Following the trail
The Newt Estate is covered by walking trails, well prepared and signposted. On a fine morning, what better thing to do that set out on one of the shorter routes to visit “The Story of Gardening”, which everyone had recommended as a must-see.
The quotation on the garden wall from Gertrude Jekyll, one of England’s most prolific and well-known garden designers seemed to sum up one of the main aims of the garden here. I wonder what lay in store down the track?
Well, not only the Story of Gardening, but tea, cake and other delights it seems!
To begin with, the pathway followed the contour of the garden and as we climbed uphill slightly, offered a good view of the orchard where we’d been yesterday. Yes, once again, we were the only people here! (Not at all…but somehow, I managed to avoid getting anyone else in the shot)
Once out beyond the copse of trees and into the open fields, we had a great view and realised that we were quite high up here.
From this field, we could see across and beyond the boundary of the estate. The path was well maintained and it was an easy stroll. The fresh air felt good!
A little way along, something different came into view…hmmm….
My hero is not good with heights or wobbly bridges, so taking a deep breath and summoning up all courage he stepped out along what was surely a very secure pathway through the trees.
There beneath us and probably totally unaware of our presence, a small group of deer grazed.
I stopped to take pictures, thinking that this would be a welcome distraction from the anxiety. That turned out not to be the case though, for stopping to watch the deer only made the very distinct wobble more noticeable and we wasted no time in getting along to the end of the bridge!
Only afterwards do I notice that at times, I neglect to take what seems like an obvious photograph. On this particular morning I didn’t take a single shot of the building that we discovered tucked into the side of the hill, totally unnoticeable until now. The Story of Gardening is very well described and explained in an article here in a blog post and some digital pages from the Premier Construction magazine though, thankfully!
What happened next was, unsure of where to go - had we even found the right place? - we found ourselves in a cafe. Was this what we wanted? We’d just had breakfast it seemed!
Thankfully, one of the staff members greeted us and explained that yes, we were in the right place…step this way and all will be clear. She explained that The Story of Gardening begins with this introductory video and continues through here….but first, please take off your shoes and leave them with your coats here.
Well, everything was immaculately clean and the floor comfortable to walk on, so there was no problem in doing that. The cloakroom was beautifully done with great coat hooks and large chunks of wood to sit on and manage shoes, which could be stored in “shoeboxes” on the wall.
There was a rather lovely collection of shoe horns for use later too!
Free of coats, shoes and with only a small bag to manage, we got the electronic guide system started. Well, actually, we needed to do nothing - the small, very comfortable earpiece was key to it all and the automatic location tracker immediately identified exactly where we were standing and told us all we needed to know. I have used these things in art galleries and cursed the way they override peoples’ common sense when moving about a public space, but here it seemed different. Perhaps it was because, still, we had the place to ourselves. Had it been busy, then maybe I would have felt differently.
There followed a series of “rooms” - or gardens - each built to represent a period of history or a style of gardening. We moved through them slowly, listening to the commentary and noting all the visual detail as we went.
Each small space had been cleverly thought out. For example, the emphasis of the Islamic garden was the symmetry and the water courses. It was shown using a mirror then and for the time we looked and listened, it was easy to suspend belief and really imagine we were standing in a square coutrtyard.
Each wall was used to add detail and to enrich the experience - not a square centimetre was wasted.
There were spyholes, small viewing panels and, in this case, drawers to open where further models could be found. Plenty of purposeful interactivity!
As I opened drawers and took photographs, I heard my Hero gasp as he stepped into the next room. “You’ll see”, he said.
Well yes…it really did look like we were walking on water in the chinese garden! I stood on a lilypad and pretended to be a frog whilst the koi carp swam in the pool beneath me.
We continued our progress through Japanese gardens, medieval monasteries and the baroque splendour of Versailles, finally coming to the enormous Victorian glasshouses and a clever demonstration of the work of the English landscape gardeners such as William Kent, Capability Brown and Humphry Repton.
Fascinating! (and quite fun too)
I felt reluctant to make full use of the virtual reality presentations which followed on from the garden rooms, not only because putting on a close fitting headset in these times of pandemic didn’t seem terribly sensible (even though we were more or less the only people there and probably the first to use that particular kit this morning), but the taxonomist in me had spotted the display around the corner.
What is it that makes collections like this so satisfying? Is it the manner in which they are displayed?
Part of it has to be the shadows, don’t you think?
I could have pulled up a chair and spend the rest of the day drawing!
But we’d arranged to meet Edward and Amy in the glass fronted Garden Cafe for lunch and looking at our watches, we realised we’d spent all morning in those little garden rooms. No time for tea and cake - time to get a move on!
Actually, lunch turned out to be rather different, but I’ll conclude my posts from the Newt with a final piece about the food here.
Oh my word…the food!
