To the Tulips, with teeth! (The Tulip Tattoo).

May! Glorious month, the garden is all dressed for a wedding, the grass is strewn with papery petal fall...and the wind bites and I perpetually wish I had a coat.

I had the pleasure of visiting Pashley Manor this week, the annual Tulip Festival is in full swing. What a pageant it is. I am not sure that I "like" order, military rows, tulips on the parade ground but there's no denying it is a spectacle. As I look at the perfectly spaced planting and the harmonised colours I am strangely reminded of a military Tattoo. I fancy I can hear the cymbals clash as the band marches in perfect unison.
Let's begin in the Bloms marquee. Trestles set with glass vases filled with specimen tulips, arranged by colour.


I like tulips with teeth! spiked edges, articulated cabbagey petals, parrots in other words!




But not exclusively, I have a real crush on this ravishing tulip, dusky terracotta with hints of pinky lilac, as seen in the Long Toms at Perch Hill.La Belle Epoque.
Outside in the garden I am drawn less by the amazing massed beds and more to the urns, I like the idea that a garden urn is a giant vase of flowers.

 

Love this greenhouse! Bit more than a greenhouse in truth...a passionflower is clinging to a lattice of canes and there are lovely sculptures nestled betwixt scented geraniums and other tender specimen.
 

The house is devastatingly handsome, all timber framed Medieval to the front and Georgian symmetry to the back, dripping in jewels, wisteria drops and clematis stars.




There is a Corps de Ballet analogy to be made too...and if I was ever in doubt enter the black swan stage left...

 Note to self: When visiting Tulip Tattoo/Ballet always wear another layer...the wind has teeth!

- - x - -

PS. I rather fell in love with this wonderfully stoic lady taking tea in the arctic breeze and thought how brilliantly English! When I said hello I was reminded how foolish it is to assume, she was Dutch! Of course she was, we were in a tulip garden.

Perch Hill in all it's glory

I have lost count of the number of times I have dragged you around Perch Hill with me. 

Sorry about that but, in my defence, it is never the same! 

The garden evolves and develops each year and I for one am always delighted by either some tiny new detail or the larger landscaping projects. 

I love the subtle changes to The Oast Garden, the tulip combinations in the Long Toms are, this year my favourite ever.

The new rose garden, situated in the old courtyard where the cold frames and a wonderful old wisteria lived is fantastic, and to see it mature over the coming seasons will be a joy.

Shall we have a wander?

 

I could write reams and reams but somehow feel you wouldn't be any better informed than you are for looking. I will add one thing...I am happy to report the old wisteria I mentioned, has been dug out and replanted, I have it on very good authority!

 

The next open day is Saturday 30th May, more details here .

--x--

Drinking in the morning sun...

...Blinking in the morning sun...
The light, early...so pure, slaking around the angles of the house and bursting through the window panes...theatrically lighting the kitchen.
I stand, transfixed looking at the detail and the shadows.
As the minutes tick past, so the spotlight shifts elsewhere...

Tea and sunshine...perfect morning balm...no matter what is broken, you have a sense it can be mended.

 --x--

Egging me on!

 These newly lighter, longer evenings are wreaking havoc with the dinner arrangements here Down the Lane. I can't come inside...just need to finish wrestling with this ridiculously rambling rose. Three evenings in a row I have stubbornly stood, back to the Westerly Biter, dead heading ancient hydrangea bushes whilst slowly losing the feeling in my fingers. Three evenings in a row we have eaten a boiled egg for dinner!

 It feels so extraordinarily good to see flowers again! So much is waking up every day now, blink and you miss something going from tight bud to blossom or leaf. The house is clad in all sorts of inherited wonders, I am finally able to anticipate, knowing the rhythm of the seasons here on our hill better each passing year. 

The house is swathed by a beech hedge scarf. I love the stubborn faded leaves, dry and rustling in the wind. Often still refusing the new buds long after the cow parsley lace has opened. The bank under hedge, roadside, is studded with yellow primrose stars and purple vinca that has made a break for wildom under the hedge and down the lane.

 

I don't know why, but I like daffodils at Easter. If Easter is late or Spring is early and the two do not coincide I feel strangely cheated.This year all is well, the daffs huddling around the trunks of trees and decorating the fence line are chiming on kew!

 I am writing this and thinking about all the patterns implied by the shadows and the limited palette...

 ..speaking of shadows, being blown about by an April gust!

 --x--

Sleeping Beauty

Arguably one of the least appealing buildings on our plot is the old Nissen Hut. Smothered and choked as it is by a thick vest of evergreen pine, ivy, hydrangea, blackberry, clematis and buddleia...woven to it's corrugated sides. Or at least it would be if it were stripped bare. As it is I often look across and imagine it is a giant upturned birds nest. Or, perhaps it is an enormous abandoned Gypsy Caravan gone "Haversham". What would happen if we did, strip it bare? I suspect it might simply give up the ghost, remain there momentarily before heaving an enormous creaky sigh and collapsing inwards in a cloud of dust.

It is also the source of endless conjecture..."one day we will....." "I wonder who built it?" We know that once there were two side by side, the brick footings are still visible in Home Field. "What did they use them for?"

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Nissen Huts were first produced during the First World War. Major Peter Norman Nissen a mining engineer and inventor developed three prototype semi-cylindrical huts. They were used extensively in the Second World war for both storage and accommodation, although not exclusively there are examples of them being used as churches and, after the war as family homes.

Photo credit: Haywood Magee

They are now in decline, ours must be at least 70 years old, perhaps older. There are lots of derelict examples dotted around the countryside, all well camouflaged by years of weathering.

image

Whilst trundling around the alternative reality that is Pinterest the other day I spotted this...

I love these miniatures by Antonia Dewhurst, they are scale models of buildings made up using digital images of the original. Something in me shares Antonia's fascination with the sense of "Home" and belonging.

Oh! and then, I discovered this and thought..."One Day!"

The Lane Man, at some distant point in the future when he reads this, will snort at my whimsy. The current scene is populated by machinery, logs, oil cans, wardrobes. rope, chairs, kitchenalia, paint pots, scalextric, fairy lights and ivy vines snaking through the cracks in the corrugated iron roof!

And the truth? Well the truth is I love it as it is...warts and all. After 4 and a half years I wouldn't change it..."One Day...." seems a very long way away!

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Back inside, there are plenty reasons to be cheerful. Stirring from my Nissen musings, I refocus on the £2 bunch of daffodils that light up the kitchen, so simple and exuberant, forever grateful for the simple stuff...

--x--