Spring is Springing!

 Spring is finally springing here at home, so we're saying good-bye to English gardens for the moment, and we're going to follow spring as it unfolds here.  We do have Crocus, Hellebore, and one tiny Iris showing blooms, and lots of Daffodils coming along.

When the snow first disappears (though it has re-appeared twice since!!), it doesn't leave a very bright coloured landscape behind.  It all looks rather dull to me, but it will turn green soon.

We've had the Hellebore blooming for a couple of weeks now, so many blooms on it I can't sort them out.  Sometimes it's buried under snow.

This pale mauve flower was the first among the Crocus to show any colour.

The yellow and white followed soon thereafter, though the white remain tightly furled.  A warm day will really bring out the colour.

Out the front window we have quite a lot of Daffodils planted; their leaves have been emerging for almost a month.  I'm counting the days until I see some yellow!

Also out front is this bigger cluster of bright yellow Crocus.

And in the corner by the garage, springing up between the coils of the cord for the Christmas lights, is a solitary royal blue dwarf Iris, my favourite spring flower.  I fear the rest have been smothered by the rampantly spreading Lavender!

A Few Other Interesting Garden Features

We've visited a lot of other gardens, and there are some highlights I just can't resist sharing.  They range from elephants in the garden to a Chinese garden, from a starkly modern reflecting pool, to Water Buffalo!  I hope you enjoy these!

Here are your elephants, facing each other in the gardens at Sezincote.  The house, built 200 years ago for a family who had served in India with the British East India Company, has been described as the best example of neo-Mughal architecture in western Europe!  The dome is a classic, here done in copper, and the small garden between the elephants and the house, is a classic Persian four-square garden with intersecting paths, upright juniper and a water feature.

The curving orangery is spectacular!  The fan-shaped arched windows are a specific feature of Mughal architecture.  And best of all it's now the tea room, so we sat inside and enjoyed coffee and cake!

There are lots of flowers too, like these bright red lilies.  They decorate a stream garden, which tumbles down a ravine to the north of the house.

Biddulph Grange is one of the most unusual gardens in England.- Found in Stoke-on-Trent, it features a collection of different style garden rooms, including a Victorian vision of a Chinese garden.  

Presumably the gilded Water Buffalo reflects time spent in India.

There are other significant features, but the one I remember is the 'stumpery', walls of old stumps inter-laced together, along a pathway between other garden 'rooms'.

Then there is Kiftsgate.  Located right across the road from Hidcote, a garden we visited right at the beginning of this tour of British gardens, it has a number of interesting flower beds, but among them is the gigantic Kiftsgate Rose, now a recognized variety you can purchase for your own rose garden!

Sadly it had just about finished blooming when we visited, but you can see it is a huge vigorous rambling rose with large clusters of small white blossoms.  The original plant we saw at Kiftsgate was enormous, about 90 feet long and 20 feet tall.

And at the back of the garden, in the former space occupied by a tennis court, is a beautiful peaceful reflecting pool.  The copper leaves at the far end are a fountain.  This sticks in my mind as the best truly modern garden feature we've ever seen.

Sudeley Castle and Gardens

Sudeley Castle, in the Cotswolds, is a historically fascinating place; the gardens have specific historic features that tie them to the time of Henry VIII.  It's also one of the rare castles still lived in by the family that owns it, Lady Elizabeth Ashcombe and her children.  They have opened the castle to the public to help cover their costs, and it is a popular attraction.

One of the famous features is the Queen's Garden, a four-square rose garden with 80 rose varieties. The name recognizes the four English Queens who have visited or lived here.

A view from the air is the best way to understand the 'four-square' garden design, here to the lower right of the buildings.  Demarcated by two dark hedges south-east of the buildings. this design of four quarters around a central square is one of the oldest in gardening, stemming from early Persian gardens.

The Queen's Garden today is a Victorian replanting of an original Elizabethan rose garden, overseen by a celebrated English rosarian.

Here is part of just one-quarter of that garden.

Looking right across the central pool is the chapel, which we will visit in a moment.

One of the other well-known gardens is the Knot Garden, a design in small sharply pruned Boxwood, said to be modelled after the design in one of Queen Elizabeth I's dresses.

The garden and castle are perhaps best known as having been visited or lived in by no fewer than four English Queens.  Anne Boleyn  was the first; she visited three times when married to Henry VIII.  Later came Catherine Parr, Henry's last wife. who remarried and came to live at Sudeley after Henry died.  Lady Jane Grey was one of her attendants.  Lady Jane later became the famous 'Nine-Days-Queen' and was beheaded at the Tower of London.  Finally Queen Elizabeth I visited on three occasions.

Among those four queens, Catherine Parr was the only one buried at Sudeley, now commemorated with  a raised life-size effigy in marble.  Found in the memorial chapel (above), the tomb has become a place of pilgrimage.  Catherine Parr is the only English queen buried at a private castle.

 

Claude Monet's Garden in Giverny

One of the most interesting gardens we've visited is Monet's garden in the village of Giverny, west of Paris.  Monet lived from 1840 to 1926, and is viewed as the founder of Impressionism, a school of painting that was viewed as radical in its time.  Impressionist painters moved from the studio to the outdoors, and painted 'en plain air'.  They emphasized the importance of changing light conditions and often painted the same scene several times over the seasons.

Monet bought the house you see in the background and started a garden where he could paint.  It was a practical combination, though Monet did have a large studio on site.

