Garden Visit: Bolehyde Manor

There's been quite a contrast in my garden visiting recently in terms of both venues and distance travelled. Friday's was a round trip of over 200 miles to visit elegant Cottesbrooke and its excellent plant fair with Patient Gardener - who's already covered everything you need to know here. Today's visit was a relaxing cream tea in the cottage garden of my friends C and J from choir. A couple of days ago I ventured a mere couple of miles to visit Bolehyde Manor, open for just a single afternoon this year via the NGS.

I missed the best view of the manor as I drove past it on the way to the car park in the field next door. This is the view just after you've paid your entrance fee. I was thinking Where's the garden then? as I took this photo. The owner must have been reading my mind because he said It's to the left behind the left hand building in front of you just as I clicked the shutter.

So the rest of my afternoon was spent finding tempting little glimpses of the manor like this one. We're not quite in The Cotswolds here, but the 16th Century house and its many garden walls are built from the same mellow local limestone, so we can pretend we are.

I'm no garden historian, but I think the gardens are more late 19th or early 20th century than 16th. There were many garden 'rooms' divided by structural yew and topiary as well as the aforementioned walls. Ironwork gates were another feature, some of them having luscious pears or grapes in their design. There were lots of lawns too.

But there was also plenty of structural planting such as this pond area.

Plus a rather nice potager of mainly triangular shaped beds, some of which was very loosely planted. Roses and a walled herb wheel made a central feature to this part of the garden. There were lots roses elsewhere too, including a wonderfully scented old rose in the orchard.

There were plenty of focal points, plus an an allium and agapanthus walk.

Here the formal topiary of the garden rooms closer to the house contrasts with the large meadow area which forms the edge of the garden to link the manor to its farmed hinterland.

This was a garden for relaxing and soaking up its atmosphere, plus making discoveries such as this rather covetable greenhouse which doubled up as the entrance to the tea and cake sales. I also found a new [to me] local nursery to visit as they were managing the plant sales area. But the best surprise of all was finding my SUP friend S, partaking in her favourite activity: tea in the garden. We both agreed Bolehyde Manor made a rather good escape from the constant World Cup coverage on the TV :)