Growing up in Green Spaces

In the latest National Trust magazine I found a photographic competition. It’s part of their focus on getting people back outdoors, so the brief is to ‘capture your favourite green space and the way people enjoy it’. It got me thinking about the photos I’ve taken down the years, and how many of the ones I’ve taken of my youngest granddaughter were in one of those green spaces. They form a lovely record of her growing up.

Here's one taken in January 2006 in Richmond Park near London. She was two and a half.

And here's how she and her mother were enjoying the green space together that day.

I'll be sorting out some more as the years went by. It should make a good series for my blog.

Wordless Wednesday: Riverside Garden

Wordless Wednesday: Kingston Lacey, Stately Home

Snowdrop Time at Kingston Lacey

I was forced to taake a couple of days off this week due to technical problems, hopefully fixed now.  Anyway, no internet connection, so one day I persuaded hubby to come with me to Kingston Lacey, our nearest National Trust property on land.  The house isn't open until April, but you can walk around the grounds.  I wanted to see the snowdrops again, and I wasn't disappointed.  All over the gardens there arebeautiful drifts and carpets of them

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Busy, Busy, Busy

Pic of Torquay's inner harbour by Laura H. at Wikimedia Commons

The last couple of weeks have gone by in a blur. I really need to sort out what I want to remember from them. I took the bus to Torquay last Thursday week and spent time with my sister and some friends. I rode the Jurassic Coast on the top of a double decker bus and it was just fantastic.

I went to two very different National Trust houses. One was a Gothic Revival house designed by William Burges for a wealthy family in the 19th century. The other was a holiday home of Agatha Christie on the banks of the River Dart - I'd seen the garden before but not inside the house, which is crammed with her family's collections.

I returned home a week ago and that was another adventure, as I got a lift part of the way from my brother-in-law in an enormous artic lorry - a first for me. He had to drop me a mile or more from Yeovil Junction station as he couldn't take the lorry down the narrow lanes that surround it. I had a pleasant country walk to get my train.

I did last week's regular work and then this week's before last Friday when Hubby and I took off for a family wedding in Leicester. The ceremony was in a Leicester church, then we headed away from the city to a village and hotel a few miles out. It turned out to be a very historic building with a Templar Chapel attached and the place where William Wilberforce drafted his Abolition of Slavery Bill.

Highlights for guests were: being greeted with a glass of fruity Pimms; a beautifully cooked meal in good company; a chocolate fountain available for several hours; buffet and disco in the evening; and having to light a Chinese lantern and watch it float away with about 50 others once darkness had fallen.

Came home yesterday and have spent today preparing rooms for guests arriving tomorrow - a very old friend and her two grandchildren - and staying a week. More people arriving on Thursday, more on Friday, and possibly more on Saturday.

It's definitely all go here. Middle of next week I shall crash. Hope to get around to sharing more details of places after that.

Brownsea Island

On Sunday I went to Brownsea Island with my weekend guests. It was a first visit for all of us, but hubby and I are the lucky ones because we live close to it. You have to get a ferry from Poole Quay to get there. The picture is of the landing area. I'm not sure when it was taken but it hasn't changed.

I will go back alone and take my camera. I rarely take it when in company because it is a bulky SLR and I get distracted, either from my friends' conversation or from taking my pictures.

Most of then island now belongs to the National Trust. The exceptions are the church, which belongs to the Church of England, and the castle, which belongs to the John Lewis Partnership. The current castle probably bears no resemblance to the original defensive fortification, which was built to protect the small entrance to Poole Harbour with its 100+ mile perimeter.

Beyond the castle is an area of varied countryside dotted here and there with buildings. To the north is a wildlife sanctuary, but the red squirrels people the woodlands all over. We were lucky enough to glimpse one - unusual for such a warm day. Red squirrels are natives of the UK but they are now very rare since grey squirrels were imported from the US bringing a deadly disease which killed off the local population. Brownsea Island has been protected from the greys by the surrounding sea and is one of just a couple of places where you can still see them.

The island's walks are delightful and offer wonderful views across the water to the eastern shores of the harbour and the Purbeck Hills. But its main claim to fame is being the birthplace of the scouting movement because Lord Robert Baden Powell set up the first scout camp there in 1907.

We really enjoyed our visit there and the ferry trips, which included a tour round the island and some Whitbread fizz on the way back. (For the uninitiated, this is a frothy British beer.)

I can't wait to go back, do more exploring and get some photos to share.

Another Stourhead Visit

We went back to Stourhead yesterday. For anyone who doesn’t know, this is a magnificent UK National Trust estate with a grand house and a beautiful landscaped garden surrounding a large lake. While the house is closed for the winter, the gardens are open all year round.

It’s about an hour’s drive from our new house, but my son and his girlfriend still live in the locality and we went to see them and ended up there. We didn’t actually go in because we didn’t have a lot of time, certainly not enough to justify the £7.40 each they would have to pay as non-members. Hubby and I have membership cards that entitle us to free entry. We used them there a lot when we lived close by.

You can still get a good view of Stourhead garden from the road at the bottom of the hill from the car park, and we got plenty of exercise trekking back up again. Then we popped into the restaurant for coffee and a snack, so they did get some of our cash. We also visited the farm shop for some of their delicious steak, cheese and c ream so all in all, they did quite well out of us. And we had a great evening meal when we got home again.

Anyway, I thought it was time to post some more Stourhead photos.

A Dedicated Gardener

You may remember this photo, which I posted here early last summer after visiting the walled garden of Mottisfont Abbey.

I’ve just discovered the name of the rose. It happened that, yesterday, I was catching up with some reading while sitting on the throne. In my National Trust magazine I suddenly came across a very similar photo that was unmistakably the same rose. It’s called ‘Graham Thomas’ after the consultant gardener who set up the rose collection there when the Trust took over the care of the walled garden in 1972.

The magazine ran a feature about the remarkable work of this man who died in 2003 at the ripe old age of 94. He became the first gardens adviser to the NT early in 1955 and twenty years later the Queen recognised his service by awarding him an OBE. He worked tirelessly at a wide variety of properties to restore, develop and conserve the gardens as they were meant to be viewed.

Thomas also wrote many horticultural books and illustrated them with his own drawings and paintings. Wikipaedia lists 13 of them. His work was his life and he told a colleague that he had never had time to marry (according to the magazine feature).

I’m actually quite proud of my photo. I think it’s just as good as the ones in the magazine and on Wikipaedia. But Shutterstock turned it down for having no commercial value.

PS I'll be away for the next few days and don't know if I will be able to post or drop my EC card. Back to normal next week.

We'd fully intended to visit the national collection of old English roses yesterday. I had been trying to get there in June when they are in their full glory. I wanted the experience and to take some pics to illustrate and article idea.

But it was not to be. Something came up and hubby had to work in the morning. The trip would have been too long a drive after that. We compromised and went to a nearer National Trust garden at Tintinhull. I took these pics there.