Arley Hall and its grand estate and extensive formal gardens lie near Warrington in the North West of England. I am always on the look-out for pleasant stop-offs to break my regular 5-hour journey between Edinburgh and Derbyshire, and Arley being just a few miles from the M6 it seemed like a good place to stretch my legs, buy a cup of tea, and revel in some expert garden design.
While I mention design, I should clarify that Arley’s ancestral family, who have gardened at Arley for the past 250 years, proudly state that their work has been “unassisted by professional designers”, and that each feature of the garden represents the tastes and skill of particular family members across the generations. The current owners, the Viscount and Viscountess Ashbrook, are the latest members of the Egerton-Warburton family to have influenced the garden. A detailed set of panels within the garden…
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Old School Garden 
This is why I love diverse blogs. Thru you, Nigel, I got curious about Edinburgh Garden Diary. Investigated and found she was visiting her gram in Derbyshire. Her photos triggered a memory and I went to the old photo albums. My daughter and I have been doing some genealogy. Wondered and had no answer why my gr grandfather who emigrated from Derbyshire to Michigan USA, built all these garden whimsies, walls, bird baths, arbors etc.from rocks. He would go on walks and come home with his finds. Even built some by the factory he worked at. My gram said he would sit out in the garden and say it was a memory of a bit of home. But no one seemed to know what that meant. I asked her about the stonework I saw on her blog and she graciously gave me a wonderful answer as to the stonework and the areas around Derbyshire. Finally we think we know why he felt “a bit of home” while he relaxed in his garden.
Thanks Sue, that’s lovely news. It’s great when something you stumble across can have a big meaning for you! On a similar vein I recently did dome judging of a park in Norwich for a scheme called ‘Green Flag’…and I remembered an old black and white photo of my father as a young man, with his dog in the very same park….some 50 or 60 years ago!