Two Days at the Garden Museum Literary Festival at Chatsworth House

Regular readers will know that the Garden Museum Garden Literary Festival is one of my favourite, favourite events of the year.

This year is was at Chatsworth House which made it a double delight. As I have previously said, Chatsworth is relatively close to home and a garden I have visited many times both as a child and an adult. I last visited last October when the Garden Media Guild was invited to visit and learn about the new Arcardian Garden at Chatsworth designed by Tom Stuart Smith. The Literary Festival gave me two connected opportunities: I could visit this garden again to see how it was developing and I could go to the talk given by Tom Stuart Smith about his work at Chatsworth and his work at the Hepworth Wakefield. As you might expect, a visit to the Hepworth Wakefield is now firmly on the list.

Exploring these gardens in a different season was sheer joy.

I had a serious euphorbia moment, just look at the a zing of this one? I can hear some of you muttering: 'but I thought you didn't like green flowers?'; true, true, but how I could not love these?

The many aspects of the Chatworth gardens were admired, from the orchids in the grass,

to the blue campanulas,

to the contrasting formal pauses of green spaces that soothe,

and the huge lily pads in the glasshouse.

I had wanted to read Miss Willmott's Ghost from the moment I heard the book was to be published. Sandra Lawrence's superb talk just increased my need for this book. I know very little about Miss Willmott which was reason enough to want to buy this book. I should add I have tried to grow Eryngium giganteum, also known as Miss Willmott's Ghost as she allegedly sprinkled seeds of it when she visited people's gardens. Let's just say sprinkling it here just does not work.