To cut or not to cut

Sue's brother Chris and his wife Sue came down from Scotland to stay with us last weekend. They wanted to get out and visit one of the Derbyshire Stately Houses. They had been to Haddon recently, and Chatsworth was a no-go area because of the Horse Trials (not sure what they were alleged to have done) so out of the big three that left Hardwick Hall.

This is another National Trust property so I had the pleasure of getting in for free (as a member of the NT), whilst the others had to cough up nearly £10 pounds each. Most people will know the saying "Hardwick Hall - more glass than wall", and one has to admit that it's not far off the mark:



As with Calke Abbey photography is not allowed inside the hall, which in spite of all the glass is very gloomy inside, so we will have to be content with shots of the gardens. We arrived before the hall was open so spent a good hour walking round the gardens, which are well worth a visit on their own. From the rear of the house the formal gardens open out into open countryside and I was taken by the contrast between the formal hedges and the trees beyond in this shot:



The gardens are divided by high formal edges into many separate areas such as an orchard, herb garden, vegtables, border plants etc. In one of the walkways between these areas I spotted this white bench in a quiet corner which appealed to me:



As you can see the bench sits on a typical English lawn: well manicured apart from a few daisies which must have shot up overnight because the lawn shows every sign of being recently cut. It made me think of when we moved into our current house five summers ago: the house had been previously occupied by a single man who worked away during the week and didn't have much time for gardening. When we moved in the lawn in the back garden was completely overgrown. When we had eventually unpacked everything and began to settle in I had to set out a complete morning in which to cut the lawn back to a normal length. I was a bit reluctant to do this because actually I quite liked the overall effect of long grasses going to seed mixed with a myriad of wild flowers (aka weeds) such as daisies, buttercups, dandelions, clover etc, etc. But convention won out over radicalism and the lawn duly received its short back and sides.

I was quite pleasantly surprised therefore on leaving the area with the bench to go into the herb garden. There at the back of the garden an area had been set aside to 'go wild', and here it is in all its glory:



Hopefully when we eventually find our little country cottage it will have a garden large enough to set an area aside to go wild in a similar fashion. I will be quite happy to share the maintenance of my garden with Mother Nature.