Garden Portrait : Dunster Secret Garden

Dunster is a Medieval village in north Somerset on the edge of Exmoor closest to the Bristol Channel. There is a castle on a wooded hill which has existed here since at least Norman times, with an impressive medieval gatehouse and ruined tower giving a reminder of its turbulent history. There is also a working Water Mill that is used daily and produces wholemeal flour that can be purchased in the shop and a lovely octagonal Yarn Market on the High Street where you will also find tea-rooms and independent shops and several nice pubs where you can dine. There are several walks through the parkland and along the river and over a particularly pretty 15th-century stone Gallox bridge. This ancient stone bridge – originally ‘gallows bridge’ – once carried packhorses bringing fleeces to Dunster market.

Several years ago I took the OH here to celebrate a BIG birthday and we stayed in a delightful B&B where the owner was a chef and offered tasting menus. Of course I reserved one for the day in question. What was so lovely about this brief getaway was exploring the lovely village itself which is home to a fascinating collection of medieval buildings. The Parish and Priory Church of St. George is worth a visit, but I want to show you the delightful memorial gardens behind the church which are so well hidden they are practically a secret.

Gravel pathways

Whistling Jack / Sword Lily

Astrantia

Irises

Iris

Gravel pathway

Entering the garden through an arched door you are immediately taken by the richness of the planting. In late spring the borders were a riot of jewel-like colours. Bright orange oriental poppies mingling with tall spires of deep magenta Sword Lilies (Gladiolus communis subsp. Byzantium, better known in the south-west as ‘Whistling Jack‘.) Blue and plum coloured irises line the pathways.

Jewel-like colours

Take a seat

Whistling Jack and Poppies

Peonies and roses stand side by side with rock roses ( Cistus ladanifer) with its distinctive brown eye.

Cistus ladanifer

Quaking Grass

Roses

Colours contrast and clash at will.

Comfrey

Oriental Poppy

Iris

Geranium

Leaving the garden, back onto Priory Green, you will see a restored dovecote opposite.

Dunster Dovecote

The Village Gardens are next to the church on the site of a former Benedictine priory which was dissolved in 1536. In 1543 Lady Luttrell bought the land to be used as a kitchen garden for the castle, but they fell into disuse until being bought by the villagers and turned into a garden for all to enjoy.

Dunster church

Sundial

Sundial

Bistort

Bird Bath

Although not as many flowers here, it is a pretty space with lots of stone decorative pieces in the nooks and crannies. The planting is lush and green with climbers and creepers.

pathway

Water Trough

Urn

Wisteria

Bird Bath

Statue

Sundial

Maybe it is time to go back and see how these gardens look now.

If you like a walk, long or short, then please visit Jo for her regular strolls in the UK and the Algarve and maybe you would like to join in too. She’s very welcoming.

Garden Portrait: Hergest Croft

Hergest Croft is unusual in having been gardened continuously by three generations of the same family over the past one hundred and thirteen years. It lies in the heart of the Welsh Marches with stunning views towards the Black Mountains. The gardens contain a unique collection of rare plants, trees and shrubs and over 90 “Champion” Trees.

The six distinct areas are Hergest Croft, the Azalea Garden, the Maple Grove, the Kitchen Garden, the Park and Park Wood.

My visit took place in late September not long before the gardens would close for the winter. In the Conservatory, many tender plants grow including a wide variety of fuchias and pelargoniums.

In the conservatory

We walked through Maple Grove into the Azalea Garden, which of course at this time of year lacked the beauty of these flowers. Instead paths were lined with hydrangea of a variety of colours.

Hydrangeas

It is dominated by a massive avenue of blue cedars planted in 1900 and many other champion trees.

Coming out onto the former croquet lawn and tennis courts, now enclosed by a large yew hedge, that contains vases of sweetly scented lilies in summer, you get a sense of the beauty of the house and its views over the parkland. The lower terrace border is filled with white galtonias and blue agapanthus.

A pretty rockery leads to a pool covered in waterlilies.

Following the path you reach the sculpture of a fir cone by Joe Smith which forms the centrepiece of the Slate Garden formally edged with five species of box.

