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Walls and steps…

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12/11/2017

Back again with another selection of photos sharing with you interesting walls and steps we have discovered during our garden visiting adventures. Let us start at Powys Castle near Welshpool in the Welsh county of Powys, which is built on such a steeply sloping site that there is the need for many steps to get […]

via Garden Walls and Steps – part 4 of a very occasional series — greenbenchramblings

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Flower power…

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08/11/2017

Whenever we visit an art gallery, one of my favourite pastimes is to check the floral content of the paintings. I love spotting familiar flowers at the foot of the Virgin, or examining the landscape for familiar trees – it is a way of engaging with the artist who must have lived amongst and enjoyed…

via The Art of the Flower — The Enduring Gardener

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Hobart…

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07/11/2017

“Have a nice walk back through the botanical gardens,” the woman said. “Find your own way over the domain,” the woman said. What she failed to tell us is how to get out of the botanical gardens. I had navigated us thus far so I wasn’t about to stop. We walked in and there were […]

via “Exploring Hobart…Tassie part 2…” — Emma & Nathan’s Travels

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Powys power…

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06/11/2017

Back over the border just half an hour away in Wales we return for part 3 of our visit to the gardens of Powys Castle. We have looked at its upper terraces and the beautiful late summer, early autumn flowering plants, so now we will wander down to the lower garden and have a look […]

via A Visit to the Wonderful Gardens of Powys Castle – Part3 — greenbenchramblings

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Boxed in at Amsterdam…

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05/11/2017

Everyone loves a box parterre (don’t they?). Back in June 2012, fellow blogger Veronica, from Through the garden gate, and I went to see the open gardens in Amsterdam. We had a super (if a tad exhausting) weekend looking at many hidden gems in the city. A recurrent theme was definitely box parterres. Not present in […]

via Box alternatives — Out of my shed

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Great Garden @ Hestercombe

Filed under: Great Gardens, Heritage Gardens & gardening, West Country Gardens — 2 Comments
04/11/2017

On our way home from a recent trip to Devon, we diverted to one of my all time favourite gardens; Hestercombe, just outside Taunton, Somerset.

I remember coming here many years ago, when the local Fire Service were headquatered in the house and the work to restore this classic Lutyen’s – Jekyll garden design was just getting underway. Even then the strong structural elements- though in a poor state of repair-  shone through. Since then, several decades later, the Charitable Trust that owns the place has done a marvellous job in restoring not only the gardens but much of the surrounding parkland too, so that you can wander through a very interesting ‘designed landscape’ reflecting earlier design styles harking back to the’ landscape garden’ school.

The main garden is what you come here for.  Sunken and surrounded by a series of strong pergolas and with two stone rills descending either side, it is a joy to behold. We were fortunate in arriving early in the day and had this wonderful place of quiet and reflection virtually to ourselves.

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The restoration story is a fascinating one, including a quest to find a series of plants that were in the original Jekyll planting plans but which were no longer readily available. This is most notable for a number of gladioli varieties, one of which was discovered by accident as one of the historians associated with the garden was giving a talk..only to be approached by someone who thought he had one of the missing gladdy’s! Since then this rare plant has been nurtured and propagated to get to the necessary scale for mass planting…and the display of gladioli is certainly impressive..

This is a real story of horticultural dedication; a trait seen in abundance all around the gardens. The house, though perhaps less of a priority, is gradually being brought into beneficial use, but it does require some renovation. We finished off our tour with a rather nice lunch in a very classy restaurant overlooking the gardens.

Old School Gardener

Frther information: Hestercombe Gardens website

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Top notch…

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03/11/2017

If you visit Beverley, you’ll likely go to see the Gothic minster – the finest parish church in the land – and its beautifully conserved town centre. It’s dubbed the Georgian Quarter now, a bit of tourist branding which in this case is fully justified. But there’s an alternative history – of a small industrial […]

via Council Housing in Beverley: ‘Top notch in them days’ — Municipal Dreams

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Perfumed and lulled in Portugal…

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02/11/2017

The granite walls of the Santa Maria do Bouro Pousada belong to a Cistercian monastery built in 1162 by the first king of Portugal. They aged perfumed by incense and lulled by religious chants. The monks enjoyed their meals sitting around an imposing stone table. The kitchen had two fountains that supplied water, several wood-fire stoves and […]

via Santa Maria do Bouro in the light of eternity — Salt of Portugal

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Hillwood…

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31/10/2017

So another garden we saw that Friday was the Hillwood Estate, which has 25 acres of grounds (plus a mansion and some other buildings) in the Northwest part of DC. It belonged to Marjorie Post for much of the last century. Marjorie owned General Foods, so she had a decent amount of disposable income. She left […]

via The Hillwood Estate Gardens — gardeninacity

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Dear Walter: letter from Old School Garden, 30th October 2017

Filed under: Dear Walter - letters/info from Old School Garden, Gardening techniques — Leave a comment
30/10/2017

To Walter de Grasse

Dear Walter,

It’s been a busy month, but not much has been going on in Old School Garden.

though I’ve planted out onions and sowed Broad Beans as well as some hardy annuals, scarified and fertilised the main lawn areas, I can’t claim to have moved on much on the home patch. Still, today I plan to spend a good time putting up fencing to hide the oil tank and possibly also laying the final slabs where the new shed is going. And hopefully I can at long last make a start on that this week, before the bad weather sets in. Despite a cold start today we’ve had things quite mild here recently and it looks like the rest of the week is also going to warm up a bit.

Front garden still looking good
Nerines looking colourful
a new ‘beehive’ water butt for our courtyard- awaiting fitting
Broad beans poking through
and onions
and garlic
Echeveria- soon to be put under cover for the winter
Colour starting to come on this Liquidambar
The next job..fencing in the oil tank, with gate

I spent a couple of short sessions over at the local High School Allotment project helping to cut out grass and weeds from around the orchard trees, and I hope to get back there to help in the next couple of weeks. It will be good to get the orchard into some kind of managed state.

Well, having said what I haven’t been doing at home, I can move on to report some major progress over at the local church, where you’ll recall I and others are gradually taking the churchyard and surroundings into more active management, including the churchyard itself as a meadow habitat.

Over the last three weekends (plus a surprise session on Saturday) the ‘Community Payback Team’ have been over to help us tackle some major projects. These are people who have broken the law in some way and have been sentenced to giving time back to the community for free. They, plus a few local volunteers, have put in a tremendous effort and the result is a transformation of the church surroundings. Here are some pictures which illustrate the key achievements, including planting an ‘Avenue of Remembrance’ to commemorate the closure of RAF Swannington (Haveringland) 70 years ago in November, the cutting and raking off of the churchyard, clearing the ‘French Drain’ that surrounds the church walls, strimming the perimeter of the church and the nearby access road and car park, planting many narcissus bulbs (donated by local businesses) and plenty more.

I have been very impressed with the effort and good-natured attitudes of those who have helped us and we have achieved so much more than I was expecting. Things look very promising for the major Remembrance Day service on Saturday 11th November; and I’m especially pleased that you and Ferdy can join us.

Old School Gardener

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