Cranborne Manor

Nepeta and alliums, meadow in apple orchard, apple training, containers, yew towers, clematis structure, mirror, big chair in meadow, allium mollie.

Hestercombe Gardens

 Hestercombe, Iris, country life mag 1908, planting scheme from a fine gardener, victorian 6500 bedding plants, 4days work to edge edwardian lawns, Argyranthemums, geranium pratense ‘black beauty’, duck pond, chinese bridge, meadow schemes, mediterranean patio, pink iceberg?, bedding, plant structures, sidewalk planting scheme, 

East Lambrook Manor

East Lambrook Manor is the garden and home of Margery Fish, writer and plantswoman.   This garden is described as the quintessential English cottage garden.

 sumac? seeds, astrantia, gladiolus, color, artemisia, bronze fennel M2, mint?, yellow iris, silver and gold, 

The Courts Gardens

 The Courts, square yew hedges, long grass and stunted daisies, iris, orange and megenta, long grass, meadow rue, pinks and purples, 

The Garden House - England

 Visited on August 24, 2016 -  For the overview of this tour, click here ==>>

Recently I was reading the tour itinerary led by a garden writer and she included The Garden House on her tour.  It got me thinking,  I recall this garden was clever and I really liked a couple of the gardens and their line of sharp A framed hedges.  So I wanted to review and update this old post from 2016.

I found this slope of interlocking ovals a thoughtful way to make a sloping lot more interesting.  The fact that the dimensions of this garden is almost exactly that of the typical San Francisco garden.  We have lots of typography too. 

Stourhead Landscape Gardens

East Lambrook Manor Gardens

Hestercombe Gardens

The Courts Gardens

 

Tintinhull House Gardens

Barrington Court Gardens

 

Montacute House Gardens

 

Kilver Court Gardens

Kilver Court in Shipton Mallet, attached not to a great country house but to a designer outlet mall.   A beautiful mall, not like something you see off the interstate in the US, but a cute collection of clothing stores, cafe, restaurant, nursery in a collection of stone buildings.   

The Home of the English Cottage Garden

In preparation for leading a small group around the great gardens of the Cotswold area I'm reading many books on our specific destinations. This week it's East Lambrook Manor House. Although I think it technically is not in the Cotswolds area, it is a must see for us, this is the Home of a the English Cottage Garden.

What is a Cottage Garden? Merely a small residence with some food and flowers planted around the yard? After reading 'The Cottage Garden - Margery Fish at East Lambrook Manor' by Susan Chivers & Suzanne Woloszynska, I would like to share some of my findings, thoughts and feelings about cottage gardening.

Cottagers started out very poor working the land and builder their homes. Naturally they started with useful plants that produced food, herbs and extending into flowering shrubs for their color and scent among other reasons. As their lives improved the cottagers began to collect those rare oddities they found in nature around them. "plants like double primroses and unusual violets. In this way, his garden became a sanctuary for mutants that would have otherwise disappeared. " For Mrs Fish, the preservation of the cottage varieties and selections was utmost important.

The cottagers in the 16th century became the main repository of plants as the monastic gardens began to fade. Well into the 18th century, the cottager were collecting and protecting selections of flowering plants. In the 18th century when the Landscape Gardening became all the rage, the cottagers took the lead in conserving many plants otherwise lost when the large formal estates were transformed into Landscapes. Finally I think the apogee of the Cottage Garden happen in the Edwardian era in the form of an Arts & Crafts Garden. This is when the Cottage Garden took center stage, allowed into the formal part of the garden. The great herbaceous borders created by Gertrude Jekyll and encouraged by William Robinson's writing, the Arts & Crafts Garden owed much to the conservation of the cottager.



Map of East Lambook

Angielskie Ogrody

With much excitement I found an English garden tour from Poland that utilized my photo of East Lambrook Garden, one of the 14 gardens we're going to visit in July, IN ENGLAND. We have 3 spots still available.



Check out another garden tour offer. This one is from a Polish perspective. We're offering a California professional gardener's perspective. I'm proud to say the author gave me credit for my photo of the garden at East Lambrook Manor House.

Kasia Bellingham is leading a 'Pride and Prejudice' themed tour in England.

Angielski Ogrody Tour & Blog

Our picks have some overlap. We presenting 300 years of English Gardens as our theme.

Both tours include East lambrook, Hampton Court, Tintinhull, Iford and Hestercombe.

We have two spots remaining on our tour July 11-18th 2014. Click here for the itinerary.

Stourhead Landscape Gardens

This is the oldest garden that you will see with Mike and I on our summer tour. It is in the natural landscape style ala Capability Brown. This garden was designed by Henry Hoare in 1740. The house was in the Hoare family for 300 years. It has since been turned over to the national trust.



We will visit this garden on our tour of English gardens this summer. I will try to post regularly to FB about the places that we are planning on going as a way to seduce you to join us on this tour. Please write to me for details. The tour is July 11-18. We have designed the tour with a historical perspective. We will show you over 300 years of gardens. From Stourhead to the most current trends at the Hampton Court Flower Show.

Please think about joining us. It's going to be amazing. You deserve a vacation.

Smooches,
Frank

Hestercombe Gardens - England

This garden was built in three separate gardening eras. The first is Georgian, then Victorian and the third is Edwardian. The last one is a Gertrude Jekyll design.



Lutyens was the architect for the building pictured below and all the rock work around the sunken garden. Gertrude soften all the hard lines and sharp rocks with an amazing simple palette that works so well. It rivals Sissinghurst in grandeur and historical significance.

Lost Gardens of Heligan

We arrived late in the day; just an hour to see a big garden. We focused on the kitchen garden, cold frames and greenhouses. This is some beautiful farmland. Lots of sheep.

Italian villa fountain with yellow Flag in the corners.

RHS Rosemoor Garden

There is much to see here and we've come to a routine when we visit the larger English Gardens. We start with a stroll out into the wooded area to see the Georgian landscapes. Then through the many sub gardens as we head our way back to the more formal gardens as we close in on the house. Starting in "Nature" and progressing toward civilization in completely respectful way.

The Royal Horticulture Society's garden at Rosemoor was our first RHS experience. I took home the impression that 'it's all about the plants' garden. None of the buildings were highlighted but played a supporting role framing the garden into it's rural/sub-urban setting. Plants were labeled well. After 10 days in the English countryside, we were still on the edge of London's sphere of influence. Rural is different over there and doesn't match my California term for rural.

Eden Project - England

We spent the night in a youth hostel in the Dartmoor National Park in Cornwall. Eden Project is a reuse of a spent quarry. I'm not sure what they mined here but it was a big terraced hole that's been reclaimed over that last decade.