The Kitchen Garden contains a traditional vegetable and fruit garden with many rare varieties. The wide herbaceous borders, and a double herbaceous border contain roses, sweetpeas, marigolds, daisy type flowers, achillea, sunflowers and echinops.

Hot colours in the Kitchen Garden

There was so much colour in the kitchen garden. Hollyhocks, agapanthus and Japanese Anemones mingled among the spikes of the artichoke.

Pinks and Blues in the Kitchen Garden

If you want to have a much longer walk then Park Wood has a secluded valley hidden deep within an ancient oak wood containing over 12ha (30 acres) of giant hybrid and species rhododendrons and exotic trees creating an almost Himalayan scene.

Size:  70 acres (28 hectare)

• Street:   Hergest Croft Gardens
• Postcode:   HR5 3EG
• City:   Kington
• County:   Herefordshire
• Country:   United Kingdom
• Website:   Hergest Croft Gardens

If you like a walk, long or short, then please visit Jo for her regular strolls in the UK and the Algarve and maybe you would like to join in too. She’s very welcoming.

Garden Portrait: Powis Castle

Castle with its terraces

The castle and garden is in Welshpool, Powys. The gardens are spread out over several Baroque terraces leading down through shrubs and giant cloud-shaped yew hedges to a large lawned area and a former kitchen garden and a woodland walk. All backed by a patchwork of fields, villages and hills of the Welsh border countryside.

Lower formal garden and lines of pyramidal apple trees

The terraces include an Orangery and an Aviary with the sheltering walls angled towards the south-west providing a mild climate in which a number of shrubs and climbers can be found. In spring pretty blue ceanothus spreads like a cloud and pale yellow roses pick up the tones of the red sandstone walls.

There are a number of lead statues in the gardens, most found on the grand terraces and from the workshop of the Flemish sculptor John van Nost. The lead used most likely came from the Powis family’s own lead mines at Llangynog, Montgomeryshire.

The Yew trees are magnificent. The fourteen specimen ‘tumps’ that sit on the upper terrace along with lead urns as well as the bulging hedge at the northern end were probably planted in the 1720s. Other evergreens include darker Irish yews and towering walls of boxwood.

Aviary terrace

Aviary terrace

Lead Sculpture

Each terrace has its own theme. Drier conditions on the narrow Aviary Terrace allow for sun-loving Mediterranean, Californian and Southern Hemisphere planting including cistus, carpenteria, broom, lavender and iris and silver artemesia. The roof is draped in wisteria and troughs of creeping figs. Fuchsias are a speciality and often grown in the old basketweave pots.

Lead figure of Hercules on a stone plinth. Hercules is depicted wearing a lion-skin and slaying the hydra (carved in stone), using a club which is made of wood. Behind is the spectacular yew hedge.

Herbaceous borders on the third terrace leading to the lower garden

On the third terrace you find the Orangery and long, box-edged borders.

Orangery

Orangery

Orangery

The bottom of the garden is now lawned (Great Lawn) and used for playing croquet. It used to be the kitchen garden, but now all that remains are the rare, old varieties of apple trees.

Ground cover, bedding plants, including hardy geraniums, roses and delphiniums stretch out from the half-timbered gardener’s bothy.

Lower garden

Apple blossom

Great lawn

View from terraces

Welsh dragon ornamental gate

Apple blossom

Vine arch

Apple blossom

View of castle from below

Here you can wander out of the formal garden and into a wilder woodland landscape, with a path curving towards the western ridge. This area is formed of acid sandstone in contrast to the limestone of the castle ridge and allows the planting of azaleas and rhododendrons.

The path leads to an ice-house and a Ladies’ Bath, both dating from the 19th century and you have views out towards the Long Mountain and Breidden Hills and across to the daffodil strewn paddock to the castle and terraces.

Returning to the western side of the castle we’ll have a peep into the courtyard and entrance to the castle (though I have yet to go inside as I always seem to spend my time in the gardens).

And a final look at the flowers in the woodland area, in springtime.

