Perhaps just a handful of you might have noticed a lack of posts these last couple of weeks (or not, as the case may be!). Well….I took a little trip, just a very quick one, and crammed rather a lot into just eight days on the ground!
From the first instant, it was all bluebell carpeted woodlands and shafts of sunlight filtering through spring’s lime green foliage as we zoomed through cow-parsley-edged back lanes and hedgerows dissecting bright yellow fields of flowering rape….the scent of the English countryside dizzying the senses. With no time to waste, the first day saw me on a visit with my mother to Sudeley Castle….one of her great favourites, and it had been a long time since my last visit. I recall at the time, they’d recently replanted the formal rose or Queen’s Garden, and I was on a fact finding, rose-choosing mission! This time, mildly jet-lagged, I was quite happy to spend an afternoon amongst ancient hedges and forged iron crowns, a fine Elizabethan knot garden (oh how I love them…with their intricate labyrinth-like patterns) and ruinous buildings sprouting all manner of delights…from cottage wallflowers to flamboyant tulips, tree-peonies, lilacs, honeysuckle, hydrangeas, with roses & wisteria about to burst from their buds.
Sudeley also has lovely little wilderness areas of apple trees (in magnificent blossom), long grasses and wildflower meadows….but I was most excited to discover a quite newly planted living willow garden! Harriet Goodall where are you???? We need to speak! In the past I’ve just dismissed such frivolity, thinking I could only do this if I lived on the other side of the world, but I know this need not be the case anymore (Harriet will probably kill me for mentioning it but….you know that workshop we planned?????!!!!!).
Day two found us at another longtime favourite…..Daylesford Organic Farm at Kingham, Gloucestershire (if I haven’t been to Daylesford, I haven’t been to England!). So we zipped over for a simple lunch (the only one we enjoyed in sunshine), to meet up with Larry.
I omitted to take pictures (I reckon I’ve taken so many before I surely can’t need anymore?), so this one and only of magnificent chard, in a perfect trough (as everything is at Daylesford), must suffice as a record that we were actually there at all! (Though there is proof, in that we bumped straight into Mouse Martin there which was fortuitous, as I got to see her totally heavenly made-by-hands studio, house fit for a mouse & new island cottage the next day…but I digress….I’ll tell you more about this later!).
Early next morning saw me wandering the gardens at Babington House, the country pad of the Soho House group, in Somerset. Although pouring with rain (as it was set to do all day), this wasn’t to hamper my delight in a bucolic setting – and this was just my first gate for the day!
The walled garden at Babington is where the fabulous Cowshed products literally got off the ground. I’d kind of always wanted to see it – with product names the likes of ‘grumpy cow uplifting body lotion or knackered, moody, grumpy, horny, sleepy or wild cow bath oil’ they come with a cheeky nod to the quintessential English sense of humour and are seriously good (if a bit on the ‘exy’ side!). Incidentally, the walled garden is pretty divine…even on a gloomy, wet morning; with magical tulips and apple blossom in flower, though it’s too early yet for veg which looked to have just been planted (a bit like here, but the reverse season).
And next, we set off to see the garden at Highgrove! This was a completely spoiling exercise – a visit for two, which was the entire reason for this little trip in the first place! Larry bought me this treat at a charity auction when he was on a business trip to London last year (lucky girl, I know). To be honest, I wasn’t really sure I even wanted to visit….having read the story of the making of Highgrove in the early days of making the garden here at Glenmore (oh so feeble and pathetic by comparison…dream on!), but funnily enough I learned a lot from those pages and in a way, didn’t want to spoil how it was in my imagination. Anyway we were off, and in the end my vision wasn’t spoiled at all…it’s a very real, very accessible garden, and for me, after reading the early story so long ago, interesting to see how the garden has developed and changed (as Prince Charles has learned, just like the rest of us, what works and what doesn’t in his micro-clmate, and has, as all gardeners do….experienced such things as the loss of a huge and favourite tree – these blows impact the landscape forever more and make us all realise how transient the garden we create can be).
Accompanied by a truly delightful guide (thank you David), with all the lowdown on each part of the garden, each plant we queried or question we raised was met with a jovial smile and sense of fun, as we trudged around muddy paths in the rain (which made us chuckle, given the predicament of our own open garden the week before – I can sympathise with the state of HRH’s muddy grass situation AND was so glad I packed my wellies!). Our visit was enchanting and the only downside is that taking photographs is not allowed….so I have a huge gap in my photographic records, but hopefully not in my memory! From delightful structures hewn of local materials to a vision of thousands of Camassias flowering in long grass, apple blossom, pink gates, duck-egg blue gates and Clematis, chunky freesia-yellow chairs set against dark green hedges of yew; shaped hedges and perennials, shrubs, ferns, ponds, walls, not to mention the Kitchen Garden which was, of course, my favourite of all – tunnels of willow, hazel, fruit trees in blossom….and those gates, good heavens those gates…..exquisite shell pink set into that delightful faded brick wall! There was a lot to absorb, but I have to say, at the end of the day, it should be the feeling that a garden leaves you with that you remember most, and the sense here is that it feels much loved. Enough said.
By the way, it is now possible to arrange a visit to the garden at Highgrove…you can make a booking online! I encourage you to visit – as a fan of the wide-ranging good works achieved by the Prince’s Trust (from the environment to the teaching of much-needed skills), I reckon money raised by garden visits goes towards a very good cause. Don’t forget to enjoy the scones, jam & cream before you leave – somehow the temptation there seemed appropriate and even Irelented! And I challenge you to walk away without clutching a little something in one of those almost-Tiffany-blue bags with regal purple ribbon attached! Why not….it’s fun! The next post will explain the image at the top of this one: onwards!