Dyrham Gardens Open Day

If you're planning to Blip regularly it isn't a good idea to go out for the day for three days running and take large amounts of photographs on each day, but this is what I did and as this was Day 3 it is partly why I'm a fortnight behind with my blips and haven't posted anything up since 25th June.

Making a choice was more difficult than usual as I not only visited seven different gardens, but also had a photo session with some ponies in Marshfield and revisited the house I had hoped to buy at auction last year in The Shoe the same day.

The Open Gardens had been arranged in conjunction with the National Trust to help raise the final half-a-million pounds needed to restore the crumbling roof of Dyrham Park house itself. The first garden was reached by crossing a bridge over Boyd Brook that led to the bottom of the sloping garden of Wynter House. After exploring that I went on to Old Rectory House, now occupied, another visitor told me, by Roland Orzabel of Tears For Fears. Outside, I met the friendly Bobby the Horse and its rider who allowed me to take its picture.

Each house's garden had its own particular quality and charm and the Garden House had many highly different sections, my preference being the thickly foliated area adjacent to the brook. I then passed through the gardens of Dyrham Park NT. As I had visited these more than once before I spent less time there, although I did spend awhile studying a solitary swan on a pond at the bottom of the garden. Not taking the short cut meant that by going through Dyrham Park I did get to see Hinds Cottage, and there I met a splendid tom cat, whose owner told me his name was Ferdinand, and he had a sister called Florence who was curled up in the shade somewhere.

There were still some more gardens to see when one reached Lower Street, with its Grade 2 listed postbox, including Laburnum Cottage and Bay Tree Cottage. When I got back to the car an hour and a half later, I went back to Boyd Brook to enjoy its calm tranquility from its bench for awhile, and took this blip.

L.
29.6.2014 (2105 hr)

Blip #1304
Consecutive Blip #166
Day #1543

Alternatives:
Brookside Tree
Dyrham Park NT
The Winning Ways Of A Marshfield Pony (Sigma 70-300 mm)

Dyrham Gardens Open Day, 15 June 2014 (Flickr album)

Lens: Pentax 17-70 mm

Gardens series
Landscape series

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Jackie Moore - Precious Precious (1970)
The song that inspired Chrissie Hynde to write Precious for the Pretenders, a slab of solid Southern soul by Jackie Moore from Jacksonville FL.