Size: 25 acres (10 hectares)

• Street:        Powis Castle and Garden
• Postcode:   SY21 8RF
• City:            Welshpool
• County:      Powys
• Country:    United Kingdom
• Website:    Powis Castle and Gardens

If you like a walk, long or short, then please visit Jo for her regular strolls in the UK and the Algarve and maybe you would like to join in too. She’s very welcoming.

Garden Portrait: Stourhead

Stourhead is often called

“one of the most beautiful of this country’s landscape gardens”

with a gentle harmonious planting of broad-leaved trees, conifers and rhododendrons. The valley landscape began in the 1740s by Henry Hoare II who had returned from a three-year tour of Italy and was inspired by the Roman Campagna ( a low-lying area surrounding Rome in the Lazio region of central Italy) which also inspired many landscape painters of the time.

It is probably a garden best seen during the spring or autumn when the tree colours are at their best. But my visit was towards the end of July on a particularly warm, but overcast day. Located in Stourton, Wiltshire the garden is best approached by walking downhill from the car park, past the estate village with its inn, church and row of cottages and down to the lake.

There is a circular walk around the lake, taking in the woods, with glimpses between the trees of the garden buildings. The understorey is mostly a glossy evergreen with shrubs of cherry laurel and rhododendron, here and there a glimpse of wild flowers or hydrangeas and hostas.

Above on a hill is the Temple of Apollo and on the far bank of the lake, the portico and rotunda of the Pantheon. The buildings disappearing as you continue into the woodland and make your way around the lake.

The Temple of Apollo

The Temple of Apollo

The Pantheon

The Temple of Apollo

The Temple of Flora

The layout of the garden is not random, but alive with hidden symbolic meanings  and it is no coincidence that Stourhead’s story was based on Aeneas’s  journey to Carthage, following the fall of Troy. The first building you come to (if you walk anti-clockwise) is the Temple of Flora. Dedicated to the Roman goddess of flowers and spring, this temple was the first garden building erected by Henry Hoare II between 1744 and 1746. Over the doorway the Latin inscription reads:

‘Keep away, anyone profane, keep away’.

The visitor then descends on paths in an anti-clockwise route around the lake, recalling Aeneas’s descent into the underworld, finding Dido who turns away from him. Continuing his journey he enters the Grotto, where the river god shows him the way out and he completes his heroic quest by founding Rome, symbolised by the Pantheon.

Nymph

River God

Waterlilies

Canadian Geese

The church

Palladian bridge and the Bristol Cross

The Pantheon: Inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, this structure was built in 1753-54. It’s the largest garden building at Stourhead. ‘Pantheon’ means a temple sacred to all the gods. The temple is filled with statues of classical deities, including a marble Hercules created by Rysbrack. Well worth a look inside.

Leaving the Pantheon behind you take in a different vista. Across the lake to the Palladian bridge a five-arched stone bridge built in 1762. Although ornamental, the bridge was intended to look practical. It was designed to create the illusion that a river flows through the village and under the bridge.

High on the hill is the Temple of Apollo, built in 1765, by the architect Henry Flitcroft, to outdo William Chamber’s earlier Temple of the Sun at Kew. It is dedicated to Apollo, the sun god. Nestled on a hilltop, the temple has delightful views over the lake.

People picnic on the lawns. Sit on the steps. Fish in the lake. Although busy the grounds are so vast it doesn’t feel crowded.

The panoramic vistas are wonderful, but for me the best part are the old stable yard and walled kitchen garden, which were being renovated on my visit several years ago. A Foster and Pearson glasshouse dating from 1902 stands in the lower walled garden and housed a collection of pelargoniums.

The success of Stourhead lies in its painterly views; the way you can’t see all of the garden buildings at once and the anticipation of glimpsing a view through the trees. Hoare noted that

 ‘the greens should be ranged together in large masses as the shades are in a painting.’

I’m afraid that I prefer a plantsman’s garden to this landscape garden, my joy comes from the colours and forms of flowers and Stourhead doesn’t really ‘do’ flowers. But nothing can take away the fact that this is a truly magnificent garden landscape.

