Category: garden seat

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Pont Faen – another lock down garden in Powys

We visited another NGS garden in Powys as we continued our way through lock down, this time the garden was on the edge of the town of Knighton. Pont Faen was owned and garden by a retired farmer and his wife.

The garden wrapped around the house and had a colourful collection of alstroemeria, several roses, dahlias and many bright coloured patches of rudbeckias.

   

All these collections of colourful plants were scattered around a garden of lawn and large sweeping borders, which allowed us to see large parts of the garden at the same time.

The gardeners here have a wonderful use of foliage either in clumps of species together such as these hostas or integrated into borders as a foil for the flowering plants.

Another interesting garden visit to help cheer us up while locked down – so enjoyable!

 

 

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Are You Sitting Comfortably? – No 18 in an occasional series

Here we are with the 18th post in this series all about garden seats which we discover and like on our many garden visits. I will cover gardens we visited in the spring, beginning with Whitlenge Gardens and Nursery, a garden designed to spotlight the owners garden planning business. I hope you enjoy looking at the selection.

We visited our friend Julie’s garden with our Hardy Plant Society mini-group and found a few chairs there too, including a set of four pieces made by her son, beautiful simple pieces sitting in a shaded woodland area.

 

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Gardening in lockdown – Sitting Comfortably at Avocet

I have occasionally shared posts for years now called “Are you sitting comfortably?” where I feature garden seats we find on our exploration of other people’s gardens. As we are in “lock down” now we are not visiting any gardens other than our own here at Avocet, so I thought it would be fun to feature all the garden seating in our Avocet garden.

We hope you enjoy sharing them with us! I have taken a photo of each seat and then one or two of the view from each seat. This lock down period means that we have no visitors to sit in our seats – how strange!

Let us start in the front garden where we have a pair of purple chairs and a seat under an arch.

Here are the views from the arched seat…….

…..and from our purple chairs.

Moving into the back garden the seats become harder to find as they are situated in each area sometimes well hidden away from paths. The first seats, a pair of wooden folding chairs are alongside the Conservatory Garden give us views over the Conservatory Border.

 

Nearby is a set of metal table and four chairs sitting alongside the rill in the Rill Garden. The view from here looks out across the Rill Garden towards the Winter Garden.

 

If we then follow the central pathway and take the first grass path on the left we find ourselves in the Hot Garden where we have two hand crafted wood and metal seats made for us by sculptor Nik Burns. We like his work as he uses wood selected fro woodland local to us. They are so beautiful being made for us using local elm and burr oak, so special!

These seats afford us views around the Hot Garden.

Next to the Hot Garden is a path that we can cross over to enter the Japanese Garden where we find just one seat a cold concrete bench, from where we can get a good look around this part of our garden.

 

If we then wander past the Wildlife Pond and the Bog Garden we can visit Arabella’s Garden where we have an old Victorian Railway Platform seat made from cast iron and wood. From this seat we can see the plantings in Arabella’s Garden and also look out across the farmland beyond our garden.

 

Brightly coloured table and chairs sets are found in the final two garden rooms, The Secret Garden and The chicken Garden. The orange set is in The Chicken Garden and the pale blue set in The Secret Garden.

The photos below show on the left the view from the orange seats and on the right the view from the pale blue seats.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Are you sitting comfortably – no 21 in an occasional series

First set of seats in this installment about garden seating features those we found while on holiday near Pembroke followed by more we discovered at Bodnant Garden in north Wales. Then a set we found at Wildegoose Nursery and Garden and finally some we found at our friends, Nathalie and Tony’s Oswestry garden and Ruth and Mike’s village garden in North Shropshire.

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Chatsworth – part one

In 2019 we spent a warm and humid mid-July day at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire where we explored the gardens for the whole day, refreshed by the largest ice-cream cones we have ever enjoyed. It is one of the UK’s largest gardens and is full of interesting planting, unusual features and some wonderful glasshouses. These glasshouses are the work of a past head gardener Joseph Paxton. You need a whole day to really appreciate these gardens and you need to plan your day well.

The first set of photos shows the beauty of the glasshouses  both old and new at Chatsworth and a beautiful mature specimen of Cedrus atlantica ‘Glauca’ and a subtly planted pot.

We made our way around the glasshouses towards the productive garden, which we knew had been developed since our previous visit and enjoyed some interesting plants and plant combinations along the way.

Sculpture is always in evidence at Chatsworth and there was plenty of interest on this visit, from classical to modern, wood and stone and hidden away throughout the gardens.

 

And then we came across this amazing seat which is a piece of sculpture in its own right.

   

 

 

 

 

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Are you sitting comfortably – no 14 in a very occasional series

Back with another set of garden seats for you to enjoy. Imagine yourself taking a seat for a rest, to take in the view and appreciate the comfort of the seats themselves.

