Gateway to the garden
Let me introduce you to the walled garden at Luton Hoo. I have an artists access card which will enable me to visit the garden a couple of days a week for the next year to take photographs or sketch or whatever. Today I had my first chance to explore and I am so excited at the opportunity I have. Let me fill you in with a quick bit of history first. The Luton Hoo estate has a long history but is most well known for its beautiful house and gardens designed by Capability Brown. In the late 1760s/70s an octagonal walled garden was built. This was to be a botanical garden to grow exotic flowers, fruit and vegetables. In the 1880s Sir Julius & Lady Alice Werner had a glass house built by Mackenzie & Moncur. After WWII the cost on running large estates became prohibitive and the garden and glass houses gradually fell into disrepare. The house was sold off and is now a luxury hotel and spa, but the estate is run by a different management. A great project is in hand to restore the garden and there are many volunteers working on researching the history of the gardens, fund raising, restoration and gardening. The garden is vast and surrounded by a 19ft wall which creates a micro-climate. There are many glass houses, an brick outbuildings which have been used in lots of TV series and films - if you are interested you can read about it on their website here and there is info about the estate on wikepedia.
Inside the garden
The garden is divided by a great 'diaphragm' wall which increased the area availble for trained fruit trees. I hope this gives you an idea of how vast it is.
Through the gap
This is taken from the great glass conservatory looking through the gap in the 'diaphragm' wall to the far gate.
The Mackenzie & Moncur conservatory
This has been wrapped in plastic to try to stop it deteriating any further.I will definitely be sharing more photographs of this wonderful place with you. I am actually more interested in making more abstract, graphic images, but I thought I'd start with a taster of the whole garden.
(No guarantee on the accuracy of my historic information)
5 comments:
It is a fantastic project and we really enjoyed our day out at the Pumpkin & Apple Gala .... I hope they are planning a summer event next year too ... I'm sure they would get lots of visitors. Thanks for sharing your lovely photos.
What a lovely place - I can imagine all sorts of abstract pictures coming from here - the shapes in the structures of the greenhouses, the patterns in the brickwork and so on all lend themselves to some sort of art work I'm sure. I look forward to seeing what you come up with over the year.
Jane x
PS That lovely marmalade cat really brightens my day when I click on your postings!
Thanks for this FANTASTIC peep at something wonderful out there....... How lucky are you??!! The conservatory wrapped in plastic is a fascinating concept..... are we going to see some abstract photos of it.... please? The scale of the whole place is breathtaking.....
Hi Jill, I've really enjoyed visiting your blog this morning (100s of other things to do, I feel a bit guilty) reading posts and admiring your artwork. Love the 'Marvin' header! Best wishes. Lesley
Thanks for your comment on mine - had the purple shoes been cheaper I just might have bought them for fun! By the way I have mentioned your blog on Ticking Stripes
http://tickingstripes.blogspot.com/2009/10/giveaway-time.html blog as being one of my favourites - hope this is OK with you?
Jane
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