Size: 93 acres (38 hectares)

• Street:      Stourhead
• Postcode:  BA12 6QD
• City:           Stourton
• County:     Wiltshire
• Country:   United Kingdom
• Website:   Stourhead Gardens website

If you like a walk, long or short, then please visit Jo for her regular strolls in the UK and the Algarve and maybe you would like to join in too. She’s very welcoming.

Garden Portrait: Polesden Lacey

I have visited Polesden Lacey a few times, but always too late for the wonderful Mrs Greville’s Rose Garden. This National Trust owned property is in Great Bookham, Surrey and designed as the perfect setting for entertaining royalty, politicians and the top dogs of the Edwardian society. Just a little second home then. I’ve never been inside the house where Mrs Greville launched the party house with a royal gathering in 1909 with Edward VII as guest of honour. In the opulent dining room the table is set for this special occasion.

I’m just going to take you for a stroll around the grounds and the formal gardens so grab your parasol and floppy hat and we shall begin.

The House

The present house, a yellow-washed and green-shuttered villa was built in the 1820s, but redesigned for the Grevilles in the French Neo-classical style in 1906. The house stands in a marvellous setting, just below the southernmost ridge of the North Downs and the trees on the lower lawns frame sweeping views over the valley and wooded crest of Ranmore Common.

Rose Garden

Mrs Greville’s roses are a thing of wonder. She was keen to show the foreign dignitaries who visited her house a typical English rose garden. Set out in a simple cross pattern with long, box-edged, wooden pergolas, it was created on the site of the nineteenth century kitchen garden. During the summer months it is a mass of pink, white and crimson. Lavenders, clematis and even wisteria adorn the walls surrounding the garden.

It is enclosed by weathered bricks, statues and a border of lavender. Best in the summer months of June and July. My visit was in late August, but as you can see there was still plenty of colour in the gardens, even if most of the roses had ‘gone over’.

Classical Statues either side of a bench

Classical Statues

The Well Head

Wooden Pergolas

Iris and Lavender Gardens

Within the walled garden are compartments with collections of irises and lavenders. A discus thrower can be found in the lavender garden as well as other statues. A playful sundial situated where several paths converge.

Lavender-edged path

Discus Statue

Playful cupids

Sundial

More musical cupids

The Thatched Bridge

To the west a path leads past herbaceous borders to a winter garden shaded by three large Persian ironwood trees and beyond is a thatched bridge leading to the former Edwardian kitchen garden, now grassed over.

Zinnias

Winter garden – cyclamen

Thatched bridge

Herbaceous Borders

These borders line the pathway back to the house and have recently been restored. The southern half was turned into beds to grow potatoes in WWII but now are back to their former beauty.

At 137m long they are divided into four sections. Pastel colours with spires of yellow achillea, kniphofia and day-lilies. Grey-green yuccas, agapanthus add structure and there are many small shrubs such as whitebeam, smoke-bush and viburnums. Berberis, lilacs and hydrangea provide a succession of flowers.

Yuccas add structure

Ginger lily adds height

Agapanthus

Day lilies

Kniphofia

Colourful border

The Lawns

Mostly used for playing a game of croquet on or lounging on the deckchairs with loads of room for children to run around in safety. With the most wonderful views over the Surrey Hills. You can picnic on the Theatre lawn and in the orchard. More urns and statues and even a Roman bath can be found among the trees and hedges of the lower lawns.

Long Walk

The Long Walk stretches for 0.4km eastward above the valley and was begun in 1761. This walk will transport you back to those Edwardian days as you stroll along the terrace towards the colonnades which originally formed part of the regency house at Polesden Lacey. The views over the valley are worth admiring from the many benches along the way.

Size: 30 acres (12 hectares)

If you like a walk, long or short, then please visit Jo for her regular strolls in the UK and the Algarve and maybe you would like to join in too. She’s very welcoming.

