Tree with flowers like cow parsley

Jun26

One of the features of the ‘dashboard’ for this blog is a list of the search terms that visitors have used to bring them here. In among the usual ‘Niels Erik From’ and ‘Scandinavian silver’ and ‘filming locations’ search terms, yesterday I spotted something a little more unusual: ‘Tree with flowers like cow parsley’. Now I don’t know the nationality of the searcher, but I’m assuming they are British as cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) is one of our common wildflowers here. And so I’m guessing they might be searching for a British native tree with flowers like cow parsley.

Cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris). Photo by Olivier Pichard.

Cow parsley flower head. Photo by Kristian Peters.

My immediate thought was the elderflower, Sambucus nigra. It is in blossom right now, and looking glorious. Great frothy heads of white and creamy white flowers cover the large shrub/small trees.

Elderflower (Sambucus nigra). Photo by kku.

Elderflower blossom detail. Photo by Frank Vincentz.

Often the cow parsley is out at the same time that the hawthorn (Crataegus mongyna) is in blossom, their intertwangled blooms giving a white frothy appearance to the hedgerows and roadsides around here, but this year the cow parsley has been much later in flowering. It’s just about going over now, but has overlapped with the elderflower blossoms, giving a different but equally lovely combination of white froth.

In our garden we grow an elderflower cultivar, a stunning and decorative form with purple leaves and light mauvey pink flowers, Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Eva’. (It was called Sambucus nigra ‘Black Lace’ when I bought it, but as so often seems to be the way with horticultural nomenclature, it’s undergone a name change, and is now a bit more of a mouthful).

Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Eva’.

Now is the time of year to make elderflower cordial, a delicious and refreshing drink made from the blossoms. Here’s a recipe by Jane Hornby from the BBC Good Food website:

Elderflower cordial

Makes about 4 litres

Ingredients

20 fresh elderflower heads, stalks trimmed

2.5 kg granulated or caster sugar

2 lemons, unwaxed

85 g citric acid (available from chemists)

Put the sugar and 1.5 litres water into a very large saucepan – a jam pan is best. Gently heat until the sugar has dissolved, but do not allow to boil. Pare the zest from the lemons, then slice the lemons into rounds.

When the sugar has dissolved to make a syrup, bring it to the boil then remove from heat. Wash the elderflower blossoms to remove insects or dirt – a washing up bowl full of water will do the trick nicely. Shake the flowers dry gently and add to the syrup along with the citric acid, lemon zest and lemon slices. Stir well. Cover the jam pan and leave for 24 hours for all the flavours to infuse into the syrup.

Drain the syrup (now transformed into cordial) and flowerheads through a clean piece of muslin or tea towel lining a colander, which sits over another large container. Discard what’s left in the muslin and put the cordial into sterilised bottles (these can be sterilised by putting them through the dishwasher on its hottest setting, or by washing well with very hot soapy water, rinsing and leaving in a low oven to dry). The cordial is ready to drink. Serve by diluting to taste with water, soda water, tonic water or whatever you fancy. It will store for up to six weeks in the fridge. It can also be frozen (ice cube trays are great for individual portions) and used as needed.

Stourhead in May

May20

Yesterday Chap and I took a day off work and spent the day at Stourhead with Elizabeth, a family friend of old, and her friend Sue. The day started gloomily, with dark lowering clouds and heavy rain showers. But we were so lucky: the sun came out and the rain held off, although the impressive clouds remained. Sue hadn’t visited Stourhead before, so it was a joy seeing her delight at meeting this stunning garden for the first time.

I’ll let the photos do the talking. Click on any to embiggen/bigify:

Stourhead: The Palladian Bridge and in the background, the Pantheon.

Stourhead: The view from the Temple of Apollo. The colours are so zingy at this time of year, and the rhododendrons and azaleas were looking amazing.

Stourhead: The Temple of Apollo. The lake is off to the left of shot.

Stourhead: The Temple of Flora, the Palladian Bridge and the Bristol Cross photographed from outside the Pantheon.

Stourhead: Inside the Pantheon.

Stourhead: The deliberately wonky, shonky windows of the Gothic Cottage.

