Kiftsgate Hidcote and Spetchley Park

[Tony Willis]

We have just got back from two days in the Cotswolds mainly to enable Mrs W. to visit Cotswold Garden Plants. On the way we visited Kiftsgate and Hidcote. We stayed over night and went to the nursery the following morning and visited Spetchley Park near Worcester in the afternoon before the slog back up the M5/M6 to home with a car load of plants

Here are some pictures from Kiftsgate which was looking just superb.

[Paddy Tobin]

Tony,

Kiftsgate looks wonderful - and isn't the 'artistic pond' a complete contrast to the previous photographs?

Mary and I received an invitation to Hidcote recently, for the relaunch of a book on the garden, but, unfortunately, couldn't make it.

Lovely photographs, Paddy

[Paul T]

Glorious, Tony.  My favourite is the "view back from pool".  It just looks so cosy and inviting!  Would love to wander there.

[ian mcenery]

Tony very nice pictures as usual. We were there a couple of weeks ago when the Paeonies were flowering, perhaps we should go back for the roses now. For those of you who can get to the Cotswolds Kiftsgate Garden is only a couple of hundred yards from Hidcote so a full day out. 

[Tony Willis]

Ian it was really superb.The Kiftsgate rose was not out but will be in the next few days.

From the relative calm of Kiftsgate we moved on to Hidcote with its hordes.

I am not a fan of National Trust gardens which I think are bland done to a formula and sadly lacking in flair. Run by a committee. £9 each to go in,money which could have been better used on some more plants. However here are a few pictures.

[Paul T]

Lovely, Tony,

Ian, that first Paeonia is glorious.  What a clump and what a stunning flower.  Looks a bit like 'Bowl of Beauty', but I think the centre is a little different.  Spectacular pic!

[Tony Willis]

Our final visit was to Spetchley Park near Worcester. What a find this was. It is a wonderful garden full of massive ancient trees and then rare and interesting trees shrubs and plants around every corner. It has four herbaceous borders each about 50 metres long a large lake and long woodland walks. Much of the garden is quite weedy,they do not get enough visitors to finance it and these areas are full of masses of naturalised lilies and other plants.The house only dates back to the 1600s but the church is much older. The Kiftsgate rose was in full flower here.

[Paddy Tobin]

Tony,

Many thanks for the further photographs of the gardens you visited. They certainly would entice me to organise myself to go and visit.

I appreciate your comments on the National Trust gardens. Mary regularly says that she prefers to visit a "person's garden" rather than some park-like development which one can view the National Trust gardens as. However, to contradict that comment, we visited Cornwall recently and were to gardens both N.T. and private. It struck us that the N.T. gardens showed the benefits of money being spent in them. The maintenance was excellent, while regeneration and renewal was evident. Some of the private gardens - the older Cornish gardens - showed signs of being past their best days and of being past the capabilities of their owners to continue to garden them in the manner in which they both needed and deserved to be gardened. The N.T. seemed to us to be doing excellent work and, frankly, we were envious of not having such a range of gardens available to us here in Ireland.

The admission prices can certainly be high but an annual subscription could, we realised too late, be recouped in a week of garden visiting, leaving one with free visits to remarkable gardens for the rest of the year. One might make the same comment re the RHS gardens - the annual subscription gives great value for garden visits. I think you are simply spoiled for choice and that it takes a visitor from abroad to appreciate how good you really have it. You have a country of the most amazing and beautiful gardens and the N.T. is to the forefront of maintaining this tradition and standard.

Paddy

[Tony Willis]

Paddy I do appreciate what we have and we also visited gardens in Cornwall last year which was a great trip and it is true there is a big difference in maintainance and in the past some wonderful ones in Ireland.

My problem is that whilst I can see that historic houses need to be frozen in time these great gardens were put together by some of the foremost gardeners of their time and they used the latest plants in their planting.When we got to Hidcote my wife who thinks it is wonderful said 'its just like I remember'(we last visited 20 years ago.) I do not think they maintain the tradition of being at the forefront of gardening but are stuck in the past. I have no problem with the quality but to me they regenerate and renew like it has always been.

I suppose gardening like many other interests is a very personal thing and I think I will stick with Mary's view on it. We have only to look at the mixed views generated by Christopher Lloyd at Geat Dixter.

Judging by the crowds at these places mine is very clearly a minority view.

[Giles]

A few from Spetchley today:
Acer palmatum
Taxodium
Salix x2

[Giles]

..and some hellebores.

[mark smyth]

Someone help me ... It's doing my head in to think of the name of the lady who lives in the house in Spetchley Park. She usually attends the Gala but wasnt there this year.

[mark smyth]

Juliette.

[David Nicholson]

Didn't she have a balcony?

[mark smyth]

yes but this one is much younger