Town: Great Bookham
Postcode: RH5 6BD
County: Surrey
Website: Polesden Lacey House and Gardens

 

Garden Portrait: Scotney Castle

Scotney Castle and Garden lies in west Kent close to Lamberhurst village and is one of the most romantic landscape gardens designed in the picturesque style. The planting is very natural with the ruins of the 14† century Old Castle at its centre. The ‘new’ castle was built in 1835 which was when the gardens around the ruins were created by Edward Hussey III.

View of the Old Castle from the Bastion

Terraces lead to a viewing point, the semi-circular bastion, with views over the Quarry Garden with its sandstone features, azaleas, ferns and other flowering shrubs towards the Old Castle and moat. There is a small triangular rose garden with a Venetian font and a lion’s-head fountain nearby and steps and paths lead down the Lime Walk and onto the main lawn before reaching the boathouse.

The Boathouse and the Sweet Gum tree

Autumn is a good time to visit with lots of oranges, reds and yellows bursting across the landscape. There are many beautiful trees in this garden including Japanese Acers, Sweet Gums, a Tulip tree and a Black Tulepo. My visit was in early September so too soon for much autumn colour, but it did mean that some plants were still flowering in the herbaceous borders and the rose garden.

The lawns are edged with mature trees and rhododendrons, kalmia and other shrubs and the Sweet Bourne fringed by trees feeds the moat. The walk leads to the stream garden and across a Chinese bridge where you will find a Henry Moore sculpture.

Sculpture by Henry Moore on the isthmus

The walk continues along the south-east side of the moat, with views focused on the house above the gardens, then returns along the north-west side to reach the approach to the Old Castle, which lies on the north-east of the two islands in the moat and forms the scenic focus of the garden landscape.

The path leads across a stone causeway and between remnants of stone gate piers leading into the Castle courtyard which contains a circular bed enclosed by yew hedges and herb beds.

Courtyard

The remains of the Old Castle (listed grade I), built in 1370, are of sandstone, with the single tower of the four possible originals, topped by its C17 conical roof and lantern, standing in the south corner of the curtain-walled island. It is like something out of a fairytale.

Reflection

Turret and stone steps

Japanese Anemones

Wooden doors

Inner Courtyard

Framed view

Size: 30 acres (12 hectares)

Thanks to Historic England for details contained in this post.

If you like a walk, long or short, then please visit Jo for her regular strolls in the UK and the Algarve and maybe you would like to join in too. She’s very welcoming.

Garden Portrait: Edinburgh Botanic Garden

It is almost 9 months since my visit to Edinburgh, where I finally met the restless lady who takes us on regular walks in the north-east of England and the Algarve where she spends all most some of her time. After a morning of walking the streets of the city we got on a bus and headed out to the Botanical Gardens for an hour or two.

The entrance gate is quite stunning.

Being the end of the summer season the main interest in the garden was seed heads. I found a few interesting ones.

Cardiocrinum giganteum

Paeonia Mascula triternata

Lilium Formosanum

Crab Apple – Malus sylvestris

Insects were still busy collecting the pollen.

We walked and we talked and we finally found our way to the Japanese garden area where the large lily pond enthralled us both and the red bridge enticed us further into the garden.

The not so subtle smell of candyfloss was in the air (Cercidiphyllum japonicum, known as the Katsura Tree) and the leaves on the acers were turning.

Eventually we arrived at the huge glasshouses, but decided against paying to enter as it was such a glorious day after the cold, damp, dreich day before and we wanted to make the most of being outdoors. Besides we really didn’t have the time needed to really take in what was inside.

The borders near the glasshouses were filled with late summer planting and a variety of colourful penstemons lined the pathway to the entrance, but deep in conversation we really only fleetingly took in the beauty of this garden.

Veronicastrum

Cosmos

Penstemons

Penstemons

Penstemons

Pausing to admire the view over towards Calton Hill and Arthur’s Seat in the distance. Places that in order to explore would mean another meeting as our time together drew to a close.

Calton Hill and Arthur’s Seat

It was lovely to finally meet up with Jo and to share a walk with her, so it is only fitting that this post is linked to her walks 🙂

IF YOU ENJOY A WALK, LONG OR SHORT, THEN HAVE A LOOK AT JO’S SITE WHERE YOU ARE WELCOME TO JOIN IN WITH HER MONDAY WALKS.

