We went to Waddeston by default! We were planning to visit another garden in Oxfordshire, but as we got close we decided to check the details of the garden, especially how to find it. The trouble was the garden details also showed that we were visiting on a day when it was closed. Oops!!
Plan B quick! Luckily we found another garden literally a mile from where we had parked up to get directions to our original destination. From the description in our book, the garden at Waddeston did not sound my style of gardening but the architecture of the house itself sounded interesting. So we decided to go and have a look.
We arrived to discover Waddestonto be an architecturally fussy building in the style of a French chateau. I admired it but didn’t like it. Jude, the Undergardener liked it a lot.
There were lots of fussy little details in the building, such as this ornate gate post.
The gardens close to the house were very formal similar to the bedding schemes found in our town parks. Too bright and again too fussy for my liking.
But this one bed was interesting as the colours were far more subtle. It turned out that this border was based on ancient lace work from the house.
Walking a few minutes from the house into the more informal areas of the garden we came across a real surprise, a very ornate terrace of aviaries housing rare birds. These birds were being bred with the intention of building up species numbers and reintroducing them back into their natural habitats.
Further from the house away from the formal gardens there were small cameos which interested me more.
So, although I was unsure when we arrived at Waddeston, I will now admit that I did enjoy the visit. Even though I found the rigidity of the formal bedding schemes with their gaudy colours unpleasant, I can see that they were well executed here.
greenbenchramblings 