befogged

Yesterday, myself and a few friends went here:

And relived our childhoods with the aid of:

Hee! Granted, not everyone will immediately recognise that when they see it, but those of us who saw and read Moondial by Helen Cresswell when we were at school should remember it well. Belton House, where both book and series were set, is only a few miles from Grantham, where we all went to school, and since not a lot of note happens there it was quite exciting to have a book and tv series based in that neck of the woods. Tom-short-for-Edward’s gravestone is in the nearby church, too - makes you wonder…

It’s a great place to visit - the house itself feels somehow friendlier than stately homes often do, and we’d somehow timed it so that we visited on an open week where more rooms were open than is typically the case (Complete fluke - we’d arranged to go elsewhere, but when looking at the website for the address in the morning I realised it was closed that day and rapidly cast around for other places we could go in the same general vicinity!). The grounds, too, are well worth a visit - Sarah’s formed the intention of whisking her family off to enjoy them, as to be honest there’s plenty to enjoy without even venturing in the house if you don’t want to/have small children who wouldn’t be remotely interested. Plus National Trust properties always do really nice lunch (carrot and orange soup - yum!), which after several hours of wandering around is not to be sneezed at!

Today has been all about the garden, however, with much appreciated (and needed!) advice and help from Al’s granny and aunty plus two garden centre visits resulting in a bootful of shrubs which have now been planted. Fingers crossed for their survival! We’ve got a bit of a variety for the borders, plus some jasmine (always had a soft spot for that, there having been lots in the garden of the house in which I grew up) for the trellis.

We worked out that a climber for the pergola does have access to non-container soil if we train them up the left hand side of the trellis and then over the front of the pergola, so for now I’ve succumbed to the temptation of the showy and gone for a wisteria. It’s already quite vigorous, so we’ll see. Either way, it’s under strict instructions to behave itself or it will be replaced, since the only real reason that it got picked over clematis in the first place was that the wisteria plants were already quite large and therefore provided more immediate cover. Depending how that works out, though, I’m tempted to try something else, with a different flowering season, in a container towards the back of the pergola.

There are still plenty of gaps to fill with smaller plants, but it’s a bit easier to see where they are and what sorts of things we’ll need now that we’ve a few shrubs in place and have got the saplings planted, and will be easier to fill once the lawn has established and can cope with foot traffic.

One of the nice things about a garden is you don’t have to do it all at once - for a naturally impatient person, it’s probably a good thing that it forces a certain amount of patience!