I have mentioned my gardening grandparents before on the blog, and this post looks at one of the favourite gardens of my granny Lalage. Her days as a missionary nursing lepers in Thailand indisputably set granny and my late grandpa as the great adventurers of my family, but she would be the first to smile and admit that recently her travelling has lessened in distance. However, one place that she continues to visit and delight in is the garden of Coton Manor. For her birthday, blessed with sunshine, my family went with her. As she sat down on a bench for a moment or two, I nipped about and took a few photos.
It can be difficult to evaluate something when it is already so familiar, but certain qualities and features of Coton Manor's garden were easy to see - and on such a bright day, the amount of "summer interest" it provided was fantastic. Its highly popular spring display of bluebells long passed, Coton Manor's loveliness appeared instead in its long midsummer border, its golden meadow, and its herb garden. The latter - pictured above - had plants of such vigorous growth, of such height and colour as well as scent, that even a visitor with no use for herbs would still want to take this enchanting little square back to their own home. The aforementioned border and meadow of the garden are framed by mature trees and little stepped waterways, and these shadier parts of the garden are appreciated all the more in the heat of summer.
With plenty of beautiful ornamental horticulture down every path and around every corner of its ten acres, Coton Manor is a wonderful place to come for that reason alone. Having said that, a quick glance at any garden's visitor comments book soon reveals that the public's favour is often found or lost by surprisingly non-horticultural considerations - a good café or a dog-friendly stance, for example. However, Coton Manor has furthered its charm in a rather unusual way. It is home to several exotic guests, some of which were polite enough to let me take their picture. As the RHS celebrates the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hyde Hall and the other three gardens have really had the gauntlet thrown at them by Coton Manor as it sports its own pat of flamingoes! Yet even these fabulous birds are upstaged by one other. Being of a similar age as me, Rodney the (extremely talkative) Macaw has lived there since I was born, and has been and always will be the first thing that my sisters and I look for when we arrive - gardening blog or no gardening blog!
It can be difficult to evaluate something when it is already so familiar, but certain qualities and features of Coton Manor's garden were easy to see - and on such a bright day, the amount of "summer interest" it provided was fantastic. Its highly popular spring display of bluebells long passed, Coton Manor's loveliness appeared instead in its long midsummer border, its golden meadow, and its herb garden. The latter - pictured above - had plants of such vigorous growth, of such height and colour as well as scent, that even a visitor with no use for herbs would still want to take this enchanting little square back to their own home. The aforementioned border and meadow of the garden are framed by mature trees and little stepped waterways, and these shadier parts of the garden are appreciated all the more in the heat of summer.
With plenty of beautiful ornamental horticulture down every path and around every corner of its ten acres, Coton Manor is a wonderful place to come for that reason alone. Having said that, a quick glance at any garden's visitor comments book soon reveals that the public's favour is often found or lost by surprisingly non-horticultural considerations - a good café or a dog-friendly stance, for example. However, Coton Manor has furthered its charm in a rather unusual way. It is home to several exotic guests, some of which were polite enough to let me take their picture. As the RHS celebrates the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hyde Hall and the other three gardens have really had the gauntlet thrown at them by Coton Manor as it sports its own pat of flamingoes! Yet even these fabulous birds are upstaged by one other. Being of a similar age as me, Rodney the (extremely talkative) Macaw has lived there since I was born, and has been and always will be the first thing that my sisters and I look for when we arrive - gardening blog or no gardening blog!
