Hampton Court Palace
25th September
I visited Hampton Court Gardens, as i have never seen them before. We started in the Rose gardens and then visited the famous maze, which was originally for entertaining in 1690 the maze consists of half a mile of paths with yew hedges either side, it takes twenty minutes to reach the middle. We then headed through to the front of the house which has an avenue of huge topiary yews framing the house from the parkland. The yews were a fantastic shape, and clearly extremely old. The maintenance issue of avenues of trees is that they look best the same size/shape, so replacing diseased/declining trees is difficult without ruining the effect, I noticed there were a few younger trees, which clearly replaced the original trees. The only way to save the effect is to be brave enough to take down all the trees at once and replant, however half the charm of the avenue is the majestic size and age of the trees. Next we saw the Privy Garden, which has been restored to it's 1702 glory, which was fascinating. The symmetrical design and perfect topiary, and marble statues, really made me consider the landscape architecture of the time it was built, it was so perfect and symmetrical and well groomed; intricately designed. Followed by the knot garden, which was laid out in 1924, an imitation of a type of garden that might have been at Hampton Court in the 16th century. And then the pond gardens followed by The Great Vine, which was incredible. The vine was a cutting from a vine in Valentine's park in Essex, planted by Capability Brown in 1768. Its roots are planted outside the glasshouse, which is kept completely clear of all other plants and heavily composted to provide sufficient nutrients to the vine. The glasshouse measures 60 x 12 feet and had to be lengthened by 12 feet to accommodate the Vine. It's very impressive and still produces grapes; although we visited too late to try them as the harvest is in late August. It was a very interesting visit and I loved the gardens, they were very beautiful and impressive.
(From the top: One of the Pond gardens, the perfectly sheered tips of the yew trees in the avenue framing the house, The Great Vine, and The Privy Garden.) 