Late Summer at Kiftsgate

Hi there everyone 😀

I must have driven past Kiftsgate Court Gardens numerous times when visiting Hidcote, without even realising it was there. I discovered the delights of the garden back in the Spring, when I made my first visit whilst meeting up with an old friend and trying to make the most of this year's Garderners' World 2 for 1 card.

I liked it so much that I really wanted to share it with Martin and Mum and Dad, who also like a good garden visit. I also really wanted to see it at a different time of year. Ideally we would have liked to have visited in June, to get to see the roses at their best, but that just didn't happen so it was actually the beginning of August by the time we managed to fit our visit in.

The garden doesn't open until lunchtime so we spent the morning at Hidcote, had lunch there and were pretty much knocking on the door as Kiftsgate opened.

We had a right mix of weather during our visit, from a very heavy rain shower, to just a little bit of blue sky and sunshine, but we all still loved the garden ... in fact we all preferred it to it's larger and grander neighbour just up the road.

As I've shared the detail of the garden with you before I'm opting again today to just share my favourite 10 images, rather than give you a virtual tour, so here we go ...

1 - The Sheer Abundance
What pretty much became apparent from the moment we entered the garden was the sheer abundance of planting. There was so much in flower, so much colour and so many enormous blooms, they just took our breath away. At times it was hard to know where to look ...
2 - Agapanthus
Mum and I both absolutely love agapanthus, though we tend to have mixed results with growing them in our own gardens. Neither of us had ever seen any as big as these white ones though. The blooms were literally bigger than our heads ...

3 - Just ... so ... much ... in ... flower ...
The top half of the garden was so full of plants in full bloom. There was something else to see at every turn and in every corner ...

4 - Lilies ...
I believe these are tree lilies, but they were literally 'as high as an elephant's eye'. None of us had ever seen lilies like this before, they were spectacular ...
5 - Blue garden furniture ...
Not something that I would have thought would have gone well in a garden, but here it seems to work a treat. I remember being taken by this when I first visited and I liked it just as much on my second look. It just works really well against the backdrop of the borders ...

6 - Hydrangeas ...
These are one of my absolute favourites and this display in the corner of the old manor house was just stunning. It was hard to capture as it was so dull but the colours were really vibrant and really stood out against the honeyed stone ...
7 - Pure & simple ...
I have absolutely no idea what these flowers are, I just know that I really liked them ...

8 - The fountain ...
The pool and the fountain are so different to the rest of the garden ... far more formal and modern with clean straight lines and no flowers at all. I love the leaves of the fountain though ... especially watching as the fountain springs back into life and gradually works its way along, until all are flowing ...

9 - Just like we have at home ...
It's always nice to see flowers on a garden visit that we have at home. I love the bright orange of this crocosmia, against the deep green of the foliage, which had plenty of room to spread out and hadn't just flopped to the ground like ours always does ...
10 - Another striking contrast ...
Here's another plant that I can't name but I really liked the striking contrast of the bright yellow against the deep, almost red to black, leaves ...

So there you have my 10 favourite images from our late summer visit to Kiftsgate. It's not a huge garden, we probably spent just a couple of hours there, including a visit to the tea room, but it certainly is worth a look.

I've already made a mental note that we need to go and have another look in June next year 😀

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Meeting up with an old Friend - Kiftsgate Court Gardens

Hi there everyone 😀

Earlier this week I shared the morning that I spent with an old friend at Hidcote Manor Gardens with you. We moved on to spend the afternoon at another garden ... Kiftsgate Court ... which we'd spotted when we visited Hidcote the last time ... it is literally just a stone's throw away.

The garden opened for the season on 1 April and can be visited for the afternoon on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays during April, before moving to opening from Saturday to Wednesday over the summer months.

It had the added bonus of being a garden that could be visited using the Gardeners' World 2 for 1 card, so it cost us just £9 to visit for the both of us. Never having visited before, neither of us had any idea what to expect, but we both ended up being very pleasantly surprised.

We both drove from Hidcote, though you could really walk, and it literally was just down the road. We were expecting to pull straight into a car park, but there is a fairly long drive which takes you a fair way away from the main road before dropping you into the car park in front of another beautiful honey stoned building, where a very friendly lady was waiting to check us in and tell us a bit about the garden.

