Thursday, August 11, 2011

A Very Well Manored Garden

The wonderful Iford Manor, subject of its own blog, Idyllic Iford, is a delightful garden designed by the imaginative Harold Peto.

A Tudor/Georgian house with a twentieth century garden in the valley of the River Frome. The garden belonged to the Arts and Crafts designer Harold Peto, from 1899 to 1933, and shows his love of Italy. It has a cloister garden of Pompeian scale, terraces, columnar cypresses and Peto's vast collection of statues, urns, sarcophagi and terracotta. - gardenvisit.com

Iford manor as seen by Britannia as she keeps watch over the river Frome.




Note the symmetry that is balanced, but seldom a mirror image. The framed scenes and the long views make one pause to look and then want to move on to see what's ahead.














Our host and current Iford owner John Hignett with one of his favorite statues. This dog-being-a-dog sits across a gateway from another very noble and dignified dog who seems disapproving of his kennelmate's behaviour. Mr. Hignett gave us a wonderful tour of the entire garden.








We prefer this guy.










In hot weather flower gardens have the worst of it, but architectural gardens retain their style. They depend on big evergreen building blocks, strong design, and an elegant use of stone and hard surfacing. The best are often the gardens of architects, whose sense of space and proportion stops a flowerless garden from being dull. (How true.) - Thoughtful Gardening - Chapter 67 The Haunt of Ancient Peace

1 comment:

Tacitus said...

Why do you suppose the corner of a dog's mouth turns down when they scratch? Its not like squinting when humans yawn, seems like different muscles....

TW