapr from Broughton Castle
8. The Flaming Fountain designed by  Jeppe at Houghton
9. A leaf of Victoria amazonica
10. An orchard in a box

Other Questions

1. Humphry Repton
2. Graceie Field’s aspidistra
3. He designed and printed wallpaper
4. Too rude to describe here but you can read the local papers account on that post!
5. Philip van Siebold, later aided and abetted by Willaim Robnson & Gertrude Jekyll amongst many others
6. Matthias and Mary Darley
7. Camellias – named after Kamel
8. Saltram
9. She was a cow at Rousham
10. Humphry Repton
11. A welsh antiquarian/historical society founded in 1751
12. Thomas Herring, Bishop of Bangor and later Archbishop of both York and Cantertbury
13. John Fraser
14. North Norfolk, on the coast around Cromer
15. A Chinese Pagoda
16. Damien Hirst’s installations at Houghton
17. Mary Delany
18. Victoria amazonica
19. Aspidistra
20. On a hilltop overlooking Studley Royal/Fountains Abbey