A dog’s dinner or a curate’s egg?

MrB has had the joy of commuting to Slough for the past few months; he started off training it but reverted to the more reliable motor vehicle. During his many ‘I must find the best route’ diversions he ‘discovered’ Chiswick House & gardens which we recently decided to explore.

The house & grounds have had a chequered history. The house, a palladian villa, was completed in 1729 having been designed by the then Lord Burlington & never intended as a private residence but as a showcase. The gardens were designed by William Kent & began the ‘English Landscape Movement’. The house was home to various members of the Burlington family until the late 1800’s when it fell into decline being used as a mental institution at one point. The house was sold to Middlesex Council in 1929 & became a fire station! The gardens are currently in the care of the LB Hounslow & the house is in the guardianship of English Heritage. In order to unify the management of the site the Chiswick House and Gardens Trust was set up & took over management in 2010. There has been a major restoration project carried out on the grounds so what is the result?

It is a fine house & there is still much of the statuary & other physical features around the gardens. The latter have obviously had much money spent on them recently to restore many of the original features, some of which look superb.

I know that newly planted shrubs will always look sparse until they have matured a little. But whilst some protection may be necessary too much & poorly maintained just makes the place look a mess.

 

 

 

There were lots of ‘municipal’ fences, many of which were there to provide dog free areas for families to use. Ugly but extremely important in a park used incredibly heavily by dog owners….

 

…although the situation was extremely well regulated…

 

The other niggles were the renovated glass-house was all closed up & orange plastic fenced off for no apparent reason, a walled area was locked with no indication of what it was or why it was shut, the beautifully shaped flower beds were just sitting empty.  

So all in all I would say that, just like this blog, the gardens were a total mish-mash, trying to re-create what was obviously a very important garden to something of its former glory whilst having to cope with dogs, children & dogs. There is no doubt it is an enormously valuable & popular local resource but if you are looking to bask in the history of the place, beware. It will improve as planting matures but I think the conflict between its historical importance & current usage will always result in a less than satisfactory situation.

This was no tiptoe through the tulips…

……more of a dive into the daffodils.

* What was the ‘this’ you ask? It was a Big Day Out with the inimitable Arabella Sock**, yes, she of the 100% cashmere loveliness. So we took a walk in the park, Nymans gardens to be exact which is approximately half way between our respective abodes.

We could not have asked for better weather; the sun shone strongly,  the sky was blue & spring was springing up everywhere.

    I have never seen so many fritillaries before; an indication of it being just the perfect place for them. Photos can not do the mass of them any justice. There were several ancient wisteria preparing to burst into flower & an interesting use of field beans in the bare beds which were waiting to be planted up with summer flowering plants.

It is difficult to be critical about a garden on such a gloriously sunny spring day when so much is bursting into life & the birds are singing their socks off so I abandoned any small critical faculties I possess, didn’t really think about it & just enjoyed the day.

*No animal was hurt in the taking of this photo & I have the written permission of the body in question.

** I am sure that Ms Sock will have already posted an erudite & witty entry on her blog by the time I get this finished

I’ve made my Chelsea bed so now…….

Last July I wrote about my delusions of grandeur as I attempted to translate some Chelsea box clouds into my own little patch of SW19. I had only got as far as planting the box balls & all that remained of the original planting was a rose vaguely positioned towards the middle of the bed & a runty clump of sedum towards the back.

It was all planted up in the early autumn & I tried oh so hard to keep the planting fairly simple & limited. Here are some spring views taken on different days towards the end of March.

Councilspeak

We have an allotment, well 2 in fact. We have had them for quite a few years now & they are tended assiduously by the very dear MrB with, sadly, very little input from me. The burden of guilt is heavy.

The site has worked well for years; we have water in dip tanks & taps, the council cut the main grass paths & take the rubbish away & every now & then heaps of stable manure are delivered.

The site has 2 entrances, one for vehicles is on a main road & near a large junction & consequently not easy to drive into. The second, pedestrian entrance gives access to a large cemetery. A number of allotment holders, us included drive through the cemetery & park close to that gate. This has been going on for many years.

2 recent developments;

• The council want to hand the management of the site over to the allotment holders; part of its money saving measures. At present consultation is minimal; we don’t have an allotment association or any fancy stuff like that. I understand the ‘threat’ is that rents will double if the council cuntinue the management of the site.
• They are going to close the gate from the cemetery.

All this is very interesting & no doubt very boring for you dear reader, but what has really made me laugh about the whole thing is the language of the council member of staff with whom MrB has been corresponding. I have been close to hysterics over his mangling of the English language:

  “Furthermore, we are not satisfied that all use of the gate in question is absolutely necessary and are concerned that, increasingly, vehicles are driving through the cemetery that are not on business that is directly related to it. In other words, some are simply using it because it is there and they are not being challenged.”

“I am sure that you will be aware of the Council's grave funding problems”

“In the long term our priority is the security of the cemetery and the future cemetery gate closing arrangements will not necessarily be overly accommodating to allotment holders who remain on site late into the evening and so using the main and proper allotment gate will be a good habit for tenants to adopt henceforth.”

Why use 1 word when at least 10 will do! Was the ‘grave funding’ a joke? Probably not as I suspect he has had a sense of humour by-pass!

Capability Brown swings…..

….and slides and has a climbing frame.

I am talking about my local park here, just a couple of streets away, loved by many local & not so local families for its play areas, bowling green, lake, Sunday football, athletics track, wooded area, tennis courts, cafe & perhaps not so loved when it is used for car parking during Wimbledon fortnight. It is used by many different groups of people all year & although the planting & landscaping are nothing to write home about it is green & a fantastic leisure facility.

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I frequently walk through the park to work & took the photos last year 

So dear reader, where does Capability Brown fit into this I can hear you shouting ? I hope you are still there? I can’t keep talking to myself now can I?

Well, a history lesson here. The original park comprised the grounds of Wimbledon Park House, the seat of the manor of Wimbledon. A number of different owners had enlarged the park & by the 19th century it was at its largest extent, and one of the homes of the Earls Spencer, lords of the manor.

It was the 1st Earl Spencer, was only 12 years old when he inherited the title, who carried out many ‘good works’ toward Wimbledon Park. And it was he who  commissioned Capability Brown in 1765 to turn the Wimbledon Park valley from being semi-marshland into a grassy parkland populated by oaks with its main feature being a sizable lake by constructing a dam across a brook that flows from near Wimbledon Common down to the River Wandle.

In 1846, the 4th Earl Spencer sold the estate and house to John Augustus Beaumont a property developer who laid out new roads and sold plots of land for house building.  Development of the area continued throughout the second half of the 19th century, gradually nibbling away at the parkland resulting in the park as it is today with it’s adjacent area of housing, also known as Wimbledon Park.

The modern park was bought by the Borough of Wimbledon just before the First World War and is now the only remnant of that former, larger park.

Just beside the lake there has always been a sad bit of a waterfall, a remnant of the original design but never working.This is what it looked like after a clean-up.

Recently however there have been developments!

What do you think? What would Capability Brown have thought?

I think it certainly has the potential to be an attractive addition to the park but my concern is the ability to keep the area looking attractive & allow the plants to mature & fill out. Although I am an optimist I can only see children running & cycling over the beds as well as the paths & climbing on the logs at the edge. Merton Council is not among the most well off of London Boroughs & like all others is having to make financial cut-backs. There was recently a proposal that they would not lock any of their parks overnight in order to save money. That is no longer the case but indicates  the severity of the problem.

We will see……….

***The crocuses at the top are not from Wimbledon Park but Wisley a couple of weeks ago!