Hopton Hall Gardens

On Friday we'd arranged to meet a couple of friends at Hopton Hall, Carsington, Derbyshire.  The hall is open through July specifically for the rose gardens.  We've been several times when they open in February for their Snowdrop walks but never at this time of year. 

It was certainly much warmer than our February visits.  I think we chose the hottest day of July so far.  We had coffee from the 'pop-up' cafe before we followed the trail into the gardens.

We sheltered under the cover of this lovely summer house a couple of times during our visit.

 

The rose gardens were looking good although some of the roses were going over.  Others were looking gorgeous in the sunshine.

Above a small section of the 'crinkle crankle' wall. Some of it was hidden by scaffolding.  It is best viewed from outside as you pass by in the car towards the entrance.  No photos as it was a narrow road and quite busy as people arrived to view the gardens.

I liked the raised beds on one of the terraces.  These looked new.

The back of the hall.  Holiday accommodation is offered here.  

There are two ponds, this is the smaller one.  Damselflies and Dragonflies were hovering over the surface of the water.  The Damselflies an iridescent blue.

It was a lovely afternoon full of chatter but the heat was getting to all of us.  We moved on for a late lunch at The Miners Arms in Carsington village where most people were sitting outside in the sunshine, inside it was cool.  As we left children were coming out of school, excitedly rushing to the nearby play area on the village green.  I guess it was the last day of the summer term and they were filled with the thoughts of days of freedom stretching ahead of them.   I remember that feeling.  Do you?

Planes and Roses

On Wednesday we had a day out and about.  The weather stayed dry until we were driving home when it absolutely cascaded down and the windscreen wipers were on overdrive most of the way.  

Firstly we visited the RAF Museum at Cosford.  There were lots of changes since our last visit.  I didn't take many photos this time.

Hawker Hind Trainer 

 

 

Boulton and Paul Defiant

 Wellington Bomber

Bomber Crew, the crew member with the dog was a rear gunner.

Spitfire PRXIX 1945

We then moved on just a mile or so to David Autstin Roses. It's really just behind Cosford's air field but you have to drive round to get there. 

  It was very busy so we didn't stay too long. 

I took photos of some of the roses that caught my eye.  It was hard to take general views as there were lots of visitors and no space in the cafe or garden for lunch.  It's a very popular place.

The Lion Garden although I didn't take a photo of the lion statue that gives the garden its name.

Renaissance Garden

 

 One of the avenues in the long garden.

I love all the different names of the Roses - Port Sunlight where we visited a few years ago when we stayed on the Wirral.

 

These smell of orange blossom.
 

The Poet's Wife has a lemon scent.

Tottering-by-Gently.  I really liked this one especially the name.  I feel I'm just tottering by lots of things at the moment.  Named after a cartoon by Annie Tempest which is apparently in the Country Life magazine.

Shropshire Lass - well we were in Shropshire- is a rose from 1968, the blooms fade gently from pale blush to pure white.

 

Gertrude Jekyll - a firm favourite with many including me.
 

Emily Bronte - such a delicate colour.

Sir John Betjeman - such a lovely colour.  I share a birthday with him.  Day and month not year of course.

Boscobel - had to include this as that's where we were off to next - it's just a few miles down a long and narrow but straight road.  We often call them Roman roads, perhaps they were.

Boscobel House

I think it deserves a separate post.

Flower Wednesday

In the gardens of the Trentham Estate, sited in between the meandering 'Rivers of Grass' flower beds and the formal Italian Garden you can find the metal Arbour or walkway.

At the moment it is full of roses and as you walk through the scent of them is wonderful.

I'm afraid I don't know the names of the rose varieties but they were all lovely in the mornng sunlight.

Joining in with Riitta and Flower Wednesday.  Use the link to visit Riitta and others who are joinng in.

