Having A Hissy Fit At .......

Recently I went on a garden tour to Britain. Why? Well, that's actually a good question as we all know that if I want to look at scrumptiously gorgeous gardens I can do it here at my leisure in my own country, the Netherlands, where we have oodles of them as every gardener knows. Well, every gardener worth his/her salt, that is.
So why did I bother to be bussed and shuttled across vast distances just to look at a bunch of British gardens? Well, for one thing, it's always good to check on what your neighbours are up to and, for another, I had heard a rumour that there were actually some decent gardens to be found in Britain. I know, I know, rather a concept of the very mind boggling kind but still worth checking up on. So off I went to see, among others, this garden.
And, as gardens go, this one was not too bad but it did have rather shabby old doors that could do with a lick of paint,
crazy paving which is much cheaper than buying enough paving slabs to lay a decent looking path,
a very ancient weather vane (1839? Hello, this is the 21 century!),
very old and crumbling walls, in dire need of a spot of re-pointing as plants were growing in its cracks (shocking, innit?),
and peeling paint, the skin flints! Not bothering to keep the place from crumbling down our ears but very good at charging obscene amounts of money for entrance fees. I feel a hissy fit coming on so high time to change the subject.
I haven't told you yet that 2 days before I went on my garden tour my old camera broke down (panic stations everyone!) so I had to buy a new one and learn how to use it in just 1 day. As you know, I am rather fearless and in possession of a very large brain so I did manage to learn in time how to manage my new camera. Whew!

With my new camera, complete with huge memory card, I can take 3,236 pics in one go. Not too shabby and 3,236 pics would be just about enough for a short garden tour. Not surprisingly, I love to experiment with my new camera, as shown in the pic above, so yours truly was happily snapping away and in the process besting a whole busload of Japanese tourists in taking the biggest amount of pics in the shortest possible time.
There, I feel all calmer now, so enough of my new camera and my fantastically wonderful photography, let's continue with showing you this garden. As you can see they not only have crazy paving but crazy plant training as well. I get dizzy just looking at it. Fig torture, the latest craze in gardening!
It was rather a relief to find that they actually did have some very nice borders and stuff in this garden. Or so it seemed at first but then I stumbled upon this:
a great big gaping hole in the planting. What a let down, especially when you take into consideration that they have an army of gardeners here to maintain the garden. In a way it's heartening though for the amateur gardener when a professionally ran garden, famous throughout the world (or so they claim), shows vast gaping holes like that.
A vast hole of a different and much prettier kind

BTW have you figured out which garden it is yet? Apparently it's an icon of the garden variety and it draws a quarter of a million visitors yearly. Frightfully shocking those herds of visitors stampeding the garden, wouldn't you say? So glad that my own garden isn't subjected to that kind of treatment on a yearly basis.
Also of the shocking was coming upon this (almost) nekkid chap in the shrubbery quite unexpectedly. It gave me quite a turn, I can tell you. Nekkid men in the garden, what is the world coming to? And I was very much right in checking up on my neighbours as they had, horror of horrors, another nekkid chap that was actually admiring himself in the moat.
The brazen whatsit, even though he's made of marble! Gentle reader, I hope you are as appalled as I am by all this flagrant and gratuitous nekkidness.

But now ...... the big reveal (perhaps an unfortunate choice of words with all those nekkid chaps about) ......
Yes, you've guessed it : Sissinghurst!

And from now on there's no need to throw a hissy fit caused by garden envy when at Sissinghurst as yours truly has shown you how very far from perfect this garden actually is. There's no need to thank me, your bill is in the mail!

Kind regards,

Dr YE, world leader in the prevention of hissy fits in gardeners

copyright 2009: Y.E.W. Heuzen

It's a Dog's Life!

It's not easy being a little doggywog. You get taken on holiday without so much as a by-your-leave. This is where we went recently, some humble abode in the country.
Havezathe Voorstonden

Really, what is that all about? See those big trees? What is a girl doggy supposed to do with them? Not a lot, you got that in one.
I liked the garden as it was very large and they had birds there, lots of birds. I like birds they are very nice for chasing, although I never catch one. Must practise some more, I think.
This was also very puzzling, what a waste of space to built a great big house like that when you could have grass for me to sniff and play on
I love sniffing stuff. BTW what are Rhododendrons?
Yolanda kept mentioning them, saying how very beautiful they were.
Hmmmmm, they can't be more pretty than I am, can they?
Nah, of course not.
This had me totally confuddled, what the heck is it? It's not a doggy or a birdie and not a kittycat either. I know kittycats as we got lots of them at home.
There was another house there and I could see the point of that one as it was very nice and cosy inside, it was were we stayed during the holiday. Having a roof over your head is good, especially when it rains.
Upstairs it had a big window reaching down to the floor with a great view over the garden and I could also keep my eye on that strange big beastie from there.
In the evenings, as it got a bit nippy, we did this. I like this!
This is me in the garden of the former coach house, checking out all those new plants Yolanda has bought. I don't know why she bothers, we have enough of those at home and they had quite a lot of them at Voorstonden too.
I don't understand this fascination with plants. Sure, I like to nibble on them and chew of the flower heads but what else can you do with them?
I know that people buy them, sometimes travelling a loooooooong way to find them and when they get home they put them in the ground and then they go inside. What's the point?
This I get, I love hedges, they are fun. Can you see me in the pic?
I really liked the garden as it had so much interesting sniffing opportunities and we played with a Frisbee on the lawn quite often which I like very much.
They had lots of water there too, which was also pretty good as I love drinking the stuff and playing in it, getting myself soaking wet and then shaking myself vigorously. The shaking seems to delight all the people close by me because they all squeal with joy. Note to self: get wet more often and do the shaking thingy!

And then, just as I got used to having such a big playing space around me, we went home. Bummer! Our garden is much smaller than this one and I don't like that at all. Sigh, it's really a dog's life I'm living, don't you think?

And Tara is not the only one who's living a dog's life, yours truly will be going to this garden (pic below) and quite a few others such as Leonardslee gardens, High Beeches gardens, Wakehurst Place gardens, the Savill gardens, Ramster gardens and Doddington Place gardens as well next Friday. I'm going on a garden tour in Sussex and Kent (UK) with a friend for a few of days.
Sissinghurst aka Hissingfirst

I know, I know, it's tough, but somebody's got to do it. Later!

copyright 2009 Y.E.W. Heuzen