Favourite Gardens - Wherwell Village Gardens

The Old Rectory, Wherwell

Ten gardens were open in Wherwell, Hampshire on 3oth June 2013 in aid of the Red Cross. Click here for some more photos.

Favourite Gardens - 5 Burbage Road

5 Burbage Road

I have long wanted to visit the garden at 5 Burbage Road, open only once a year under the National Gardens Scheme, but have never succeeded. This time I decided to e-mail the owners and ask to visit privately, and was extremely happy when they agreed. Rosemary Lindsay herself showed us around, which made the visit even more fascinating, and I was able to take lots of photos.

The garden is brilliantly designed to seem far larger than it is, being divided into many distinct areas with trees, paths, terraces and strong planting so that one can never see the garden as whole, but is drawn further and further in while only guessing at 'what lies beyond'. It's a masterpiece of rich planting and intriguing design.      

Favourite Gardens - Bere Mill

Bere Mill

For more photos of this lovely garden beside the Test, click here

Favourite Gardens - Mottisfont

Mottisfont

For more photos of this lovely garden and the rose garden in particular, click here

Destruction of the Winchester College Wingnuts

One of the mature wingnuts

The base of one of the smaller wingnuts before felling

I love to walk in Winchester College woodland and over the playing fields beside the Itchen Navigation Canal in the area where Keats is supposed to have composed the 'Ode To Autumn'. In one part alongside Brandy Stream that borders the Nature Reserve, there is a line of magnificent trees, Wingnuts, that I have seen nowhere else. They were apparently planted by Graham Drew, the art master at Winchester in the 1960s; one of the school's iconic dons.

In the past few days most of them have been felled, apparently as part of an attempt to return the area to cattle grazing, a humdrum activity of little interest and originality, and certainly insufficient justification for cutting down such magnificent rare and beautiful specimens. Why could they not have been left? Cattle could shelter under their huge branches. They will apparently be replaced with willows - in which the area already abounds.

Click here for some more photos and here for a most inadequate justification by the College bursar.