Midsummer Roses

Roses have a special connection to midsummer. The legend is that any rose picked on midsummer's eve or midsummer's day will stay fresh until Christmas. I may try - although I expect I would be better served by pressing a flower between the leaves of a book. This always brings to mind the wonderful book A Month in the Country by J L Carr - set in the period just after WWI and one of my favourite books. The vicar's wife, the beautiful Alice Keach gives Birkin, the artist who has come to restore the wall paintings in Osgodby church, a rose - a pink, single rose called Sara van Fleet. Years later he writes 'I have it still. Pressed in a book. My Bannister-Fletcher, as a matter of fact. Someday, after a sale, a stranger will find it there and wonder why.' It is the end of the film of the book that has me reaching for a box of tissues when Birkin, now an old man, returns to the church and in the churchyard opens his book and there, between the pages, is the pressed rose, a symbol of what might have been.


Roses are seen as the flower of love. Another custom for Midsummer's eve was that young girls would scatter rose petals before them and say the words:-

'Rose leaves, rose leaves, rose leaves I strew, He that will love me come after me now.'

Then, according to legend, the next day, Midsummer's day, their true love will visit.

I wonder if this ever happened? In Act 1 Scene1 of William Shakespeare's play 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' Lysander enquires of Hermia

'How, now my love? Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there do fade so fast?'

Hermia replies 'Belike for want of rain, which I could well beteem them from the tempest of my eyes'

Lysander follows with 'Ay me! For aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.'

Indeed!

Roses are much used in perfumes and also for healing purposes.

How to make rose water:-

Gather the roses from your garden just before they drop from the plant. Place in a heat-resistant bowl and cover with boiling water and leave them for about half an hour. Strain the mixture through muslin or cheesecloth into a jar and discard the petals. This mixture will last about 10 days if kept in the fridge, a tablespoon of vodka will act as a preservative if you want to store it for longer. Place in a spray bottle as a refreshing spray for warm summer days. You can also combine the rose water with glycerine to make a soothing moisturiser:-

3 tablespoons of glycerine to 3 tablespoons of rose water. Combine in a clean bottle, fasten the lid and shake the mixture. You need to shake before each use.

The rose above is called The Herbalist.

After I'd written this post and set it ready to publish later today we went for a walk around Trentham where we decided to have an ice cream from Cadwallader's ice cream parlour. Well, you've probably guessed - the flavour I chose was Rose Petal it was a pretty pale pink colour but this doesn't show very well on the photo which was taken with the phone camera; it was delicious - such a soft delicate flavour.

A Journey to Morville - Part One

Paul is on holiday this week and we've been pottering in the garden quite a bit but on Wednesday we decided to have a day out to visit a garden I'd been wanting to see for ages at Morville in Shropshire - much more of this magical place in a later post. We set out in the morning heading down the A34 towards Eccleshall and taking the Newport road through Woodseaves (I always think of Kester Woodseaves hero of Mary Webb's 'Precious Bane' when we pass through this village which is quite apt as we are heading into Shropshire later) and out towards Albrighton, after the A34 these are mostly peaceful country roads and it is a familiar drive for us because every year we visit the RAF Museum at Cosford. We stopped here first for a coffee and a look around to see what was changed and what was new - I'll let Paul tell you all about it on his blog. After a good walk around we drove back into the village of Albrighton and made our way to our next port of call - David Austin Roses.

There were some gorgeous roses both in the sales area and in the gardens which are free to wander around. The rose below was growing by the entrance - it is called 'Gertrude Jekyll'.

Below are a few more photos taken around the gardens.

Thanks to Paul and his camera for the close ups of the roses.

This fine fellow was certainly making his presence felt - well heard - all around the garden.

I'd never seen blue roses before - they were stunning and called 'Rhapsody in Blue'.

After wandering around to the call of the peacock, the buzzing of the bees and the wonderful scents from the roses it was time to move on. We drove along country lanes through yellowing fields rippling with red poppies towards the town of Bridgnorth. I'll tell you all about this in part two of the journey.