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

Would You Like to Come Up to See My Kip?

Jan Kip, Dutch draughtsman for William of Orange in Amsterdam and then William and Mary in England, along with fellow Dutch draughtsman Leonard Knyff were best know for their bird's-eye view engraved prints compiled in Brittania Illustrata. Or Views of Several of the Queens Palaces, as Also of the Principal seats of the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain, Curiously Engraven on 80 Copper Plates, London (1707, published in the winter of 1708 – 09). - NDL

The volume is among the most important English topographical publications of the 18th century. Architecture is rendered with great care and detail, and the settings of parterres and radiating avenues driven through woods or planted across fields, garden paths, gates and toolsheds are illustrated with meticulous detail, and amusingly staffed with figures and horses, coaches pulling into forecourts, water craft on rivers, filled with the delight native to the Low Countries' traditions. Some of the plates are maps, in the Siennese "map perspective," a feat of imagination in a world that had not conceived even of a balloon ascension. - Wikipedia




This Kip was used to help the National Trust recreate the formal gardens at Westbury Court after they had fallen into disrepair. - NDL


The topographical images of Kip and Knyff are significant for providing reliable illustrations of the development of the formal English garden in the Dutch-French style. Their documentary information for this period in British architecture and landscape design is particularly valued because, within a generation, the formal gardens seen in these views would be swept away in favor of the pastoral compositions, derived from idealized landscapes of painters such as Claude Lorrain, that characterize the "naturalistic"English landscape gardens. - Wikipedia

Tuck Kip and Knyff away in your mental file. They just might make you look very smart when they resurface on trivia night, during your appearance on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, or when dropped casually into cocktail hour conversation. Let us know how that works out.

Water, Water, Everywhere

We visited Westbury court on a very wet and grey day. The former great buildings of of the estate are long gone and a retirement village now overlooks the restored garden. The garden itself was narrowly saved from development after having survived the great movement of Brownian landscape type garden renovations. It was nice, but between the mood of the dreary day and the faded glory of the grounds there was an air of melancholy about the place. - NDL


A remarkable restoration by the National Trust has re-created this original Dutch water garden, the only one to survive the era of naturalistic landscaping by the likes of Repton and 'Capability' Brown. Although the exotic varieties of tulips from the famous age of 'tulipomania' are no longer extant, Westbury Court is planted exclusively with species of plants available before 1700.




The long canal was the first feature to be created by Maynard Colchester in 1696.




Near it the parterre in box with its conical and ball shaped topiary contained within yew hedges, some of which also sport cones, provides a formal and graceful surround to the Tall Pavilion.





Many old varieties of apple and plum trees are espaliered here as well as peaches, apricots and cherries and round them are planted daffodils, anemones, muscari and ranunculus. There is a small walled garden growing a collection of perennials of the 17th century.

Two magnificent trees, a Tulip tree and Holm Oak, probably dating from before Maynard Colchester's time, dominate the formal garden, the oak in particular being one of the largest and oldest in the country. Views of the neighbouring countryside are limited to those through two ironwork grilles in the North Wall, contributing to the intimate atmosphere of the garden.




The vegetable plots have been recreated to grow fruit and vegetable varieties from the 17th century.


Laid out between 1696-1715 by Maynard Colchester, and possibly influenced by his Dutch neighbour, Catherine Boevey of Flaxley Abbey, its further development was carried in the hands of his nephew, also named Maynard Colchester.




The garden came to National Trust in 1967 in a very sorry state and it became their first garden restoration, starting in 1971. - gardensguide.com

Looks Like about 8lb. Test

Angel's Fishing Rod, Fairy Wand, Wand Flower, or dierama pulcherrimum.



Photo from: Seaside Plants

Anyway you call it this is a lovely, ethereal flower that nods in the slightest breeze on the slenderest of stems. England and its Gardens participants from New Jersey to British Columbia, but no farther South than about zone 6a (except for one lucky Texan in the group) were entranced by this zone 8a to 10b beauty found in several of the gardens on our tour.

If you know someone down South you should ask them to plant dierama and then plan your trip to their locale when it is in bloom. Angel's Fishing Rod would be a wonderful addition to the garden. Yet again zone envy rears its ugly head. Sigh.

In a Word...

...Lovely.

That's all we really need to say about Hidcote.















































But, if you want to know more. Read on.

Four Weddings and a Double Decker Bus

We might not have noticed what was going on if it weren't for the cars...




The hats...




The tails...




The plaid pants...




And the double decker wedding special parked outside the palace.




But fortunately we caught on, and in the end, witnessed parts of at least four weddings at some of the most picturesque sites in England. You can have your event at Stourhead, or another of the dozens of wonderful National Trust wedding venues, or perhaps Hampton Court Palace too!

Pride and Prejudice Goeth Before a Rainfall

Stourhead is the best example of a garden inspired by the great landscape painters of the seventeenth century. Ernst Gombrich suggests it should bear the signature of an Italianized French painter: Claude Lorrain (1600-82). The Stourhead garden was made by a wealthy English banker who had been buying works of art in Italy at the time he inherited the Stourhead estate. Henry Hoare II's 'Claudian' garden was made in an unusually well-proportioned valley behind the house. The Temple of Flora at Stourhead was made in 1745 and the grotto in 1748. But the key date was 1754, when the lake and the Pantheon were made. It is based on the Pantheon in Rome and the planned walk through the estate is based on the journey of Rome's legendry founder, Aeneas. The five-arched bridge was made in 1762 and the Temple of Apollo in 1765. Gothic features were added later in the century: Alfred's Tower, a Rustic Cottage and a Hermitage. The Stourhead woods were underplanted with Rhododendron ponticum after 1791 and with more exotic species in the twentieth century. - gardenvisit.com





Stourhead's Temple of Apollo was the setting for a dramatic first proposal of Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth in a scene from the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightly. The cast also featured: Matthew Macfadyen, Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Tom Hollander, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, and Judi Dench.




Word is that filming took place on a dry, but apparently grey day with hoses pouring huge volumes of water down over the rooftop of the temple.