The May bank holiday arrives, and even the trees join in the celebrations, strewing their petals across the ground to provide a glorious carpet on which to tread…
Read moreDay 123: considered disorder
There’s a little corner in the gardens at Penshurst Place that a casual observer might be forgiven for thinking had been overlooked by the gardeners…
Read moreMay in the garden
May brought us sunshine and rain, burgeoning borders, a late frost and, of course, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. It’s the month of the gardening calendar when everything goes a bit bonkers – in a wonderful, exuberant way. Always quite nice to reach the end with your sanity intact, and your body parts functioning, though by the final week I was being reminded of the need of a good stretch, and that its about time I really ought to be getting some serious yoga practice in.
Read morePenshurst Place
I’d not intended to write a blog post on my visit to the gardens of Penshurst Place a couple of weekends ago. It’s scarcely a ten minute drive from my front door, and I’d popped out to take some photographs for Instagram. The thing is, I feel I’ve about exhausted everybody’s patience on that particular platform with images from the visit and so it seems they were destined for the blog all along.
Read moreMagic in the walls
The entrance to the walled gardens |
While it’s undoubtedly the magnificence of the house, the hundreds of metres of beautifully clipped yew hedging, the topiary shapes, pools and fountains which create such a sense of history and grandeur, one thing that really touches me about this garden is the superabundance of tree fruit. Not very posh at all. Apple, pear and plum trees are literally everywhere, confined not to an orchard beyond the garden walls or kept in check in a dedicated kitchen garden, but given pride of place – not least along the recently replanted herbaceous border which runs across the centre of the garden. I think it’s this aspect which somehow relates the garden to the land on which it sits; there’s a sense of storybook charm here, with doors cut into hedges leading to wondrous and unexpected garden rooms (one with its own grass amphitheatre and stage!), but it retains a deeply grounded and earthy quality which makes you feel welcome, inviting you to linger.
The Stage Garden, with the elusive pumpkin number three beneath the tree |
RHS members get in free.
To the side of the Lime Walk, with the outside of the garden wall on the left |