July Holiday 1997 - 3

Now I'm staying in Devon for a week, on my own in a Bed'n'Breakfast. Devon is world famous for its gardens, but all I really want to do is fly home and work in my own. Hopeless!

Saturday 12th July

Rosemoor was OK - it was quite big, but I seemed to zoom around in no time. Oops. The part called 'Lady Anne's Garden' was nice, with lots of Phormiums, some Cordylines, and Eucalpytus trees (aargh!) in the mixed shrubby borders. Here, celebrated with a plaque, grows 'One of the Biggest Specimen Gums in Britain' which looks smaller than the BIG GUM on my house lawn back home. I'm afraid the mature Cordylines made me really homesick. All I want to do is to go home and be in my own garden. Foolish!

Herbaceous Borders

But back to Rosemoor. By the visitor centre there were herbaceous borders and rose beds - and mulch! I saw Lilian Austin next to Abraham Darby next to Mutabilis and these three roses looked groovy together.

Later...

I am the worst navigator. I wiggled on for a country drive supposedly to reach Dartmoor, but ending up at Crediton. Then attempting to return to the B'n'B I went round in a circle and found myself back at Crediton. Ha! Crediton sold me crummy strawberries, so I did not wish to return.

Sunday 13th July

My host has given me a detailed, hand-drawn roundabouts map - in case I end up in Crediton again - and I've followed it to Marwood Hill. This garden is one I've heard of - perhaps the local gardening magazine back home featured an article. It was very 'pondy'.

But - I saw weed-killer circles around the lawn shrubs and trees. Not a good look... And so in protest I don't take any photographs!

Later...

Now I've put myself on a local Red Cross Open Gardens tour. So far I've seen a couple of walled kitchen gardens, a couple of croquet lawns, and some cannons. And an old glasshouse, terraced inside, with two of the oldest brick chimneys. Weird!

These wee private gardens are a bit silly, really. There are lots of ladies wearing hats and people in uniform. Anyone who bothers to talk to me thinks I'm Australian...

Gardener's Comment 2009

The next day I drive like a woman possessed up into Wales. But I start to seriously miss my family and the animals back home. I decide from now on to send Daughter of Moosey on any overseas adventures, and retire into being an armchair traveller.

Train Trips...

I do make a few train trips, but - oh dear. 'The magic is lost and I'd rather be at home' I've written in the tiniest letters. I plough through a huge book called 'The Culture of the English People', which apparently explains (among other things) the importance of chests and fireplaces, though I can't for the life of me remember these details now.

English Slugs! Aargh!

I experience some real English gardening at my host's cottage in Bromyard. I don't wear gardening gloves and meet some huge black English slugs. Aargh!

But there's one more garden I do visit as I drive back to Heathrow, London. I absolutely fall in love with it. It's called Hestercombe, in Somerset. Back to the 1997 journal...