Muswell Hill

In the middle of July, I took Mum and Dad down to London as their joint birthday present, to visit the gardens of Earl Hyde and Susan Bennett, which had featured on Gardener's World and also in one of Mum's Woman's Weekly Garden magazines.

The garden was open as part of the National Garden Scheme openings for charity - it transpired that Susan Bennett is one of the London organisers so knows exactly how to get into that Yellow Book - an ambition of mine for some point in the future, probably retirement!

This garden is the size of three tennis courts apparently and is incredibly quirky.  There are two ponds, one at each end of the garden, and there is a large pottery studio in the centre of the garden, where Earl makes all his sculptures and pots.

These strange structures are old drainage components which have been painted and added to the garden.  They have used a lot of reclaimed materials - we lost count of the chimney pots - and have some brilliantly creative ideas for dressing the garden.  I loved it!

These pots are absolutely beautiful and all made in the studio on site.   (Amanda has expressed an interest in becoming a potter and has even thrown her own pot on a recent course in Staffordshire, home of the potteries.  With a price tag of £125 for these, Mum and I - while desperately wanting one - could not afford the price tag so we're actively encouraging Amanda to get her finger out and make some for us!)

(I have since discovered that the head sculptures of Beethoven and Liberace were made by Earl Hyde and that Alan Titchmarsh, while visiting to film a garden programme, made Beethoven's hair!)

It was a baking hot day so we were very glad to find a shady seating area underneath the willow tree by one of the ponds.

One area of the garden was given over to plant sales and I bought a cutting of this beautiful fuchsia - I don't usually like hanging baskets, but I planted it in a basket at the front of my house and I'm pleased to report that it's flowering now - and the flower heads are a beautiful bright pink colour.  (I also bought a very well established tradescantia, with similar colouring - going from green to pink to white and that is in another hanging basket out the front and doing very well.)

Love this fire place and clock on the mantelpiece!

A really fab garden and I have already nicked a few design ideas for my garden, including a hanging glass fish bottle from my pergola and a little rockery garden in different coloured ceramic pots.   Lots more ideas to follow although I'm not sure I'm brave enough to go the whole Hyde/ Bennett way, but it certainly is a beautiful garden and very well worth a visit.

Blossom and Yarn - Caston - Wedding

The Blossom and Yarn organisers really went to town for Caston church - we had a wedding party, wedding guests, bell ringers, even the Bishop!  And this church really suited a wedding - a beautiful setting and they'd even got a wedding reception set up with cake and champagne and inebriated wedding guests!  (Actually they may not have been inebriated, they may just not have had as much backbone or stuffing as the other knitted models!)

We were greeted by the Bishop as we entered the church.

And the bell ringers were in the entrance too to meet us.

There was even a weeping mother of the bride!

Such a brilliant display!   Not so many photos though as, by the end of this one day, I had taken over a hundred photos and my camera card was too full.  As it was, I sat on one of the pews to try and delete some photos taken earlier in the day!

What a brilliant day though - such a joy to visit all these different churches and see how hard the villagers had worked and the sheer creativity of everyone.  I so hope they do this again next year - I might petition the organisers while I think about it!