Viewing gardens at Stowell Park

Camilla and Sridhar collected us for our jaunt to Stowell Park near Northleach, a bit further north of us in Gloucestershire. Camilla wanted to re-visit the amazing gardens of this rather opulent and classic country house and estate during its only other Open Gardens day this year. The threat of forecast rain didn't put us off although it did make the day rather gloomy, but the rain only became heavy once we had got back into the car for the journey home.

We arrived just as it opened at 2pm with queues of cars following us showing how popular it was. I must admit that Camilla was right in saying that it is perfectly looked after in a way that few estates can manage anymore. There are extensive walled gardens where flowers, fruit, vegetables and herbs are grown in profusion for the house, its owners and visitors. There were many glasshouses all carefully nurturing a range of different fruiting trees, delicate shrubs and flowers for cutting. The walled gardens seemed carefully designed to protect and nurture plants, not for them to be observed in situ, but to grow in abundance for their uses.

Having left these stone walled areas with their distinctive and purpose built sheds, barns and walkways, we crossed over a lane into another world where the gardens around the house are laid out in a rather more manicured way.  The house dates back some several hundred years and there are terraces behind and below it, some laid with Cotswold stone floors, others with carefully mown grass and even larger areas where grasses and trees grow in a wilder fashion extending into the distance and down the hillside towards the river.

My blip was taken inside one of the glasshouses where these carnations are carefully grown as very long single stems, reaching towards the light. As we wondered what they were doing a person overheard us and explained that these were for the owner of the house to put a single carnation in his buttonhole!

Other 'Extra photos' are of the house from the first tier of the terraced gardens looking along the length of the house towards the ballroom where we were able to have tea and cakes, and rather good they were. I then turned to my left and took a view at right angles looking down the steps and the hillside and out across the valley into the distance.  The last picture is of Helena and camilla smelling the roses in one of the avenues of covered walkways dotted around the walled gardens as well as around the house. Quite another world which we enjoyed visiting but it does make our own back gardens seem more manageable.