Firstly let me say sorry this post isn’t as good as the first version I wrote which my computer lost, it never is when you have to write the same thing again is it?
Wednesday we visited The Manor House Garden while it was open as part of the National Garden Scheme, a scheme which opens private gardens to the public for charity. I love visiting gardens through this scheme, they are ‘ordinary’ gardens rather than gardens planned and maintained with the public in mind. Thats not to say this garden was ordinary, most of the gardens open aren’t ordinary at all, but it is someone’s backgarden and often they are more the sort of size of most people’s backgardens.
This garden was a little jem, it had only been rediscovered about 20 years ago and has been carefully restored to the original Gertrude Jekyll plans since. There was a lovely wild garden, some beautifully planted walls and a rose garden with some interesting ideas for plants to put with the roses in our garden.
Another feature of NGS gardens is often good cake, and this one did not disapoint and we have a lovely afternoon tea with tiny sandwiches and yummy cake. It wasn’t their fault I only got half a slice of chocolate cake, the little man thought it was yummy as well and ate the other half.
He liked the pond with huge goldfish and the tiny bantam hens best, they are a little more dynamic than plants. I actually was rather taken with these cute little hens, peking bantams, and could quite easily see a couple of them pottering round our backgarden. The original thought was hens would be difficult to get someone to look after if we went away but I think we are already past that point so maybe we could reconsider. They were such characters with their little feathery feet.
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