I recently had reason to be staying in a hotel and is my usual habit when I got a moment to myself I wandered off to explore the gardens. When I wandered out to explore the gardens what I found was the too often known tale of a ghost of a grand garden.
I love exploring somewhere new. I could see the bones of the garden and where things had once been and as usual I tried to picture it as it had once been.
The lawns are beautifully terraced down to the river.
There are these excellent sweeps of steps. I decided that this could have been an Italianate Garden at some point. There is something about how the areas link together that spoke to me of such. If it had been there then this has now been swept away. I had a little hunt about on the internet to see if I could find any old photographs or pictures of the gardens in previous times, but I could find very little. The house was requisitioned during the war and has changed hands several times. That is has now been made into a hotel has probably been the saving of it.
There is this pretty formal garden now sadly rather clogged up with weeds. We all know as gardeners that it only takes a moment to look the other way and the weeds will take advantage.
This is not years of neglect and the urge to get in there and start weeding was almost too strong.
There are few things as sad as a dead palm in a pot....
This is not an angry finger-wagging of a story, this is a lament for what once was. You can see it was a fine sunny autumnal day and a few weeds here and there were not going to discourage me from enjoying my wanderings.