A memory board within the Gothic Cottage.

Stourhead: The memory board within the Gothic Cottage.

Stourhead: A lovely note pinned on the memory board. Ah, huge congratulations to Ben and Vicki.

Stourhead: Naughty Grace!

Stourhead: View across the lake to the Temple of Apollo.

Stourhead: Gaudy rhododendrons and azaleas among the acers and other trees.

Stourhead: View from outside the Temple of Flora to the Pantheon.

Stourhead: The Palladian Bridge from the Temple of Flora.

Stourhead: Big skies over the lake and the Pantheon.

Cottages and the National Trust estate office at the village of Stourton, just outside the Stourhead landscape gardens.

And this is the view from just by those cottages: the Bristol Cross, the Palladian Bridge and the Pantheon.

Stourton Church, viewed from the same spot as the previous photograph.

Stourhead: National Trust gardeners training some young fruit trees in the walled kitchen gardens. Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ popping up between lavender within box hedges in the foreground.

Stourhead: The restored glasshouse with the beautiful collection of species and variety pelargoniums.

A wonderful bee, insect and other critter hotel made out of pallets, old terracotta roof tiles and ridge tiles and bamboo, among other things.

Stourhead: A wonderful bee, insect and small critter hotel made out of pallets, old terracotta roof tiles, ridge tiles and drainage pipes with bamboo, among other things, against a wall in the walled garden.

Rosa banksiae 'Lutea' growing against an outbuilding. Gorgeous.

Stourhead; Rosa banksiae ‘Lutea’ with its tiny yellow pompom flowers growing against an outbuilding. Gorgeous.

And watching the Chelsea Flower Show coverage on the Beeb yesterday evening after our return, what do I hear but architecture critic and broadcaster Tom Dyckhoff say this:

‘In fact, I would go so far as to say that the greatest contribution that Britain has made to worldwide design has been the landscape garden and its relationship to architecture. I mean particularly from the classic periods, the late 18th century, that kind of period of picturesque garden design, places like Stourhead. That was arguably our greatest design moment, certainly our greatest contribution.’

(edited slightly to remove ‘you knows’ and ‘like’s)

I couldn’t agree more. And we are so lucky to live so close and to be able to visit its wonders frequently.

National Trust visitor information for Stourhead.

Grapey delights

May16

The other day Chap and I enjoyed a really terrific bottle of red wine, given to us by my Aussie wine loving lovely, wonderful Pa: Peter Lehmann’s The Pastor’s Son Shiraz 2009. Dad is a massive Australian wine fan and regularly gives us great thumping great Aussie shirazes (his favourite grape variety for wine and ours too). All his wines are fantastic, but this one had that extra something.

So. Not that I’m a lush or anything (hic), but I somehow seem to have amassed a collection of grapey jewellery in my Etsy shop.

Here’s a vine leaf ring:

A vintage Danish 830 silver ring by S. Chr. Fogh of Copenhagen, for sale in my Etsy shop. Click on photo for details.

A vine leaves and bunch of grapes brooch:

Baltic amber and sterling silver brooch, for sale in my Etsy shop. Click for details.

Vintage Baltic amber and sterling silver brooch, for sale in my Etsy shop. Click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

A bunches of grapes bracelet:

Vintage Danish 830 silver link bracelet by Chr. Veilskov. Click on photos for details. (NOW SOLD).

and a French Art Deco brooch with fruit, leaves, and two birds after the crop:

Art Deco silver brooch by H Teguy, France, 1920s, Basque jewellery. For sale in my Etsy shop. Click on photo for details.

Art Deco silver brooch by H Teguy, France, Basque designer, 1920s. For sale in my Etsy shop. Click on photo for details.

(Okay, this last one might be a bunch of berries rather than grapes because the leaves aren’t vine leaves … but it has a grapey vibe that’ll do for me!)

