Garden visit: Dower House Garden

Dower House, Morville

One of the reasons for choosing Shropshire for our holiday this year was in part inspired by the book: The Morville Hours, which I first read a year ago. The book, which is about the creation of the Dower House Garden at Morville, managed to encompass so much of what I love about England and my life here. The history, the landscape, our gardens and seasons, and how these things interconnect. The author, Katharine Swift, beautifully encapsulates all this within a journey of self-exploration about her own past.

The garden was created with different areas reflecting the people who lived at Morville over the centuries. So there is a Cloister Garden beautifully created in Yew to represent the old priory that was sold off in 1540 at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

I loved the Elizabethan Knot Garden, created with herbs such as germander, sage, wild strawberries and lavender, rather than box. It's cleverly placed near the house so the fragrances can be taken best advantage of during the summer when the windows and doors are open. I've been wondering how I might create something like this at home, or some elements of it, since I simply don't have the room for a knot garden. I'm thinking perhaps more herbs near the front door, that guests can brush against when they visit. Mmmm.

One surprise for me was the Canal Garden, representing the more formal tastes of the 18th century. To say I'm unenthusiastic about the 18th century landscape movement style of gardening would be an understatement. Frankly, I cannot stand it, it's attempts to control nature and the willful destruction of villages and people's lives, as happened nearby to me in Oxford, at Nuneham Courtenay. So I wasn't really expecting to think much of this part of the Dower House Garden.

However, I was mistaken, it's quite lovely. This is perhaps because it's on a small scale, so not really landscape gardening. But also because Katharine has allowed nature to rebel, allowing plants such as one of my favourites, Verbena Bonariensis to self-seed itself where it wished, giving nature a say in the garden.

I've increasingly come to the realisation that when it comes to gardens, I tend to love the ones that incorporate food into the design. I guess I like bringing together both beauty and practicality (food!) in a garden. The Dower House Garden does this specifically with fruit, such as in the Vegetable Garden with it's criss-crossed tunnels of pear and apple trees, though there are vegetables in the Vegetable Garden too!

The pear tunnel, needing to be held up by stakes as it's overloaded with fruit

There are a large number of varieties of English apples and French pears. I was delighted to see the apple Catshead. This was recommended to me a while ago by George, a friend of my friend Jackie, with whom I got into a long discussion about apple varieties and other vegetables at her last birthday dinner. Notable because I don't often find someone I can talk to in such depth and at length, almost to the exclusion of all others, about such things!

After George's recommendation, which included that it has a very long storage life, up to March the following year and being good for eating and desserts (apple crumble!), and having finally seen the apple for myself, I'm now resolved to obtain a tree for myself, if I can find a place to put it. Although maybe I should try and find one to taste first, just to make sure?! It does look yummy...

I picked up an interesting trick on growing pear trees at the garden. I have planned on growing my pear trees in an espalier fashion. Katharine has done this, but with a slight twist.

I don't know if you can tell (I can, but I took the photo so know what I'm looking at!), but rather than a series of rows off from a central upright branch, these have been trained to curve around. This creates the appearance of several branches coming out from the centre, when in fact they are two long branches that have been trained to curve across, up and around repeatedly. It's quite elegant I thought, and I like the style of the weaved branches.

A fun element in the garden was the Turf Maze. I learnt from the book that this is a unicursal maze, or labyrinth. This has just one path with winds around to the centre, unlike puzzle mazes where you can take various paths.

The nature of the turf maze leads you to follow the path around and I found once I got to the middle, rather than walk straight over the maze to my wait out, I felt compelled to walk back through the maze to the exit/entrance. I don't know why, just felt like the thing to do.

Kevin didn't feel such a compulsion and once he got to the middle (you can see him above carefully following the maze through), he strode out across the maze to another part of the garden. I cannot decide if this is a gender thing, or laziness on his part...?!?!

