Author: Sarah Salway
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Ruins and personality at Great Comp
Great Comp garden, near Sevenoaks in Kent, is a remarkably personal garden, wrapped round a 17th century house. Dotted around the garden are the ruins which, by the time you spot the second one, you realise must be the creation of the same person who has created the rest of the garden. They offer an…
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Sculpture, sun-tattoos and the ‘art garden’ – Marle Place
This may well be the quickest garden-visit-to-post on here because I was in Marle Place gardens just this afternoon. And talking about speedy, look autumn is on its way. There’s a reason for putting this up now though. Marle Place shuts to the public on the 29th September so there is only just enough time…
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Beekeeper in the Garden
And inside the hive a baby soothed by the whir of wings as fragile as honesty leaves, how warm honey pulses through flower veins to the sticky sweet nest, dripping through fur as drones search on mouths open hungry for nectar My friend (and sometimes artistic collaborator) Ellen Montelius let me spend an afternoon with…
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The Homewood – ‘temple of costly experience’
It’s impossible to talk about the garden of The Homewood without referencing the house. (And the house without referencing the garden.) This is a modernist gem, famously built by the architect Patrick Gwynne in 1938 when he was only 24. Let’s repeat that. Only 24! Perhaps it’s not surprising then that his ‘clients’ were his…
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Finchcocks – A Musical Garden
It’s grey and dreary here today so I make no apologies for writing about a garden I visited last summer* when the sun was still shining and the flowers blooming… Now, doesn’t that make you feel better? And there’s still time for you to visit Finchcocks this year as it is open until the end…
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Tortoises and tulips in Istanbul
We didn’t do many garden-visits during our recent – short – visit to Istanbul, but then in some ways the garden was with us in the form of decoration everywhere we looked. Or tulips were anyway. They even formed part of the city’s sadly unsuccessful Olympic 2020 bid. It’s a reminder that tulips originally came…
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“Temptation whispers from the window” – A visit to Virginia Woolf’s garden at Monk’s House
“You must come and sit there on the lawn with me, or stroll in the apple orchard, or pick – there are cherries, plums, pears, figs …” (A letter from Virginia to Janet Case in July 1919.) It was a beautiful sunny day when I went to visit Monk’s House, the weekend home in Sussex…
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A visit to Kirkharle – where Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown began
So, the above might not be the picture of a garden you’re expecting from the birthplace of the man who has been called the ‘Shakespeare of Gardening’ but the house that Lancelot Brown was born in was once situated where this car park now stands. It’s at Kirkharle Hall in Northumberland which was owned by…
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Garden Visiting with a Five Year Old…
As with Tudeley, most of my garden visits are taken either by myself or with other ‘adults’. Yesterday, however, I was lucky enough to get to walk round Knole Gardens (different from the park and only open on Tuesdays) with a five year old girl. She very kindly took the photographs for this post for…
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The Labyrinth at All Saints’ Tudeley, Kent
Churchyards may not be traditional gardens but in the context of this website I believe they can count, not least because they are so often havens of wildlife and nature. However, they DO have to contain something man made (apart from bones, of course) and the Churchyard at Tudeley is special because of the turf…
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Greyfriars Garden and Chapel, Canterbury
This must be one of the quietest gardens in Canterbury. Although it’s just off the High Street, it’s hard to find and accessed through an unprepossessing courtyard off Stour Street. But so well worth a visit. It was originally an island site, and home to the first Franciscan monastery in England (I’ve written about the Franciscan…
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Cas Holmes in the Garden
As soon as I saw this beautiful little picture by artist, Cas Holmes, I knew it had to be mine: It sums up my emotional roots in the Fen landscape just perfectly, and so I wasn’t surprised to find that Cas is from the Fens too. She’s a wonderful and interesting textile artist – just…