Garden Portrait: Glamis Castle Italian Garden

In addition to the Walled Garden is the more formally designed Italian Garden, close to the actual castle. The garden  was laid out by Countess Cecilia, the Queen Mother’s mother, c.1910 to designs by Arthur Castings. The fan-shaped parterres of formal beds are separated by gravel walks. Between the two gardens lies the Pinetum which was planted c.1870 and has a variety of exotic trees, many native to North America.

Other features include pleached alleys of beech, a stone fountain and ornamental gates which commemorate the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday.

Pleached beech trees

Queen Mother’s Gates

Fountain in need of repair

Pleached beech trees

Memorial to Princess Margaret who was born here

Bear’s Breeches (Acanthus mollis)

Like most formal Italian gardens there is a fair amount of statuary here.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

And in September the beds were full of colourful dahlias of all sorts of shapes and sizes.

IF YOU ENJOY A WALK, LONG OR SHORT, THEN HAVE A LOOK AT JO’S SITE WHERE YOU ARE WELCOME TO JOIN IN WITH HER MONDAY WALKS.

Garden Portrait: Glamis Castle Walled Garden

Glamis Castle lies in Angus, Scotland and is probably best known as the childhood home of the Queen Mother (Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon). At the age of four her father inherited the Earldom of Strathmore and Kinghorne and with it Glamis Castle and the family spent some of their time there.

It is the setting for Shakespeare’s Macbeth and is referred to several times in the play: – “Glamis thou art” “and yet woulds’t wrongly win: thou’dst have great Glamis”. It is widely believed that Duncan was murdered here by Macbeth.

Today it looks more like a French Chateau having been extensively renovated in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The walled garden is reached via a short walk through the estate alongside the Nature Trail and Pinetum.

Once used as a fruit and vegetable garden for the castle it fell into disrepair and only recently has major redevelopment work started, including the installation of a spectacular fountain.

Even in late September the garden was full of colour. Roses were still blooming.

The wide gravel pathways radiate from the centre of the garden with deep herbaceous borders on either side. Sedums, monarda, heleniums, echinacea, rudbeckia and asters were dominant.

Herbaceous Perennials

Rudbeckia

Monarda

Monarda

Asters

Trellises and pergolas were still covered in flowering roses and clematis and more dramatic colour can be seen in the brightly painted Japanese bridge and the vivid red door in the wall.

Roses and clematis

Clematis

Salvia?

Agave and sedum

(Korean burnet) Sanguisorba hakusanensis

Seed heads

Crocosmia ‘Hellfire’

Herbaceous border

Enticing doorway

Sunflower

Artichoke

Japanese bridge

Naturally I was drawn to the lean-to Victorian style glasshouses, which appear to still require a lot of work. However, the dilapidation has a charm of its own.

Next time we’ll have a wander around the Italian Garden.

IF YOU ENJOY A WALK, LONG OR SHORT, THEN HAVE A LOOK AT JO’S SITE WHERE YOU ARE WELCOME TO JOIN IN WITH HER MONDAY WALKS.

Garden Portrait: Dartington Hall

Designer Henry Avray Tipping (1855-1933) the distinguished architectural editor of Country Life magazine gave this advice to the RHS in 1928:

“Let there be some formalism about the house to carry on the geometric lines and enclosed feeling of architecture, but let us step shortly from that into wood and wild garden”

His reputation was based on the hundreds of articles he wrote on country houses and their gardens and in his many books, but his greatest legacy are the gardens he designed for his friends, one of which is Dartington Hall in South Devon.

The medieval hall itself was built between 1388 and 1400 for John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon, half-brother to Richard II. After John was beheaded, the Crown owned the estate until it was acquired in 1559 by Sir Arthur Champernowne, Vice-Admiral of the West under Elizabeth I. The Champernowne family then lived in the Hall for 366 years until 1925.

