The Gardens at Versailles

 The gardens at Versailles are overwhelming, they are so huge!  If the Boboli Gardens were the start of making gardens bigger and better, the gardens at Versailles were the pinnacle of that trend.  Extending over 2000 acres, these gardens featured very few flowers but dozens of fountains, as well of course, as the Palace of Versailles.  Everything was to be bigger and better for the Sun King, Louis XIV!

These are the extent of flowers in the garden, a formal design of the Fleur de Lis on the parterre immediately behind the palace with its Hall of Mirrors.

Beyond this is a spectacular view over the distant lake, a huge fountain in the foreground under renovation when we visited.  The view faces west so the king could watch the sun set.

If one were to wander to the left and look over the edge, you see a very formal arrangement of trees and shrubs in pots known as Versailles Boxes.  In fact many of these are orange trees and they will be moved to the Orangery, a huge room under your feet for the winter.

Looking the other way is a formal walkway with fountains to the sides.  My primary impression after walking through the garden was of the fountains, dozens of them.

We walked down the main hill and discovered the maze of 'bosquets', smaller garden rooms enclosed by trees, each bosquet having a specific theme.  This one was obviously a dance of fountains.  These jets of water danced up and down in time to music, a popular feature for visitors.

Another fountain, the Apollo Fountain, one of the more spectacular ones.  Water was a challenge here, so it was piped from a distance.  It was said the fountains were turned on and off as the king progressed around the park.

Another view of the Apollo Fountain.  I was surprised by the number of visitors, 16,000,000 per year!  That works out to 44,000 a day!  It's one of the most popular attractions in the world.

The lake, known as the Grand Canal, is just under a mile long, and provided a place for gondolas gifted by kings of Italy.  It also provided a basin where the water from all the fountains eventually ended up.  The gardens at Versailles were an enormous influence on the development of English landscape gardens and other gardens around the world.

The Boboli Gardens, Florence

It looks like I'm stuck with the tail end of winter here, so I'm going to go back to some of gardens we've visited which I was quite enjoying.  The Boboli Gardens sit on the south bank of the Arne in Florence, Italy.  We visited them when we went to Italy for a tour.  For Mrs. F.G. it was a return and the trip was wonderful!

Florence is of course that famous city of culture, featuring the Duomo, completed in 1436 and home to Bruneshelli's dome.  There are three statues of David, and most tourists see the one in the Uffizi Gallery, but the one standing outside the town hall is the more appropriate one, for 'David' was intended as a political statement!

Since we were in town we went off by ourselves to visit the gardens, where we wandered for three hours.  The entrance is the   TPitti Palace originally home to the Pitti family, but bought by the Medici family in 1549.  The gardens were laid out for the Medicis.

As you enter the dominant feature is the statue of Neptune, in the centre of a large pool.  You can continue up the hill beyond this. or you can turn to the right and follow down a long wide path.

This is that long wide path, wide enough to be a road, (in fact it was originally a road) and lined with statues.  It was built for the ladies to stroll down and admire those statues.

At the bottom we come to another large reflecting pool, with an island in the centre, the Isolotto.  We were there on a day of perfect reflections.

The statuary was amazing, no flowers but plenty of sculptures!

At the other end of the gardens is the famous grotto, a much copied element of 16th century gardens.  This garden would be one that wealthy English Lords saw on their 'grand tour'. from which they brought back ideas to home, creating English landscape gardens.

March Weather Rollercoaster!

 March's weather continues to behave like a rollercoaster, up and down, but then this weekend was the Ides of March, right!

When I left you the view out back was this, almost no snow.

But Friday afternoon the snow was back, and the world looked white.

Those poor Hellebores were buried again!

And our snowstick carried a small pile of snow on his back.

Today it's back to spring, virtually no snow in sight!

And the Hellebores are enjoying being out of the snow!

Spring is Charging Ahead Here at Home - Until Today!

 I cannot remember a spring when the snow disappeared so abruptly!  Mind you, we still have  snowbanks; it takes along time to melt those.  But the foot or so of snow that was on our lawn ten days ago is gone - until today.  It's snowing hard today!

One week ago today, the view out back looked like this.  Our snowstick was just barely showing up.

By the next morning the snowstick was half emerged, after temperatures Soared to 16°C!