Update. And the viticulture love goes on: a recent(ish) addition to the shop is a pair of blue glass grape earrings:

Grape earrings, for sale in my Etsy shop. Click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Orange and almond cake

May2

When my younger sister opened her garden for the National Gardens Scheme, we sold plants and laid on tea and cakes as well, as a way of increasing the amount of money we took for the various charities that are the NGS beneficiaries. The days in the run-up to the two-day weekend opening would be a mad frenzy of fudge making and cake baking. My sister’s lovely work colleagues all joined in too, and so we always had a really impressive array of cakes and scones and flapjacks and brownies and all sorts of goodies to offer to the visitors. I had a massive grin on my face when I overheard one visitor say to her friend that our cakes knocked the spots off the National Trust ones! Quite properly, given that my sister lives in Devon, the third most popular was a West Country apple cake. The best seller was coffee and walnut cake, but it was very closely followed by a wonderful, zesty orange and almond cake.

Orange and almond cake. This is only about half of the syrup.

Almost all slurped up – it takes a few hours.

So scrummy it didn’t last long!

There is something very moreish about this cake. It’s got no flour in it, using ground almonds and semolina instead, and as well as having orange zest and juice within the cake, after baking it is drenched—and I mean drenched—with a fresh orange and lime juice syrup. The smell while the syrup is cooking is divine, and reminds me so much of the smell that pervaded the whole house when my Mum used to make her batches of marmalade every January. When you make the syrup you think that no way can the cake take all that liquid without turning into a soggy mess. But hold your nerve. The cake gradually sucks it all up, and it gives the cake a wonderfully moist texture, as well as ramping up the citrusness (Is that a word? Citrusosity? Citraceousness?). Yummy.

Orange and almond cake

Serves 8

115 g / 4 oz butter

grated rind of 1 large orange

115 g / 4 oz caster sugar

2 eggs, beaten

175 g / 6 oz fine semolina

100g / 4 oz ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp mixed spice

3 tbsp / 50 ml / 1.7 fl oz freshly squeezed orange juice

For the syrup

175 ml / 6 fl oz freshly squeezed orange juice

5 tbsp / 90 ml / 3 fl oz freshly squeezed lime juice

115 g / 4 oz caster sugar

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C / 350 degrees F / gas mark 4. Butter and line a 20 cm / 8 inch round cake tin. Beat together the butter, orange rind and caster sugar until light and creamy. Gradually beat in eggs. Mix together semolina, ground almonds, mixed spice and baking powder, and fold half into the creamed mixture with half the orange juice. Fold in remaining dry ingredients and orange juice. Spoon mixture into tin and bake for 30-40 minutes until well-risen and firm. Leave to cool for a few minutes, peel off the lining and turn out on to a deep plate.

Meanwhile, make the syrup. In a pan, heat the orange juice, lime juice and sugar until sugar has dissolved then bring to the boil and simmer for 4 minutes. Spoon over cake. This might take several goes depending on how deep your plate is and how much liquid it will hold. Leave to cool. Makes a nice pud served with crème fraîche as well as a great teatime cake.

National Gardens Scheme website.

National Trust recipes we beat!

Coming up roses

Apr3

I’ve just realised I seem to have a lot of rose jewellery in my shop at the moment. This is totally unintentional—I think I must have have a subconscious thing for the little beauties!

Grann & Laglye Skønvirke malachite and silver brooch. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

From Denmark, I have a beautiful Grann & Laglye Skønvirke malachite and silver brooch with a rose border. Skønvirke (meaning ‘beautiful work’, and which is often anglicised to Skonvirke) was a development of the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements as developed in the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Grann & Lagyle was founded in 1906 in Copenhagen, Denmark by Jalhannes Lauritz Grann (1885—1945) and Johannes Laglye (1878—?). The firm finally closed in 1955.

Also Scandinavian, probably from Denmark, and from the same period I have a lovely Skønvirke pendant with a rose design:

Scandinavian, probably Danish Skonvirke rose pendant and chain. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

I also have an Art Nouveau style ring with a lovely rose design, made by Chritsoph Widmann of Pforzheim, Germany. This design is known as the Hildesheimer Rose, and is named after the wild or dog rose (Rosa canina) that grows up the walls of Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany. This famous rose is said to be over a thousand years old.