Dartington Hall

It sits amongst the bosky lanes of south Devon and easily missed if you don’t turn into the long drive by the church. The medieval Great Hall presides over a gaggle of subsidiary buildings, where many famous artists have gathered including dancers, actors, painters, potters, musicians, philosophers and poets through the long decades of the 20th century.

But I am here to introduce you to the gardens. Restored by the homesick American heiress, Dorothy Elmhirst, who along with her English husband Leonard, bought the hall in 1925, at its heart are the impeccable lawn terraces that recall the medieval tournament ground. All around are graceful green walks across lawns, beneath magnificent trees.

Jacob’s Pillow by Peter Randall-Page (May 2005)

“a house should sit at ease with nature”

The garden, really a small park, is Dorothy Elmhirst’s creation through 40 years. When they arrived the central feature was an overgrown formal Dutch-style sunken garden which Leonard Elmhirst dubbed the ‘Tiltyard’ and had its tiered shape accentuated. Drawings from the †19C revealed that it had been a lily pond making use of the nearby spring waters.

Azalea Dell and Swan Fountain

A flagged walk on the west side of the Great Lawn leads to terraces south of the Hall.

This is the sunny border as designed by Henry Avray Tipping and in spring is full of peonies and irises.

“retain the grace and feeling of the wild, while adding eclectic beauty of the cultured”

The Twelve Apostles

iris

peony

There are woodland garden walks which were designed by Beatrix Farrand, a famous American landscape architect, who loved to ‘paint’ with colour and form. Dartington is her only example of her work outside the USA.

pieris

pieris

pieris flowers

Azalea

Pocket Handkerchief Tree – Davidia involucrata

Woodland walk

The paths converge at the statue of Flora (also the name of Dorothy’s mother) which was presented to the Elmhirsts in 1967 by the people of Dartington. The statue dates back to the late †17C but the artist is unknown. Flora marks the site of the couples’ ashes and the statue is often found adorned with flowers.

Flora

Working with existing landscapes and views interested English landscape architect Percy Cane, who after WWII, created the walk around the garden including the Glade with its temple, the Azalea Dell and the long flight of steps between the Glade and the Tiltyard. Except for a burst of colour around the Swan Fountain (1949 and a gift from artist Willi Soukop) in spring, most of the palette in the garden is soft blues, white and yellows.

Steps between the Swan Fountain and the Tiltyard

The Glade

At the bottom of the Glade you find one of the several sculptures in the garden, this by Henry Moore. The Reclining Figure (1945-6) was created for this location as a tribute to the Elmhirsts’ first Arts Administrator, Christopher Martin, who died in 1944.

The Reclining Figure (Henry Moore 1945-6)

Alongside the sculpture is a row of 500 year-old Spanish Chestnuts.

At the other end of the terrace a Garden Access Bridge, designed by Peter Randall-Page leads to a dappled shady area where his sculpture Jacob’s Pillow can be found. The sphere of 12 spirals is inspired by the Twelve Apostles.

Garden Access Bridge

Jacob’s Pillow

Bronze Donkey (1925) by Willi Soukop an Austrian Arts and Crafts artist.

By now the somewhat cloudy sky was growing darker and it was obvious that we were in for a shower so we began to walk back to the entrance past the lovely stone and timber summerhouse (listed Grade II) with a thatched conical roof built by Rex Gardner in 1929 to overlook the valley south-east of the Hall. It was formerly a temporary nursery and then a studio for Willi Soukop. It was rebuilt in 1980 after a fire.

Summerhouse

Darkening skies

We were lucky to manage to reach a wonderful new Green Table café just outside the entrance without getting too wet and enjoyed a marvellous cup of coffee along with orange polenta cake and a delicious flapjack.

This is a beautiful peaceful garden with delightful views and a wonderful sense of traces of the past and the artistic and tranquil atmosphere.

IF YOU ENJOY A WALK, LONG OR SHORT, THEN HAVE A LOOK AT JO’S SITE WHERE YOU ARE WELCOME TO JOIN IN WITH HER MONDAY WALKS.

Sources include Wikipedia, the Dartington Hall Gardens leaflet and Historic England website