A Walk and Tour with a Personal Touch

My second venture out to a National Trust property was to Dyrham Park. It is situated not far off the M4 just north of Bristol and Bath. It was an ideal location to meet up with a couple of friends one of which I hadn’t seen since the beginning of lockdown. We arrived equipped with picnics and started with a walk around the parkland. This included a walk along what is known as Prospect Walk which gives panoramic views towards Bristol and Wales. We then skirted back round to a shady spot under a Horse Chestnut tree for our picnic. We were high up above the house and could see the roof tops through the trees.

Dyrham Park originally had a large area of Italian water gardens with water cascading down off the landscaped hills towards the house. This is now all parkland.

There are magnificent views of the house as you descend. You may notice a row of ornamental trees in containers outside the house. These are normally in the Orangery which is currently closed due to Covid restrictions.

The number of visitors is limited so nowhere was particularly crowded. We took a minute to reflect that an outdoor performance of Macbeth was supposed to be happening on this back lawn at the end of July. Sadly another casualty of the times.

One of the friends I was with  has been volunteering for the National Trust since last year as a gardener so she was able to give us a personal guided tour.

She was obviously not able to volunteer during lockdown but has been back for a few weeks now. Things have changed. They have to socially distance, not share tools and only work on certain days.

There is quite a lot of catching up to do which the 3 regular gardeners couldn’t get done on their own.

She did introduce us to one of the two resident cats.

We had quite a chat about this lacy hydrangea. One of them is a self confessed hydrangea hater but admitted that this particular one was quite pretty. My other friend informed us that her mum (a farmer’s daughter and wife) always referred to them as “town flowers”.

There was plenty of colour such as this bed of mombretia (Crocosmia).

A lot of the flower borders are lined with hoops of willow to control the plants flopping onto the path. The willow has been allowed to grow in places adding to the display.

It was quite a hot day and this volunteer gardener had the ideal job cleaning the green off the cascade steps.

The main borders have been planted with a lot of cottage garden type annuals because they were unable to pursue their original planting plan. These marigolds were particularly attractive.

The overall effect of the annuals was beautiful.

Everyone has worked hard to keep the garden up to scratch.

Here are a couple more beauties to finish on.