Southern and Severn summer gardens

We've just got home from catching up with our family and friends in Hampshire and Sussex.  Returning to North Staffordshire in the drizzle of an unseasonably cold August night, I was delighted to find a hedgehog hiding just inside the front gate, hopefully hoovering up the slugs.  I'm glad now that I didn't bring the slug pellets home from the allotment and give the front garden a dose before we went away, though whether our prickly pal will return and do a good enough job that I can manage without them when we get to next spring and bulb time remains to be seen.

Our garden isn't doing too badly (in fact I owe it a blogsworth of praise for how well it coped with serious neglect while we were away on the narrowboat), but this post looks at a couple of gardens we discovered on our travels.

The first is the Human Nature garden in Horsham Park, a clever space which includes an amphitheatre performance area, medicinal flower, herb and vegetable beds, educational information boards and a fun sculpture of a shepherd and his flock.  

 

Usually open to the public and free to access, it can also be hired for private events and, as we discovered, makes a great venue for children's parties as the gentle slope of the amphitheatre area is safe for games and rolling and the wooden sheep don't object to be ridden on by small people.

It is a very good example of what can be done to make gardens fun for children and young people while still being tranquil spaces for grown-ups.

We came across our other garden 'find' quite by chance while searching for an evening meal.  Stopping at the Hundred House on the road from Bridgnorth to Telford a little too early for dinner (having decided to get well away from the M6 after some grim traffic news), we were invited to take a stroll in the gardens while we waited.  There was, we were told, a herb garden and a flower garden on opposite sides of a little path marked 'Lovers Walk'.  Drinks in hand, we set off to explore.

The 'herb garden' is actually a far more diverse productive garden with a great variety of apple cultivars grown as standard trees, pillars and step-overs, raised beds full of salad leaves and squashes, pergolas of runner beans and ornamental gourds, though the huge hornet hanging around the fruit trees was an unwelcome addition to this particular little paradise.

On the other side of the house was a deliciously eccentric, romantic garden full of ferny, mossy corners, reclaimed statues and elegant formal planting, all created on what had once been a bare stretch of lawn by the former owner of the inn, Sylvia Philips (sadly now deceased). 

All manner of quirky little compositions made from odds and ends of salvaged masonry hide in nooks and glades, overgrown in an artistically managed fashion.  Had it not been getting rather late and quite cool, and close to dinner time, we could have spent hours out there, even though it isn't a huge site.

The gate made from horseshoes is a particularly clever little feature.

After a scrumptious dinner, had it not been a work day in the morning it would have been very tempting to stop the night in one of the inn's pretty guest rooms, but we've promised ourselves a proper break exploring the Ironbridge Gorge and Wrekin area, so there may very well be a September visit to this fascinating garden.  I bet the autumn leaf colours are glorious.

Hopefully the hornet will have buzzed off by then!