Hidcote; an appreciation

‘Inventive’

‘Influential’

‘One of the great Arts and Crafts gardens in England’

‘A series of outdoor 'rooms'.

These are just a few of the words used to describe the garden at Hidcote, in the Cotswolds.  There is little point in me telling you all the background as you can find some of it here. Needless to say it is a garden that many people have heard of, thousands visit every year & it has been one I have been wanting to visit for some time. A week ago I had the opportunity during a short break in Stow-on-the-Wold.

The view as you step out of the door; vista alert

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Some more vistas

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The area near the house is dominated by a large cedar tree.

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Paths to look down, viewpoints & holes in hedges.

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And a few more of those vistas

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A wide open space spoiled, in my view, by the tree at the end. A more elegant one might have improved it.

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The red border was still looking good

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Some favourite bits!

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So, what did I think?

Initially I thought all the different views & vistas were fabulous; looking down little paths to a different area with something interesting to see at the end, glimpses through gaps in hedges but after a while I began to tire of being ‘encouraged’ where to look & would have liked the relief of a wide open space where I could just look around in my own way. I also felt rather claustrophobic quite close to the house; the hedges were very high  & the ‘rooms’ were fairly small. Added to this was the large cedar tree & lots of tall plants coming into autumn & looking rather sad & floppy. I wondered if the hedges were supposed to be this high.

I think my view of the garden may well have been coloured a little by the season: the ‘wow’ factor of some of the flower beds was missing, but then a good garden should hopefully be one for all seasons. The advantage of the time was few visitors of course.  I really enjoyed my visit, loved many parts of it & could see how the garden had been very influential but personally would have enjoyed a little more freedom to view.

The daisies are a moving & so are the peas.

Picture this; early afternoon, a gloriously sunny day, you have enjoyed an excellent glass of Youngs bitter, walked across a village green where a late summer game of cricket is being played & suddenly come across what looks like a stray from a classy fancy dress party.

This weekend was Open House London. You know the one, where lots of buildings not normally open to the public throw open their doors & positively welcome us in with open arms. I have visited a few buildings over the past few years, & not visited even more, but the one I enjoyed most & visited again this weekend was the Herbarium at Kew Gardens. A little history of the herbarium can be found here. 

I find the whole place fascinating & would happily spend hours there. We started off in the original building where not only is a sense of history engendered by the dark wood panels & portraits & busts of Hooker, Bentham & Broomfield, but actual history is right there in front of you. We were looking at plant specimens brought back from the Livingstone expedition. Specimens are collected & sent to Kew in an almost identical fashion to the way all those plant hunters did many many years ago; between newspapers in a cardboard folder. The dried specimens are still glued onto paper & stored in the same way.

In parallel to this living botanical history some new-fangled processes & procedures have to be employed too. Now, in order to protect the specimens from pest damage, not being allowed to inject the plant material with poison, they all have to be frozen & the storage of some material is in the recently opened new building at the herbarium, where the temperature can be more strictly maintained.

Currently the Asteraceae & Fabaceae families are being transferred to the new building, a process will take about a year to complete.

I think I am really a frustrated botanist. I loved biology at school & was frustrated not to be able to study it at A level. When studying for the RHS General Certificate & Diploma I suddenly found myself enjoying the botany bits enormously. Bit late for a career change!

Sadly we came to the end of a wonderful afternoon far to soon.

In praise of……

…. a stalwart little workhorse of a plant, Nemesia ‘Wisley Vanilla’.

I bought 6 of these in early summer to go in a window box & hanging basket,  mainly as a long flowering plant with a colour & shape contrast to Begonia ‘Something or other’. As I couldn’t be bothered to make & maintain the hanging basket 3 plants got shoved in a pot & have sat on the table outside in the garden ever since.

They certainly have flowered their socks off all summer but it took a while for their other major attribute  to penetrate my consciousness, or should that be my nasal passages! I always have pots of lilies on the decking every summer, filling the outside & inside with their very heady & heavenly scent so it was some while before I realised that the vanilla of the Nemesia in fact referred to the perfume rather than the colour. So in between & particularly after the lilies had finished pushing themselves forward like over-dressed strumpets the decking area has been delicately perfumed with the lovely aroma of sweet vanilla.

