Bridport Gardening Club

Mottisfont stands bold, then follow along to the priory’s cellarium and coffee strong, view a Mappa Mottisfont defining the hours and lands from the priory’s 1340 flourishing to the black death and decline. Across the sward a stone arched summer house, fit for assignations, is dwarfed below majestic trees. Boxed trees with much clipping to define, formal edging, hedging and a lime walk recalling columned cloisters, formality with urns and mown lawn give way to rewilding tinged red and shades[…]

A hot sunny morning, you would think it was June as trees have fresh leaves and the fields are coloured in a patchwork of brown to acid yellow and every shade of green, after heavy rain a couple of weeks’ ago.  Row cover glints on a distant ridge, a reminder that the ground is still needing to warm up, and that’s not the only place that needs warming, the coach has hyper air conditioning.   To the south flat fields gather[…]

The last garden visit of 2024 and guided by volunteer Mike King through Dartington Hall’s long and tempestuous history. In 1326 the Martin family enclosed a 100-acre deer park, still home to fallow deer, then Dartington was granted to Sir John Holand in 1388 by Richard II, his half-brother. A year after Sir John built a hillside manor house he was executed for treason by Henry IV. History then repeated itself with the estate passing between grants from the crown[…]

Deep mist and heavy rain, wellies left at home, after all it is July. Drip, drip, drip from the overflowing guttering and heavens above, in front of me is a sign about Compton Acres having the invasive Curly Waterweed, it was certainly watery but I couldn’t see many weeds!  Pippa took us on our walk through all the gardens with their many educational notices about protecting and conserving wildlife, birds and woodlands, marine plastic pollution and a happier one about[…]

The formal Edwardian Hestercombe Garden has been described as ‘Lutyens at his best’. Designed just before the First World War, a collaboration between Edwin Lutyens hard landscaping and Gertrude Jekyll, weaving her magic with soft planting: a plan of which she left pinned up in the potting shed and is still used for reference.  The Victorian mansion with its somewhat dour southern Victorian facade is in contrast to the gardens which reside below on three levels.  In the combe north[…]