Letters to Pop: 1 August 2016 - Gardens of England Part 1

I had a bunch of firsts in July. First trip abroad, first trip to England, first group tour: three firsts in a single visit. And I don't have enough superlatives in my vocabulary to tell you how amazing, incredibly beautiful, fascinating and fabulous it was.

This trip was organized by two women who teach Master Gardening classes in Michigan. Since my friend Amy completed the twelve week training and the additional 40 hours of volunteer work, (although I think she came in closer to 80 hours) and is now a certified Master Gardener, I could not say YES fast enough when she asked if I'd like to go with her.

I am finding this is one of the hardest adventures to write about. How do I winnow thousands of photos down to just a couple illustrations? How can I possibly describe the majesty, the eccentricities and individuality of each garden without boring you to tears? How can I possibly provide just a taste when the banquet was so huge?

This trip included amazing gardens, castles, gargoyles galore, wonderful metal work, birds and so much more. This post will begin to cover the gardens.

I will say that I found the structure of the gardens more interesting than the posies themselves. So I'll be showing more structure than flowers.

Day 2. Hampton Court Flower Show and Palace Gardens
We started in London at the Hampton Court Flower Show, the largest flower show in the world held on the grounds of the Hampton Court Palace. The show was great way to start the trip. Hundreds of vendors who all displayed beautiful gardens packed to the hilt with plants at the peak of bloom. Amy and I wanted to linger over each display, oohing and aahing over the combination of plants, the combination of colors used, not to mention the structures and ornamentation.

Many of the displays concentrated on a single type of flower. Check out these foxtail lilies and pitcher plants.

There were elaborate displays.

And inspirational displays of plants that really look beautiful together.

I was absolutely charmed to find a Punch and Judy show in progress, but even more surprised to discover it was still funny. Punch was busy battling an alligator in the episode I watched.

While the garden show displays were fun on a personal level, the Hampton Court Palace Gardens were spectacular. The grounds were manicured to perfection.

It was only fitting that Henry VIII was presiding over the grounds.

Check out the trees in the background--all trimmed to matching shapes.

The Privy Garden at the palace was formal and lovely. One of my favorite things about all the gardens we saw were the walls. Brick walls, stone walls, hedge walls--they all worked to create intimate spaces.

Next to the Privy Garden were a series of smaller gardens, each walled in by hedges. The perspective is hard to see in this photo, but there are four levels in the garden below.

The windows in the right hand side of the hedge above look into this next garden, which is only two levels. Still very formal and beautiful.

Here is Amy making good use of a window. Makes you wonder if they are part of the garden design, or made so guards could keep an eye on their royal charges.

Day 3. Wisley Gardens
Wisley was started in 1878, the largest and one of the newer gardens we toured. It featured many kinds of gardens.

Water gardens

Formal Rose Gardens: Here are climbing roses arching over the path into the rose gardens. Amy is for scale. You can see how she is dwarfed by the roses.

Rock Gardens

Mixed Borders--our tour leaders described England's flora as being flowers on steroids. Every plant was exponentially larger than you would find in the states.

Not only were there mixed borders there were long borders. This swath of lawn has a border on each side that is easily 25 feet wide. The long border itself is at least 200 yards long.

Delphiniums were often seven to eight feet tall. And the blues were intense.

In addition there were test gardens, vegetable gardens, orchards, wildflower meadows, two different kinds of forests and a gorgeous glass house that butted up to a lake. There was also a huge nursery where you could buy plants.

The gardens varied from huge sprawling areas to tiny, personal spaces, and most of them had some kind of water feature at the center.

Day 4. Sissinghurst Castle and Gardens followed by Hever Castle.

Sissinghurst Garden is among my favorites. Poet Vita Sackville-West and her writer/politician husband Harold Nicolson fell in love with a ruined estate built in the mid-1700s. They restored some buildings added more and created gardens. Vita was part of the Bloomsbury Group that included Virginia Woolf, but in England she is better known for her garden design.

Looking at the castle from the front you have no idea what is in store behind the walls.

The first surprise? The tower you see in the center of the photo above was built by Vita to be her library and writing room.

It is four stories high, and not attached to the castle. The flat space between the two towers provides a wonderful birds-eye view of the estate. The tower has a very steep circular stairway that gets smaller the higher you climb. It is actually a little bit scary.

Vita's library and writing room

Standing on the roof you can look down into the gardens.

You can see how she used brick walls and hedges to create many little, okay, not so little, gardens of different types. Most of them are accessible by paths coming in on all four sides.

One of my favorite elements in these gardens were the doorways from one garden into the next. Sometimes it was a door that opened revealing a surprise. Other doors let you see down a path into two more gardens. There were narrow paths, one person wide where hedges towered over you. There might be a dead-end with a statue, or what might look like a dead-end would have side entries not visible until you walked all the way to the end.

Overall this garden was stunning. The structure, the design, the colors all worked together to make a truly remarkable experience.

Hever Castle.
Built in the 1270, this castle was later the home where Anne Boleyn grew up. Her father is buried in Saint Peter's church next to the castle grounds. Such history!

The castle was wonderful: complete with a moat, crenellated, and better yet, the gatehouse which is the only original part of the castle has the oldest working portcullis in England. Better yet, it is said to be haunted. What more can you ask of a castle?

Over the centuries the castle fell into disrepair and was purchased by disenfranchised American millionaire William Waldorf Astor. He restored the castle and added to and restored the gardens to house his collection of statuary. The gardens include topiary, a hedge maze, a water maze, several rose gardens and Astor's Italianate gardens.

Drawbridge and portcullis

Among the topiary in the garden is a chess set made from yew in the style of pieces used from the time of Henry VIII. This was created in 1904 by Astor. In front of the chess pieces is a sphere sundial dating from 1710.