Art Nouveau style 835 silver ring by Christoph Widmann of Pforzheim, Germany, with a Hildesheimer Rose design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Art Nouveau style 800 silver ring by Christoph Widmann of Pforzheim, Germany, with a Hildesheimer Rose design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

I also have a socking great modernist silver tone metal pendant with a rose design (well, I say rose—it just as easily could be a camellia or a gardenia or similar). This takes some wearing, as it weighs almost 20 g.

Big silver tone metal rose pendant. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

And finally I also have a Malcolm Gray Ortak sterling silver and enamel brooch, with a design inspired by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and featuring a Glasgow Rose.

Malcolm Gray Ortak sterling silver and pink enamel Glasgow Rose brooch, inspired by the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

And to go with the jewellery roses, here are a few flowery beauties that I have photographed:

Rosa ‘Madame Hardy’, in our garden, June 2006. This beautiful damask rose has a tiny green button at the centre of the white flowers.

Rosa ‘Climbing Souvenir de la Malmaison’ in our garden, June 2006. The buds of this spoil very easily in the rain.

And again, in June 2007. Rosa ‘Climbing Souvenir de la Malmaison’ is a climbing bourbon rose.

Rosa ‘Constance Spry’ growing up an apple tree in my sister’s garden in Devon. This is a climbing shrub rose with gaudy pink flowers of the most gorgeous cupped shape.

and here’s a photo of the Hildersheimer Rose growing against the wall of the apse of Hildesheim Cathedral:

Signs of spring

Mar5

The markers of spring are gradually accumulating: the first snowdrops, the first honeybee, the first chaffinch with its fluting descending spring call, the first beetroot red shoots of the paeonies. I took some photos the other day of the wonderful drift of Cyclamen coum flowering on a neighbour’s bank.

Cyclamen coum and snowdrops on a neighbour's bank.

Cyclamen coum on a neighbour’s bank. These self-seed freely, from seedpods with fantastic coiled stems.

A tight clump of snowdrops.

A pretty speckled Helleborus orientalis in my garden. I'm holding the flower up as it normally hangs down so you can't see the glorious interior.

A speckled Helleborus orientalis in my garden. I’m holding the flower up as it normally hangs down so you can’t see the glorious interior.

I adore this season, with its sense of promise and renewal.

Gardens I’ve made: Devon

Feb25

An occasional series on gardens I have designed and planted. First up is a garden in Devon, made for my younger sister. In 2001 she moved into her present home, a Georgian house with a small, sloping, south facing stone walled garden at the front. Her brief was ‘jungly, exotic, subtropical’. She loves acers, hostas, bamboos and ferns in particular. She wanted a garden full of foliage interest: different shapes and colours and textures, and the bigger the better. Flowers weren’t the top of the list, but if they were to sneak in there, she wouldn’t mind …

The main emphasis in the garden is on the foliage. The large-leaved plant is a Paulownia tomentosa which is cut right back every year to encourage the large leaves to grow. Other plants seen here include Aralia elata ‘Aureovariegata’, Euphorbia mellifera, Nandina domestica and Aruncus dioicus. There’s a banana lurking in the background too.

The garden had a few mature trees around the edge and a grand old apple tree on one of the terraces: everything else was old or diseased or unwanted, and so they went, leaving a daunting area of naked ground. After the cull, the first thing we had to do was weed, weed and weed, and then weed some more, and then leave the garden fallow for a whole year before we could plant anything. The reason? Ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria). It was everywhere in the garden, its roots reaching sometimes 50 or 60 cm deep, and getting into the stonework of walls and under the paths. The trouble with ground elder is it is highly invasive, smothering out other plants, and it can regenerate from the smallest fragment of root left in the soil. So we dug out as much as we could, and then waited to see what sprouted, and gave it another digging over. We preferred to do the weed control manually and organiicaly, rather than go the quicker chemicals-based route of zapping the lot with weedkiller.

After over a year, in spring 2003, we were able to start planting. The hard landscaping for the garden wasn’t too attractive, but it was too big (and expensive) a project to redo it as well as completely replant the garden, so we made do. We were lucky in that the garden was completely surrounded by a beautiful old stone wall, made from the local Devonian shillet.