18 July (note the ‘professional’ design drawing of the proverbial Chelsea bed)

19 July window box performance

2 August (you can just see one of those lary lilies)

15 September

All this with very little in the way of trimming or cutting back. Wisley Vanilla will be back……………..

Of Cabbages & Kings

Oh yes, & cakes of course.

Everyone who IS anyone has already blogged about the trip to Ssssshhhhh, you know where. Sorry dear reader but I don’t really care. I thought I should trail my blog along several days after the event & reveal my experience & thoughts on the much hyped & discussed bloggers & tweeters trip last week to H***g****, the country pad of HRH the Prince of Wales .

Firstly the cabbages; well they were meant to be cabbages but many  think they looked rather lettuce like… or even green roses. What did? The decorations on top of the little cakes made to celebrate this great event. Peculiarly I seem to have become known for making cakes; a heavy weight of responsibility to bear for such a naturally lazy trollop. I had just decided that I could manage enough cakes for a group event when certain shy & retiring person started putting in orders on Twitter for a personalised cake. Bloody cheek. Despite this on-line bullying I faltered only briefly &  cakes were made & decorated with cabbages in recognition of a conversation on Twitter about how cakes are essential for happy garden viewing. A personalised version was produced at the last minute – hence the rather wobbly writing (or perhaps it was the several medicinal G&Ts)

I must also mention the wonderful chauffeuring of the inestimable Rob Stacewicz. As a fellow SW Londoner what else could we do but travel to Tetbury together & I was not turning down a offer to be driven. It was an uneventful journey despite a loop playing of Duran Duran including a sing-along ‘My name is Rio & I perch upon your hand’, poor jokes, coded messages as the car came to an unscheduled halt………

Anyway, the garden. Sadly, but I suppose understandably there were no photos allowed so no illustrations. Much chatter went on during the guided tour but we were able to see a garden of many different parts, some of which worked & some of which didn’t & which did not really fit together as a coherent whole. There was also no real sense of the garden fitting into the landscape or views which took in much of the outside; it was all very inward looking other than perhaps at the front of the house. Could that partly be a result of the landscape itself or a future king needing to feel protected & safe?  I quite liked some of the quirkiness such as the use of stone carvings in a stone wall, but in places it became a little over quirky.  

Others have written much more eloquently about the day here, here, here & here. I enjoyed it enormously; meeting lots of lovely & interesting people & seeing the garden was a delight. I look forward to other such trips!

Prairie Sunday

The Sussex Prairie garden has been on my computer list of ‘favourites’ for ages; I don’t remember where I got the link from in the first place, it just looked a really lovely garden to visit. On Sunday we made the trip, meeting up with Arabella Sock & the bedsock.

So what was it like you ask. Stunning.

I suppose in concept the garden is quite simple; large sweeps & drifts of perennial planting, each variety in very generous dollops. The site is surrounded by trees with glimpses of the South Downs in the gaps. What is lovely is that you can walk in amongst the planting on lots of pathways & really appreciate the contrast of textures & colours, movement & variety. Sometimes the planting is over your head so you almost get lost amongst it. There are lots of seats so you can just sit & contemplate, some in amongst the planting, some on the edge. The place was awash with bees & butterflies & dragonflies around the pond areas.

There were some sculptures in the garden too, some of which worked well in my view,

others not so well

Despite the look of the perennials the garden is very new & the hedging has a way to go before it has the necessary impact but it a glorious way to spend a few hours. There is a terrace where you can sit with a coffee & a delicious slice of cake &  chat about the experience. I am aiming to return for the October opening when the grasses will be at their best. Oh yes, & apparently there is an excellent pub close by.  

 

It is probably no surprise that the creators of the garden are working with Piet Oudolf. If you are interested the Prairie Garden has been reviewed here, here & here.