Events
2010 Events Programme
Our events are, with the Annual Plant Sale, the main way of raising income to support the aims of the Trust. Do come to our events and bring your friends. Friends of members pay £1 supplement over the event price; members of the public pay £2 over the event price (both refundable if they join the Trust at that event).
Details of the events for the remainder of this year are shown below. For further information, or to reserve tickets for any of the following events, please download the Booking Form June to Nov 2010 or contact Commander David Freemantle, tel: 01984 667202 or email: hartwoodhouse@hotmail.com Maps of venues will be sent with tickets.
15 July – Coach Trip to The Laskett and Brockhampton Cottages – £38 Leave Glastonbury at 08.00, Taunton (West Monkton) at 08.25
The Laskett Gardens are the largest private formal gardens to be created in England since 1945. Over almost four decades the historian, Sir Roy Strong, and his late wife, the designer Dr Julia Trevelyan Oman, transformed a four acre field into a series of stunning garden rooms, vistas, ascents and descents. These include a rose garden, pleached lime avenue, orchard, kitchen garden, knot garden, fountains and parterres as well as a spectacular array of topiary and rich herbaceous and prairie style borders. Uniquely, the garden tells the story of both their marriage and their creative lives in the arts.
Brockhampton Cottages lie some five miles north of Ross-on-Wye, with views over deep Herefordshire valleys, perry orchards and game coverts. It’s a richly patterned landscape of fat hedgerows bursting with hazels and oaks, and warm soil the colour of fresh liver. Peter Clay inherited the cottages and the surrounding land from his grandfather, and he and Tom Stuart Smith began making a garden in 2000 to test some of the ideas Peter was going to use on his innovative gardening website www.crocus.com.
We will have a bring and share picnic in the grounds of Brockhamton Cottage.
10 August – Visit to Steeple Manor and Bloxworth – £18
Self drive. Parking is limited at both houses, so please car share wherever possible. There will also be a shuttle from the Village Hall Car Park.
An interesting pair of gardens near Wareham both created around early 17th Century buildings.
Steeple Manor Small parts of 17th C garden remaining but most of the existing garden was designed by Brenda Colvin in 1923 and is one of only three gardens created by her that are still in existence. Set in a fold in the Purbeck hills, the five acre garden is a garden of smaller gardens with the intention of surprise between one garden and the next, whilst using the different aspects and soil conditions to produce a range of garden experiences. Like many large gardens with limited staff, informality has become the key.
Bloxworth Martin Lane Fox, one of three garden designers to hold the Royal Horticultural Society’s prestigious Victoria Medal of Honour, has created an 8 acre garden around this 17th C Manor House. Using a number of the old buildings and medieval structures, he has produced a garden with many features reflecting the tastes of earlier times – the rill, the pleached lime allee as well as modern touches like the gravel garden.
28 September – Talk by Caradoc Day “Plant Hunters & Pioneers of the South West”
19.30 at Cannington Gardens. Cost £10 to include soup and rolls.
Plant Hunters & Pioneers; The Story of the Veitch Nurseries of Exeter & Chelsea
You would be hard-pressed to find a garden in Britain that does not contain a ‘Veitch’ plant or one derived from their nurseries. This illustrated talk highlights some of the well-known and interesting plants introduced by this important firm. They were the first commercial nursery in Britain to sponsor their own plant collectors, returning with many hundreds of new plants. The Veitch Nurseries sent twenty-three collectors to many countries over a seventy-two year span which included William and Thomas Lobb, Richard Pearce, John Gould Veitch, Peter C. M. Veitch, Frederick Burbidge, Charles Maries, Charles Curtis, James H. Veitch, Ernest H. Wilson and William Purdom.
17 November – Talk by Jonathan Lovie “Affliction Brightened by Hope; The Evolution of the English Cemetery Landscape”
15.00 Ruishton Village Hall. Cost £9 to include tea.
From 1800 England faced an unprecedented crisis in the provision of burial space, and this talk will consider the aesthetics and underlying symbolism of the commemorative landscapes created during the 19th and early 20th centuries – with some excursions abroad. Many well known landscape gardeners, such as Joseph Paxton, were involved in this work and there is some fascinating architecture involved.
Jonathan Lovie is a part-time Conservation Officer and Policy Advisor for the Garden History Society and has been responsible for listing and recording many of these cemetery landscapes for English Heritage.
For further information, or to reserve tickets for any of the above events, please download the Booking Form June to Nov 2010 or contact Commander David Freemantle, tel: 01984 667202 or email: hartwoodhouse@hotmail.com. Maps of venues will be sent with tickets.