I enjoyed visiting the Dower House Garden. Even though we were visiting at a time that Katharine described to me in an email enquiry as 'not at its best', I still found lots of discover and much beauty. I would like to return again in Spring. The descriptions of the garden in Spring in the book, along with my own observations, suggests this is a garden to visit all year around.

Shropshire holiday

Kevin and I got back from a week in Shropshire yesterday. Perhaps not an exotic holiday, but a lovely and relaxing one which was just what we needed. We did some walks nearby (see below), and hired a car for a couple of days so we could visit a couple of gardens that were hard to get to by public transport. These were the Dower House Garden of The Morville Hours fame (and a very strong reason for choosing Shropshire for our holiday this year), and Wollerton Old Hall Garden, both of which I'll blog about separately.

We stayed in Ludlow, a pretty town with lots of historic buildings, some dating back to the 15th century, and the castle which dates to the Norman Conquest. A hilly town, because you build your castles on a hill, don't you know, but well worth it. The photo below is of the market square.  

We took the opportunity of a guided walking tour so we could learn more about the history of Ludlow. The guide was clearly keen on architecture and buildings, and that was the main focus, rather than social history, which we prefer. However, it was engaging and one particularly interesting fact is that some of the 'Georgian' buildings you can see on the square, actually date to the medieval period. The owners, in an 18th century version of 'keeping up with the Jones's', couldn't afford to pull down their house and rebuild completely in the Georgian style as was the fashion of the time, so they just had the front refurbished to look Georgian, whilst inside the rest of the house remained medieval!

And of course, it has a castle which dates back to the Norman conquest. The 'of course' is you can trust a Gwenhwyfar to find a castle to play in on holidays if she can!

The first picture is a view of the castle from the river side, and the second below, from inside the castle. Unfortunately the castle isn't being looked after by English Heritage who are pretty good at keeping castles and ruins in good repair, but is privately owned by some Duke or Earl dude with an eye on profit. It shows. Part of the castle has been closed off to the public and 21st century private accommodation added at a nice exclusive price, the cheapest being £480 for 3 nights. And what you can visit, isn't very well looked after. There were trees, one at least over 5 ft, (sycamore I think) growing out of the top of some walls, the roots of which will destabilise the mortar and could lead to walls falling down. The remaining old iron-wood doors, must be about 15th century, are almost coming off their hinges, and pigeons are nesting and shitting all over the place. You have to be careful where you step.

I think my pictures might make the castle look in better repair than it is!

One of the particular reasons for choosing Shropshire was to do some walking in the hills of South Shropshire. We walked from Church Stretton up to Caer Caradoc. This picture of Caer Caradoc (the hill to the right of the picture) was taken from the Long Mynd the following evening.

Not a long walk, about 6 miles for the round trip, but very, very, steep. Well worth the effort though. The views from Caer Caradoc were breathtaking. We could actually see as far away as Hay Bluff in the Black Mountains. It was a good place to view the Long Mynd (below, with Church Stretton in the valley) to the west, the Wrekin to the north, and Clee Hills to the south-east.

Here are some sheep pretending to be goats up on top of Caer Caradoc.

My photographs in no way do the view any justice. It was a hazy day, and frankly, I don't think it is easy to capture the breadth of the views on camera. Or maybe I'm just not a good enough photographer?! I did manage to capture this Kestrel hovering, which I'm pleased with.

And here I am having a rest in the heather, just before we began the steep walk down.

We slacked off a bit the next day, and took advantage of the hire car and drove rather than walked up Long Mynd. Again, more beautiful views of the Shropshire hills. I think my picture of the wild ponies on Long Mynd captures the sparse beauty of the hills, reminiscent of Dartmoor. And isn't the foal cute!

Other wildlife we saw on the holiday was a hare, too quick for me to photograph, and Red Kites. Yes, we have Red Kites flying over Oxford these days, but they are still amazing birds to see.

In Much Wenlock, I snapped this sign that we found amusing on the wall of the old telegraph office, reminding us that every age has its 'hoodies'.

