On Monday June 18th, this week, we went to visit Mottisfont Abbey Garden. It holds the National collection of old roses. The rain had damaged many blooms and brought donw several of the talled perennials but it was still lovely.
There was a very nice restaurant with a smallish but good selection of lunchtime fare. The house was converted from an abbey to a family house in the 19th century so was less interesting then the garden. However, the hose has a great number of paintings given by artist Derek Hill, not just his own but a small Degas and some other famous names. (I was not especially interested in these.) We also saw a lovely exhibition of paintings of flowers - some botanical in their detail, others more artistic in their representation.
In addition, you can buy many of the rose varieties but we didn't! No more space in the garden for big shrubby roses at present.
A really good day out, despite the awful rain in the morning, as we had coffee in Winchester on the way and pottered around the shops for a while until the abbey opened at 11am. On the way home we went via Farnham for a cup of tea - another old fashioned sort of town, interesting and worthy of at least a half day trip.
As the weather was so wet I did not take my camera although now I wished I had. So no photos only a link to the national trust page.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment