The Secret Garden
Mar. 5th, 2022 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
puddleshark
I recently found out about a Secret Garden (Shhh! I mustn't say how).
Actually, there's a website. But the website refuses to tell you where the secret garden is, until you have booked a ticket, then sends you a set of clues. (I suppose if you really wanted, you could cheat and consult Google, but where would be the fun in that?)
To reach the Secret Garden, you follow a long lane through a rhododendron jungle, then bump your way along a long gravel track, till it feels like you might be in the middle of nowhere. Leave your car in the small car park. Follow a narrow gravel path that zigs and zags gently through the woods for several minutes...
...till you come to a wall.
Follow the wall.
The entrance to the Secret Garden.
An old Victorian walled garden. It was abandoned and overgrown for forty years, and is now slowly being restored. Still very much a work in progress.
The Rose Garden, with
I didn't manage to photograph it, but the ripple of water over metal is rather beautiful, like shot silk.
Promise of things to come!
The Veg Garden, all nicely prepared for Spring.
The Herb Garden, and one of those little garden fortifications that the Victorians were so fond of.
The Stumpery, with willow arches and little dens for children.
Withy tunnel.
Work in progress. Unsually for a walled garden, one side of the garden has only iron railings. The southern side of the garden is above the flood plain of the River Piddle, and was left unwalled to allow the early morning mists and frosts to roll out of the garden.
The old tatty (potato) store, now a little café run by the Salt Pig (a locally-sourcing café and delicatessen based in Wareham).
Black coffee and a muffin, which the north-east wind tried to steal ( I don't blame the wind - it was cold, and probably just wanted to warm itself up). I would have liked tea, but I know from past experience that the Salt Pig's coffee is excellent, and their tea is horrible. They really don't understand tea at all.
