A day visit to south London was in order this week to catch up with the Tirzah Garwood exhibition in its last month at Dulwich Picture Gallery, somewhere we had never before been to. Upon arrival at West Dulwich station, it was straight across the road into Stephanie’s café for coffee and a cake in charming, quirky surroundings.

The exhibition was the centrepiece of our afternoon, and what an excellent one it was! Tirzah Garwood was the (shamefully) lesser-known spouse to Eric Ravilious, and had the knack of capturing dream-like tableaux in a naïve style in a range of media, including remarkably detailed wood engravings, as well as simply beautiful marbled papers (my favourites!).

But either side of this of course we were out and about, in the Picture Gallery garden, and in the parks either side. In fact, although Dulwich Park is the famous one, it was Belair Park that interested us most, a little less manicured and formulaic. Nevertheless, Dulwich Park had some impressive ornamental plantings, with Kolkwitzia especially beautiful and scenting the air.

Wildlife-wise though, there was only the Box Moth caterpillars demolishing the Box bushes, and of course the ever-present Rose-ringed Parakeets and Grey Squirrels, testament to the multicultural diversity of the city! The same theme was apparent throughout our day…

Belair Park had lots more to offer: views to central London; dead wood, harbouring all sorts of boring beetles no doubt; and a pond with basking Pond Slider terrapins, kindly pointed out by a friendly dog walker. These seem to be the Yellow-bellied Slider, a less frequent introduction from the USA it seems than the Red-eared subspecies.

In the lovely warm sunshine, welcome after days of cool northerlies, insects were out a-basking, especially hoverflies and Dock Bugs, but also our first Dryophilocoris flavoquadrimaculatus (bug) and Nematopogon swammerdamella (micromoth) of the summer.

And spiders too: a Xysticus crabbie just waiting, and Cucumber Spiders hanging around, in one case with some success…

Many of the Oak trees were bedecked with huge Oak Apple galls, larger and more numerous wherever we have been than ever this year it feels; Elm leaves had mite galls; and Horse-chestnuts in both flamboyant fresh flower and producing hordes of minimorsels for the birds – Horse-chestnut Leaf-miner moths.

And a surprising plant in one of the damp sedgy low ways, was Buttonweed, a native of South Africa that is sometimes naturalized in such areas, although especially in coastal spots. In parts of southern Europe it now dominates whole swathes of coastlands, the only place I have seen it previously.

In the Gallery garden, there were some lovely trees, including a remarkably sculptural Tulip-tree, perhaps the inspiration for one of the actual sculptures?

Basking insects were also of a feature of this garden, especially lots of ladybirds, including the declining Two-spotted alongside its potential nemesis, the Harlequin (although the numbers of Rose Aphids would seem to be a much more viable food resource).

Viburnum beetle larvae munched away on the Viburnum leaves, creating a latticework that speaks volumes about the positive ecological management of the garden…no pesticides and poisons here!

There was Closterotomus trivialis, a plant bug new to Britain (from the Mediterranean) since 2009, a nymph Toad Bug with its distinctive rear-end brush of bristles, and a gall on the leaves of North American Red Oak. This is a sign of infection by the fungus Taphrina caerulescens, a gall that is shown in only thirty or so places on the National Biodiversity Network map (and not at Dulwich), although as so often this probably reflects under-recording rather than rarity.

And finally it was just up the road to round off the day with a good meal at the Crown & Greyhound, a historic 18th century hostelry that apparently once was the was the beating heart of the Dulwich literary and poetic world: drinking in the footsteps of Charles Dickens, Laurie Lee and Ivor Cutler, under the magnificently ornate ceiling!