The Minchenden Oak

I’ve still not been getting out much but on New Year’s Day I managed to get 5 miles from home to visit the Minchenden Oak. I didn’t get such a great welcome, but thankfully I was not denied access. It looked like it was meant to be closed, but its makeshift gate was on the ground when I arrived. This is the only entrance to the Minchenden Oak Garden, a small walled garden created in 1934 to safeguard the ancient Minchenden Oak. Continue reading “The Minchenden Oak”

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Hardy Ash?

Last Sunday I went back to St Pancras Old Church for the first time since April (A Walk From King’s Cross) to see how the Hardy Tree was getting on. It is not a particularly grand tree, nor is it ancient but it is probably London’s most significant ash tree. With all the hysteria in the press I wondered if I would find signs here of ash dieback. Is this tree able to withstand the coming plague or is it doomed and this site to become a memorial to fraxinus excelsior? Continue reading “Hardy Ash?”

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A Walk From King’s Cross (With Labels)

King’s Cross station has a new concourse, enclosed by a beautiful, sculptural roof which grows from a steel trunk and spreads into a tree-like canopy of intersecting branches. They meet the ground along the semi-circular perimeter, which is a continuation of the arc of the Great Northern Hotel, which was in turn shaped by the curve around a bend of the River Fleet. Continue reading “A Walk From King’s Cross (With Labels)”

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