My sister decided she wanted an alley of pompom trees (as we inelegantly call them) to flank the central path up to the house. We planted eight magnificent Elaeagnus x ebbingei trees from Architectural Plants in West Sussex. On either side of this I planted matching jewel beds that were inspired by the beautiful show-winning Evolution Garden by Piet Oudolf and Arne Maynard that I’d seen at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2000.

The jewel beds, with Allium ‘Globemaster’, Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’, Veronica austriaca subsp. teucrium ‘Knallblau’, Veronica spicata ‘Romiley Purple’, Convolvulus cneorum, Centranthus ruber var. coccineus, Persicaria microcephala ‘Red Dragon’, Alchemilla mollis, and others underneath the eight Elaeagnus x ebbingei trees.

We made a pond, and a tree fern grove underplanted with ferns, and shrubby beds at the bottom end of the garden to provide some privacy from the street.

There’s a pond in here somewhere, honest! Plants include the massive Zantedeschia aethiopica ‘Gigantea’, Arundo donax, Darmera peltata, Cynara cardunculus and good old Geranium palmatum that self-seeds with wild abandon.

My sister opened the garden for a weekend in the end of May for three years (2005, 2006 and 2007) for the National Gardens Scheme: all moneys collected go to various charities, and over the three years she raised a truly amazing £3,300 from entrance fees, the sale of cakes and refreshments, and in the second and third years we ran a plant stall as well as so many people were asking for plants that were in the garden. I started potting up all the Echium pininana seedlings I could find, plus Geranium palmatum ones and splitting off bits of the Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’ and potting on as well. They all went like hot cakes!

The central jewel beds edged in box (Buxus sempervirens). The yellow plant is the lovely but thuggish Phlomis russeliana. The amazing plant in the pot on the terrace is Dasylirion acrotrichum.

The left hand lawn surrounded by shrubs and trees including Cercidiphyllum japonicum (Katsura, a tree that smells of candy floss in the autumn when the leaves are colouring up), Euphorbia mellifera, with flowers that smell of honey, and Melianthus major, with leaves that smell like peanut butter when bruised and flowers that smell like honey! The Allium ‘Globemaster’ heads are just going over in this photo.

View from one of the top terraces looking across the garden.

Lots of pots everywhere, including beautiful fragrant Lilium regale looming in on the right.

The conservatory. This is an Edwardian addition to the front of the house, and is a beautiful, restful space. The pale blue flowered plant is Plectranthus zuluensis, with a pinky purple-flowered passion flower growing above it, and of course there’s a grape vine.

National Gardens Scheme website.

Round and round the apple tree

Dec29

By coincidence, my last couple of posts have been about Scandinavia, snow and ice, and ovicaprids. I’m not going to manage to shake free of all of those in this post either …

Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris). Photo by Arnstein Rønning.

We woke this morning to a terrific hard frost. The countryside is white; the trees are white; it is gorgeous. It’s not quite so gorgeous inside our bedroom, where there was ice on the inside of the windows—one of the joys of living in a 300 year old cottage with all its draughts and dampness and ill-fitting doors and windows.

We call one of the gardens next to ours ‘the secret garden’. Not so much because it is hidden, but because no-one uses it. The cottage to which it belongs is rented, and none of the tenants in the last few years has shown any interest in it. Contract gardeners come and cut the grass about four times a year, and that’s it. We can see into the garden from our bedroom dormer window. There is an alder tree which has grown from a small sapling when we arrived in 1992 to a large, two-trunked tree; there is an old ruined cottage or barn or outbuilding, the stone walls of which survive to about a metre or so high and are gradually being covered by brambles; and there is a venerable old apple tree. The apple tree always fruits prodigiously, and because no-one uses the garden, the apples stay where they fall. They provide welcome food for wildlife in the winter months.

This morning the apples were providing a frosty feast for about nine or ten blackbirds (Turdus merula), a grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), and a single fieldfare (Turdus pilaris). Fieldfare are a palaearctic species, living in more northerly latitudes in the summer and heading south in the winter—our fieldfare come from Scandinavia. Normally they travel in flocks, so it is always surprising to see a lone one. This one was vigorously defending its food, spending more time chasing all the blackbirds away than it was eating. Watching them, I could almost hear the Benny Hill Show theme tune in my head as the fieldfare scooted round and round the apple tree in hot pursuit of a blackbird.