And by the next morning a large well had melted out surrounding our winter indicator!  All those big rabbit pellets are actually alfalfa pellets, which Mrs. F.G. spreads at this time of year for fertilizer.

By Sunday at noon, less than 48 hours after the melt started, the golf course looked like this.

And by Monday morning it was looking downright tropical!

Almost our entire snowstick was showing up by then, even with green leaves of a Hellebore at its feet!

Over at the edge of the garden two newer Hellebore were already in bloom when the snow cover melted!

The Rhododendron, which is a broad-leaved evergreen already has really obvious bright green buds.

So in four short days the snow virtually vanished leaving the view out back looking almost ready for golf!

While only a small circle of very dirty snow remained surrounding the snowstick!  Of course it all looks white again now, but that`s March!

The English Landscape Garden

After our first trip to England viewing gardens, I came back amazed, and having learned of something totally new for me - the English Landscape Garden.  This is a garden generally without flowers, but with interesting landscape features such as artificial lakes, bridges, temples and so on.  The big example we saw was the 'garden' at Stourhead.

Created by Henry Hoare, a rich English banker, Stourhead is fascinating once you realize what you're seeing.  Trips to Italy were a big inspiration for this garden; many of the garden features are copied or inspired by Roman temples.  But the big feature is this artificial lake and a bridge that has no purpose but to look visually attractive.

The feature I liked best was the Temple of Apollo.

 

It was the careful placement on a distant hillside that appealed to me the most.  It's all about creating a landscape that's visually attractive and interesting.

The big temple was the Pantheon, modelled after the one in Rome.  Unfortunately it was being restored when we were there and we couldn't get close.  But let me share a few of the unique garden features that other landscape gardens in England have.

This reflecting pool, temple and obelisk are at Chiswick House, right in London.  Like most of these unique 'gardens', this was created in the mid-1700s.

Another weird and wonderful feature is the Temple of British Worthies at Stowe.  There is only one woman, Queen Elizabeth I. There's a bit of political bias here, as they were all selected for their Whig (liberal) political leanings.  There are many other landscape features at Stowe, now a private school, including two unique bridges and several temples.

One of the very first gardens we visited was Scotney Castle, in southeast England.  It's one huge garden feature all by itself, though not everyone has a real castle in their garden.  I like it because you could still get inside and see the building.

And finally a truly unique garden building is the rebuilt Witch's House from Hesterecombe.  

And finally the artificial lake and picturesque bridge at Blenheim Palace.  The English Landscape Garden was truly something unusual among gardens for me!

Hestercombe Gardens

Hestercombe Garden is the third of the three famous gardens I'm starting out with.  Just by luck this innocent trip planner happened to include these three famous gardens on our very first trip - lotsa brownie points for doing that.  It's found in southwest England, west of Taunton.

The Hestercombe estate was acquired by the Warre family in 1391, and held by them for nearly 500 years.  During the later 1700s a landscape garden was created in the stream valley to the east, with various temples and an artificial waterfall.  It became overgrown and was unrecognized for over 100 years until it was rediscovered in the 1990s.

But it's the big formal garden that Hestercombe is renowned for.  The house is the dominant feature of the garden, though it was being used as a fire station when we visited.  Today it has been restored to the Hestercombe Gardens Trust and features an art gallery, exhibition and meeting space. 

Extending in front of the house is the spectacular formal garden, created starting in 1904.  Designed by the famous architect Edward Lutyens and the famous gardener, Gertrude Jekyll, this provides a unique combination of stonework and formal design with luxuriant flowers.

Nowhere have I seen a garden laid out like this; just look at the layout!.  You arrive on the upper level and look down over the spectacular combination of formal design and luxuriant planting.

Bordering the enormous formal garden are parallel strips of lawn centered by stone rills through which a tiny stream runs, dropping down a stone wall at the end.

The pergola at the end extends across the entire garden, held up by alternating round and square stone pillars.

The Lutyens-designed stonework is obvious several other places in the garden,  I remember being particularly struck by these steps which had tiny daisies growing in all the joints when we were there.

Here is another example of that combination of stonework and lavish flowers.

The older orangery sits to the east of the house.

And here's a glimpse of the artificial waterfall and stream in the small valley to the east, an area that merits much more exploring,