And for funniest village name of the trip, in the manner of Douglas Adam's Meaning of Liff, Diddlebury. Kevin and I thought this sounded like the kind of word you might use to describe someone who is a bit absent minded and does silly things getting themselves further into a muddle. "What a diddlebury, I've just put the cat in the fridge and the milk outside the back door... Argh!!!"

The holiday hasn't ended, we now have another week off at home, pottering about and maybe going for cycle rides. And blogging about our garden visits in Shropshire.

French Bean 'Ice Crystal'

I love French beans, both climing and dwarf. One of the varieties I picked up when I attended Patrick of Bifurcated Carrots seed saving event last October, was 'Ice Crystal'. This was given to me by Dr Simon Platten who also attended the event. He is doing some interesting research on British home gardens and the levels of diversity in them.

I picked up several other Dwarf varieties and sowed some bog standard ones (ie. that you can easily get from garden centres or online), but so far these ones have been the most successful.

Even though the plants are not in the best position, they are in partial shade, they look incredibly healthy, as you can see. They are also quite prolific. Given I only planted five plants, in a week I've had two meals off of them (one for two people, another for three) and plenty more are growing.

They are unusal looking, in they are quite a pale green.

They might look a little anemic, but they were crunchy and juicy, a delight to taste. They went very nicely with my freshly dug Pentland Javelin potatoes and some honey mustard dressing, though just lightly steamed on their own would have been just as good.

I haven't always have the best success with French beans in the last couple of years, being so wet; French beans (dwarf or climbing) do like regular warm sun to get going in my experience. Other standard varieties you can get at garden centres or online, like Maxi and Tendergreen, planted close by, haven't done near as well, I guess they need more sun. I like that the Ice Crystal have done well under partial shade, as it suggests they might be a good variety for indifferent English summers.

I'm so pleased with them that I've decided to not pick any more, but just let them go to seed so I can save them and grow lots more next year.

Butterfly cakes

My first attempt at Butterfly cakes:

They tasted great too!

In the wars, and parsnips

No, not the Split Enz song.*

The lack of blogging is due to not just being too busy with two jobs, but also because the last couple of weeks have seen me in the wars. I, a) put out my lower back again, b) have my left elbow clicking out of place and therefore put all the muscles into spasm and causing constant pain and c) then got my left fingers  burnt. All of which has meant I've had to limit computer time to just work instead of blogging. Thankfully, the lower back is ok now and the burns are healing. My arm is still giving me hell, so I'll make this a short blog.

The point of this blog was not necessarily to complain, although I did manage to sneak that in. Did you notice? I wanted to share some good news. Gardening news that is. Kevin and I pootled down to the Lottie on Sunday to do some watering. Well, Kevin did the watering, and I directed - cannot lift anything coz of my arm you see. And I got a nice surprise. Parsnips.

You see, I was pretty much giving up on having much of a parsnip crop this year. I have sown quite a few rows at home and on the Lottie, but apart from the 10 that I specifically germinated and planted individually as a trial, nothing was germinating. About a 6 weeks ago I gave it one last shot, sowing some Turga, Tender & True and Kral Russian (from the Heritage Seed Library). I didn't really expect them to germinate, particularly with such warm weather. You usually sow parsnips between about February and May, so mid June in the heat seemed like hope over what's on the seed packet.

But to my great delight, there the little buggers were - growing! Real little parsnip leaves and everything. I forgot to take my camera, so you'll  have to take my word for it. But boiling weather and no rain and I got parsnips to germinate and grow. Well I'll be...

So not plant pics, but here's me looking cheery at Bee Day last Saturday at Barracks Lane Community Garden.

*As a teenager, and in fact still as an adult, I loved/love Split Enz. On their Corroboree album is a song 'In the wars' and immediately I hear Tim Finn singing it in my head singing every time I hear the words 'in the wars'... So couldn't resist putting it in the title.