Advertisement
The garden enthusiasts gather
The Head Gardener gathers her audience beneath the ancient tree, with the even older Great Hall in the background. If you're going to visit a stately home's garden, there's no better way to do it than with the Head Gardener.
So it was, in March this year, that we attended another special event for English Heritage members at
Eltham Palace, the boyhood home of Henry VIII and, in the 1930s, of the wealthy textile magnates Stephen and Virginia Courtauld. You'll find it in the Borough of Greenwich in south-east London, a 15-minute walk from either Eltham or Mottingham railway stations, or off Court Road, London SE9 5QE on your SatNav. If you have a Blue Badge, you get to enter by a special gate and to drive across the moat by the oldest bridge in London.
We'd been here before to tour the inside of the house, ably guided on provided headphones by the voice of David Suchet, better known in the context of this Art Deco mansion as Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Poirot. I do wish English Heritage would relax their ban on interior photography because it's so difficult to describe what wonders are to be found inside this unique house - the Great Hall, all that remains of Henry VIII's medieval palace, and the Courtauld's adjoining mansion
with its pink leather upholstered chairs and black-and-silver doors portraying animals and birds from London Zoo reflecting the glamour and allure of the '30s. I'll have to leave that for another time perhaps.
On this occasion, we came to see some of the 19 acres of beautiful gardens which surround the Palace. It was early in March, so there wasn't a lot in bloom but Jane Cordingley, the genial and eminently knowledgeable Head Gardener, brought it all to life for the dozen or so stalwart members who'd braved the chilly breeze.
There was the evergreen Christmas Box
(Sarcococca confusa - or was it Sweet Box
Sarcococca hookeriana var. digyna - they're very similar), with its lustrous dark green leaves growing against the wall of the Great Hall, its scented white flowers borne since December now gone over. There was the ornamental Cornelian Cherry
(Cornus mas) with its
forsythia-like yellow flowers and the handsome creamy-yellow edged evergreen leaves of
Daphne odorata 'aureomarginata', its small, tubular flowers arranged in clusters at the shoot tips filling our walk with their fantastic perfume.
There were swathes of Crocus
vernus and
tommasinianus beneath the ancient trees, the nodding snowdrops
Galanthus nivalis and
nivalis Flore Pleno, and the tiny, pink-flowered, hardy
Cyclamen coum.
Star-like Chionodoxia
lucilliae and Scilla, Erythronium (dogs-tooth violet), delicate Anemone (and numerous others whose names I forget) filled the borders backed with well-tended, mature shrubs.
There were accidental, yet delightful, combinations, like daffodils and Pulmonaria growing together against a wall in a border where Mike the gardener had skilfully produced imaginative plant supports from woven willow branches. And there were formal rose beds being lovingly tended by the same aforementioned Mike.
My real favourites, however, were the Hellebores, varieties of which shone brightly here at this time of year. These weren't the all-too-familiar white blooms of the Christmas Rose
(Helleborus niger) but those of the much prettier single- and double-flowered hybrid forms in shades of red, pink, green and cream, and even some in gorgeous near-black. One that particularly caught my eye was
Helleborus x eric-smithii. Lit from behind by a low, winter sun, it was a picture on its own. Scroll down to see if you agree.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.093s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 35; dbt: 0.044s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
David
non-member comment
Master Blogger!
Good to see you're hogging the limelight this week, Keep Smiling. I see we got to share the leader page for a couple of days earlier! Keep 'em coming! David