Play nicely, children. Photo by Dave Jackson.

Play nicely, children. (This is a small fieldfare as an adult fieldfare is quite a bit larger than an adult blackbird). Photo by Dave Jackson.

I would love to have seen this many!

Update 4 January 2015: A week on and the fieldfare is still with us. He sits in one of the higher beech trees that surrounds the secret garden, and swoops down to chase off larger interlopers who are getting too close to his precious stash of slowly-rotting apples. He tolerates the smaller birds such as chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs) and dunnocks (Prunella modularis) and blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla), but is aggressive in his pursuit of the blackbirds. Even larger birds like jackdaws (Corvus monedula) get the ‘get orf moi laaaand’ treatment from him (or should that be written in a Scandinavian rather than a West Country accent?)

Update 29 November 2016: The fieldfare stayed for about a month, leaving the day our neighbours on the other side of the secret garden started having some very noisy chainsaw work done on their trees. We didn’t see him in winter 2015, but this morning we woke to a hard frost and a lone fieldfare guarding the apple tree in the secret garden. Is it the same bird? I’d like to think so ….

Stourhead’s autumn colours

Oct28

Chap and I headed out to Stourhead this morning to get a fix of autumn colours. The gardens open at 9 and we got there at about 9.30, and there were already plenty of people there. Unsurprisingly most of them seemed to be taking photos.

We did our usual circuit walk around the lake, anticlockwise this time. The colours are pretty good this year but I wonder if the best is still to come.

Stourhead. The Palladian bridge in the foreground and the Pantheon on the other side of the lake.

The Temple of Apollo.

View across the lake to the Temple of Flora.

The Pantheon, newly reopened after restoration works this summer. Look at the red of that acer – it gives that lady’s coat a run for its money!

Beautiful Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) on the island in the lake.

Beautiful tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) on one of the islands in the lake.

The river god, representing the River Stour, in his grotto.

Looking back at **8 through the grotto. Love the pebble floor!

Looking back at the river god through the grotto. Love the pebble floor! To the right in this view is the sleeping nymph.

The sleeping nymph in the grotto.

The Bristol Cross, the Palladian bridge and over on the other side of the lake, the Pantheon.

On the drive home from Stourhead, just to the south of the estate: fantastic little estate smallholding, with outbuildings for livestock. We could see geese, ducks and guinea fowl!

On the drive home from Stourhead, just to the south of the gardens en route to the wonderfully named village of Gasper: a fantastic little estate smallholding, with outbuildings for livestock. We could see geese, ducks and guinea fowl!

The autumn colours are still developing. Alan Power, the Head Gardener at Stourhead, gives updates on his Twitter feed, as well as tweeting some amazing photos (he’s definitely got a better camera and waaaaaay more skill than me!).

On it I found out that in August this year the gardens at Stourhead were Google mapped: soon you’ll be able to take a virtual walk around the estate, courtesy of Google and this young man!

And I have to include this photo that I found on Alan’s twitter feed: it’s the most stunning view of Stourhead, taken by James Aldred in May this year from one of the taller trees on the estate:

Stourhead. Stunning photo by James Aldred in May 2014, showing the Temple of Apollo on its heights, and the Palladian bridge in the foreground.

Update on Friday 31 October: I have just heard Alan Power on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, doing his annual description of the gardens, interviewed by the wonderful Eddie Mair. Alan has such a poetic way of describing the gardens, and his horticultural contributions are rightly a favourite part of PM’s annual cycle. He was recorded this afternoon, chatting for about 8 minutes on the programme, with the full 11½ minute interview available here. It’s well worth a listen: he clearly adores his job, the gardens, the plants and the people who visit, gaining pleasure from their pleasure, and he has a great eye for detail and a passion to share his delight in these fabulous gardens. A few lyrical snippets:

‘Trees in full autumnal song’

‘Early last week we had some wind come through the country … and on its way it undressed some of the trees’

‘On the island there’s a tulip tree that’s been rattled by the wind a little bit and its internal branches have no leaves left and it’s just haloed with a golden yellow’

‘And there’s architecture in the plants as well … looking across to the trees in the distance and there are some poplar trees and some birch trees by the grotto at Stourhead and they’re, they’re bolt upright you could describe them as, so their stems are really striking from a distance, really grey stems and they’re almost the same colour as the columns on top of the Pantheon, so you’ve got architecture within the soft planting and you’ve got the harder architecture of the eighteenth-century temples.’