Our ticket had a little map on the back, which gave us a good idea the best route to take round the garden to make sure we didn't miss anything. This can be found on the garden website if you want to see it in full multi-colour.

After a quick visit to the facilities in the courtyard we were on our way.

The first thing that caught our eye, on the edge of the bluebell wood were the drifts of anemones and fritilleries ...

We didn't want to miss anything and not really knowing the layout of the garden we opted for following the little map pretty much in the order it was laid out.

We wandered round the back of the buildings to the four squares, where we got a real sense of how high up the garden was. There was definitely going to be a view to be had looking out over the valley at some point, but for now we were happy to be mooching about in the sunshine taking in what the garden had to reveal to us.

From the Four Squares we made our way around the side of the building to the sunken garden ...

... which was a real treat ...

We were both surprised at how well the blue metal garden furniture worked as it wasn't a colour that either of us would have thought would have looked so right ...
We also both really liked the fact that so many of the plants were labelled so we knew what we were looking at. We saw a fair few that neither of us had come across before including this ... which we could not find a label for, but Martin managed to find it online after I got home and confirmed it as a trillium kurabayashi when back home ...

From the sunken garden we wandered through the rose borders, where not much is happening at the moment but it was lovely to see how all of the roses were supported on all kinds of makeshift metal supports. I'm sure these borders will look amazing in June ... there may just be the need for a re-visit.

Passing through the wild garden we could also see that the allium were going to be amazing but for today, there was just lots of green.

We carried on through the orchard, where the blossom is just starting to make an appearance ... again just a little too early to see the camassia in bloom. We passed some other visitors on the way who said that it was definitely worth climbing the wooden stairs to the top, which of course we did ...

It was definitely a bit of a 'wow' moment. I don't know what we'd been expecting, but it certainly hadn't been this. I guess that is the joy of visiting a garden for the first time. However many times we visit again, we will never quite have that same feeling the next time we see this view.

We couldn't not walk up to the sculpture to see it close up. From a distance it looked a bit like a feather ...

Up close it is just as spectacular. It's three dimensional with some very intricate patterns in the metalwork. I think the blue sky definitely helps, but we were both very impressed.

Retracing out steps back up to the mound we could see the tops of the leaves of the water fountain and from the map we decided the water garden was definitely our next stop.

The water garden was another total surprise. It was so formal, compared the rest of the garden that we had seen so far ... not what we expected at all ...
We didn't have to wait long for the fountain to start and watched patiently whilst the cascade worked its way along all of the leaves, waiting until it had reached the very last one before having a walk around the pool, which looked very dark and deep ...
Of course we had to cross the steps into the centre ...

... where I captured what had to be my favourite shot of the day ...

Having sat for a while and watched the fountains for a couple of cycles it was time to move on and along the borders to the steps which would take us down to the lower part of the garden ...

... and this is where we found that view we'd been hoping for. It was stunning ...

Looking back across the pool was pretty decent too ...

Looking back towards the top of the garden you can see the banking on the left which has made planting and access to the steep slopes possible ...

We started to make our way back up the steps and pathways to the top of the garden, stopping to take in the view, and to get my breath back, on the way ...

We passed paths seeming to lead off into secret hideaways ...

... but carried on to the path that took us through the bluebell wood, where we found a very nicely located bench and had a sit in the sunshine just chatting and taking in the view ...

By now time was getting on a bit so we made our way back to where we'd begun ... the fritillaries and the anemones ...
... and there was just one last place left to visit ...

Having visited the garden and written this post I've had a look at the history of the garden on its website and was interested, but not that surprised, to find that when the garden was created, 100 years ago, Heather Muir, who created the garden, was helped and inspired by her lifelong friend Lawrence Johnson of Hidcote Manor.

You can see the similarities in the way that the garden is laid out in such a way that it doesn't reveal itself to you all at once ... you need to go looking. The website says that Heather wanted the garden to develop organically, rather than being totally planned out on paper. This has most definitely led to the garden having a more 'feminine' and relaxed feel, with a lot softer edges than we had found at Hidcote.

We both loved it and I'm sure I will definitely be visiting again. I want to see the roses in bloom. If you're in the area it's definitely worth calling in 😀

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