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.