‘The leaves have been falling gently and they haven’t been frightened by the frosts.’

Alan has been talking to PM about the autumn colours at Stourhead for six years now, and it’s just a delight.

Filming locations: Stourhead

Oct9

We are so lucky to live close to the beautiful landscape gardens of Stourhead, near Mere in south-western Wiltshire. Chap and I visit often, and we are about due another visit to see the gorgeous autumn colours there.

Stourhead. The Palladian Bridge in the foreground and the Pantheon on the other side of the lake. Photo by Inglenookery.

Stourhead. The Palladian Bridge in the foreground and the Pantheon on the other side of the lake. Photo taken April 2011 by Inglenookery.

The house at Stourhead was built by Henry Hoare between 1721—1725, and the gardens were developed soon afterwards. They were brought into greatness in the mid-eighteenth century by Hoare’s son Henry Hoare II, with the damming of the small River Stour to form the lake, the building of the various temples, planting of the trees and development of the landscape features.

Stourhead Estate is managed by the National Trust. The charity’s properties are often used for filming, especially for period pieces (I’ve previously written about Montacute House, Mompesson House and Saltram House).

View from the Pantheon looking across the lake to the Palladian Bridhge and . The tTemple of apollo is on the high ground to the right of the photo. Photo April 2011 by Infgelnookery.

Stourhead. View from the Pantheon looking across the lake to the bridge and the Temple of Flora. The Temple of Apollo is on the high ground to the right of the photo. Photo taken April 2011 by Inglenookery.

Stourhead is more famous for its gardens than its associated Palladian mansion, and I am always surprised at how little it has been used as a location for filming. Part of the reason might be that it is one of the Trust’s most popular properties, with the gardens open every day apart from Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Even though it has many visitors every day, the gardens are so large that they rarely feel crowded. In 2012—2013 it was the most visited NT property for which a charge is made, with 356,023 visitors (other open country sites in NT ownership, such as Avebury or the Coastal Paths, are free to visit and so counts of visitor numbers are not easily available.)

Stourhead. View of the lake from the Temple of Apollo. Taken by Inglenookery

Stourhead. View of the lake from the Temple of Apollo. Photo taken September 2013 by Inglenookery.

I can only think of it appearing in two films: the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, in the scene when Mr Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) first proposes to Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley), filmed in the rain at the Temple of Apollo, and the brief scene with Elizabeth running across the five-arched bridge over the lake; and the scene in Barry Lyndon, the 1975 film directed by Stanley Kubrick, where Barry (Ryan O’Neal) talks to his mother (Marie Kean) on the bridge, with the lake and the Pantheon in the background in some shots, and the Temple of Flora in the background in another. There must be others, I’m sure—I just can’t think of any.

Stourhead. The Temple of Apollo starring in Pride and Prejudice (2005).

The bridge at the lake at Storuhead, satrring in

Stourhead: the bridge at the lake, starring in Pride and Prejudice (2005).

Stourhead in a scene from Barry Lyndon: the bridge with the Pantheon in the background (1975).

Barry Lyndon (Ryan O’Neal) with his mother (Marie Kean) on the bridge at Stourhead, with the Temple of Flora in the background.

Barry Lyndon (Ryan O’Neal) on the bridge at Stourhead.

We we very lucky when we visited in September last year—the Festival of the Voice was taking place, and it was magical to hear unaccompanied choral works drifting in the air as we walked around the garden. We stopped at the Pantheon to listen to this (apologies for it being filmed sideways on. I have no idea a) how to film or b) how to edit …)

Short National Trust history of the house and gardens.

Inglenookery

West Country witterings

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