Firstly let me share a few seats from the gardens at Ivy Croft in Herefordshire, a garden open for its huge snowdrop collection and interesting winter plants.

We recently visited John’s Garden attached to Ashwood Nursery in the West Midlands, and being in February seats became very obvious features. They varied so much in style!

Next I want to share with you seats from the gardens at Erddig, a Welsh National Trust property.

So that is it for this collection of garden seats. More to follow in the future!

 

 

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A canal-side garden in winter – John’s Garden Part 2

I found this unpublished post originally written back in mid-February of 2018. I hope you enjoy it!

Back at John’s Garden for our February visit in the cold we can carry on with our exploration as we wander further along the canal-side borders to the canal bridge. In part two we will move along the canal borders before returning along the opposite side of the patch, while along the way discovering a pool, sculpture and a terrace and lots more exciting plants and plant pairings.

Conifers, grasses and trees and shrubs with coloured stems and bark give a common theme throughout. The first two photos below show the matching gold coloured foliage of a group of conifers and a swathe of grasses.

          

The Rhodendron above has a surprise for you if you turn over its leaves! Who would expect orange on the reverse side of a touch dark green leaf? And it feels like the softest felt.

Skimmia “Kew Green” has unusual green flowers instead of the usual reddish shades, while the Witch Hazels sport many shades of yellow.

 

Snowdrops in drifts light up the ground beneath the tree. Ilex “Ferox” sparkles with variegated leaves curled and heavily spined, probably one of the best hollies available for the small garden.

 

Metal panels with cut-out shapes of fern leaves reflect the planting beneath them in the border. John features many different versions of the low growing evergreen shrub, Leucothe. This one was a real beauty!

 

White can be a powerful colour when the winter sun catches it, as in the bleached stems of Teasels, the trunks of white-bark Birch and the ground covering Carex.

  

Along the way a beautiful pool gave a space to slow down and take a deep breath to take in all we had so far seen.

 

Every garden however small needs seats and they must be chosen to fit the design and atmosphere.

  

Sculpture is scattered around the garden providing us with pleasant surprises among our delight at its plants.

        

Turning at the far end of the garden we had a quick look at the new garden which has just begun being created, Adam’s Garden, designed in memory of John’s gardener who died very young late last year. This will be a great addition to the garden and we look forward to seeing it develop. We then returned on the opposite side of the long garden making interesting discoveries all the way.

The terrace is a place where you need to stop and study the small details, the pots full of original planting ideas, trimmed shrubs, interesting foliage and some floating blossoms.

    

Exploring an interesting little terrace garden finished our visit and we returned to the cafe via John’s lawned area with Betula, Snowdrops, Crocus and sheep.

We have a list of the other few open days the rest of the year so aim to return. All of John’s open days are to raise money for charity including some for the National Garden Scheme, the NGS. We will be back!

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Are you sitting comfortably? No 18 in a very ocassional series

So for number 18 in this very ocassional series of posts about all sorts of garden seating we have found on our travels we continue with the gardens of Cornwall. The first garden we visited in Cornwall while on holiday was a small garden called Poppies Cottage Garden and here are the seats from our exploration of this gente cottage styled patch.

From this little garden I will now move on to the much larger and much more famous Eden Project. There was a wide selection of garden seats on the slopes of the landscape in which its famous domes are situated.

So that is it for post 18 in this very occasional series about the seats we find in gardens we visit. See more in post 19.

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The Sheffield Gardens – Part 3 –

David Clayden is the third gardener from the Sheffield School of Planting whose garden we visited in the weekend arranged by the NGS. His garden was completely different to the other two but enjoyed by us equally. The garden had a gentle feel to it and it was full of wildlife. It had many features that would attract wildlife including dry-stone walls, green roofs and patches of ferns and grasses.

We found the narrow entrance half way down a steep street of terraced houses, and we got a feeling for the garden as we walked through the tiny front patch.

We then wandered around the side of the house into the back and immediately felt calm and relaxed. With plenty of places to sit including seats on a deck in front of a summerhouse complete with green roof, there were opportunities throughout the garden to sit and observe the planting and soak up the atmosphere.

   

I will finish this report from the three Sheffield School gardeners home gardens with a selection of more images of this third garden. I hope you have enjoyed looking at these three Sheffield gardens which we visited one July weekend.

  

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Biddulph Grange – a fantasy garden

Biddulph Grange north of Stoke-on-Trent, is a garden we re-visited this week after decades. We remembered it to be a garden created by the imaginative Mr Bateman who made a garden of several different rooms. Egypt, China, the Dahlia Walk, The Stumpery and two avenues one featuring Lime trees the other Western Red Cedar. This time we visited the gardens with our friend Pam who we know from college 40 years ago. So we were catching up a friend and a garden!

Please come with us for a wander round by following my gallery. Just click on the first photo and then navigate using the arrows.