Here, in the front of the house, is a mixed planting of red and mauve Geraniums.  Monet's art today has fetched enormous prices, one painting selling for $88 million recently!

And this is the view out the front door of his house, which is also open to visit.  Imagine this view in Monet's time probably before the trees were here.  The garden has eight gardeners, including students on internships from school.

But Monet was not satisfied with painting flowers, so he purchased land to the south, across the railway track, and put in a large pond where he grew waterlilies.  He then embarked on painting the waterlilies and produced nearly 400 paintings over 30 years.  Today you get here through a short tunnel under the tracks.

This allowed him to paint the changing light conditions as the light reflected from both plants and water.  This led to his most famous paintings, the waterlily paintings, the largest of which are on display in two purpose-built rooms at the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris.

The other oft-painted feature of this garden is the small bridge copied in many gardens around the world, and painted repeatedly.  I waited 15 minutes to get a picture of just Mrs. F.G. but eventually took it with other visitors in place.

This is one of the enormous waterlily painting at the Musee de l'Orangerie.  There are two oval rooms with natural light from the ceiling, hosting the paintings which are 6,5 feet tall, and about 50 feet long.   They were officially given to France on the day after Armistice Day in 1918, in the hope of future peace.  They are one of the most colossal paintings of the past century.

Crathes Castle Gardens

Crathes Castle is a fascinating place to visit, on the way from Balmoral Castle to Aberdeen in the Highlands of Scotland.  You can see both the interior of the castle and the garden, and both are amazing.  The garden is a large diverse walled garden, and the castle has original painted ceilings that are unique in my (limited) experience.

This is the castle, dating from 1596, built during the troubled reign of Mary Queen of Scots.  Prior to this castle being built, the land was gifted to the Burnetts by Robert the Bruce in 1323.  The shot is taken from the croquet lawn inside the walled garden, the enormous Yew hedge forming the gateway.

And looking down on the rest of the garden from the castle you can see again the Yew hedge, including a pruned 'locomotive' bordering the garden.

Not all the garden looks like this, but the area dedicated to flowers is spectacular!  The castle and garden are now managed by the National Trust of Scotland, with a team of seven gardeners.

It takes the gardening team weeks just to prune the huge hedge.

One of the unique things that stuck in my memory was the 'Gold Garden'.  You've heard of white gardens, but in all the gardens we have visited this is the only time I've seen a 'Gold Garden'!

At the time we visited, nearly 30 years ago, photography was not allowed inside the building, but if you ever get there, the original interior painted ceilings are amazing!

Inverewe

It's bee a busy week, sorry I haven't posted sooner.

I'm thinking we should leave the landscape gardens behind and go back to some of our favourite gardens in England and Scotland, gardens that actually have flowers!  Inverewe is on the far north-west coast of northern Scotland, and it can grow some amazing plants (like Palm trees), because of the passing warm water current, the Gulf Stream.

Inverewe was established by Osgood Mackenzie starting from a very barren landscape in 1862.  Tons of soil were brought in to create conditions for growing, starting with a shelterbelt of pines to protect the area.  Today it has been described as the best garden in Scotland due to its outstanding collection of plants, especially trees, from around the world.

The highlight for most visitors is the walled kitchen garden, replete with flowers as well as veggies.  It sits in a cove facing Loch Ewe, terraced up the slope, providing a very protected space for growing.

This is simply an outstanding space to wander through as you enter the garden, now run by the National Trust for Scotland.

The house, built in the 1930s after the original burned down, now functions as a museum, with beautiful flower borders outside.

And beyond that is the beautiful parkland of trees, including many species of Rhododendron.

I leave you with the outstanding selfie of yours truly, standing under the huge Gunnera, the first time I had seen that plant up close.  In my mind those are still enormous rhubarb leaves!

Chatsworth House

We return to England with the gardens at Chatsworth House, perhaps the grandest example of a landscape garden in England, no flowers but plenty of interesting landscape features.  One of the largest and grandest of English estates, the house and gardens are over 400 years old, and have been in the hands of the Cavendish family ever since, a family ruled over by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.

Chatsworth House gardens have been built and rebuilt over the centuries.  At one time the gardens featured a very formal layout, not unlike those at Versailles.  But Capability Brown, a uniquely English personality came along with his rebellion against formal gardens and swept it all away.

The formal gardens were replaced by acres of lawns, with a focus on fountains as well, though many statues, like this one, were retained.

The most celebrated water feature is not a fountain, but a cascade, a long set of stairs down which water runs in an extensive set of tiny waterfalls.

It's a popular feature as you can see, though they do try to keep the kids out of the actual cascade.  When we were there they turned the water on at 1 pm and the crowds were already gathered.

The other big water feature is the Emperor Fountain, one of the highest jets of water in any fountain run by natural water pressure.  It is fed by water from a large lake dug on top of the moors.

The rock garden is one of the other interesting features, built not from small rocks, but from large boulders!

At one time an enormous glass house was a popular feature, but it was heated by coal and during WWII no coal was available for such purposes, so it was torn down.  It has been replaced by a maze.

I just loved the wavy pattern of this hedge.

The 2.5 acre kitchen gardens are a much more recent feature, laid out by the inspired Duchess in 1991.  They include of course an extensive area of cutting flowers, destined for bouquets in the house.  In this way flowers have returned to the gardens at Chatsworth after nearly 300 years.