Garden Visit report for 2016

Our garden visits to the “House in the Woods”, “Chestnut Road” and “Townhill Park and Gardens”. Although vastly different were nevertheless equally enjoyable, each visit blessed with a typical English summers day. The May visit was to “House in the Woods at Beaulieu, a beautiful house built around the 1850 obviously by a wealthy family in acres of ground which was used during the second world war to train special operations men and woman. The gardens were vast, a magical placed to get lost in and very popular for bird watchers. The day was finished of with a very tasty cream tea.

 The June visit was to 21 Chestnut Road, this garden was delightful, a gem in the crown of amateur gardeners. It was an extremely well tended garden with vegetables, fruit trees and a wild flower area. Perennials shrubs and rose borders, with a wild life pond with a pretty little summer house in which there was a photograph and painting exhibition. After an interesting explanation of the gardens by its creators Iian and Mary the outing was topped of by 18 of us enjoying the traditional afternoon tea and cake.


 July visit was to Townhill Park House and Gardens, this huge house built around 1790 and is now a Grade 2 Listed building and now owned by Gregg’s College. 17 of us enjoyed an excellent talk on the house and its various extremely wealthy owners and distinguished visitors; this was followed by a guided tour around the gardens designed by the very late Gertrude Jekyll. Interrupted every 20 minutes or so by noisy aeroplanes taking off from Eastleigh airport whisking lucky people off on holiday. Once again a lovely afternoon was completed by tea and scrumptious cake.

June Morris


 


 Greggs School