Open Squares

A couple of Sundays ago Ruth and I headed for the Open Garden Squares weekend, which we last went to in 2016. Profiting by experiences at previous such events of spending most of the day travelling between venues, we were determined to pick a collection of places to visit within a reasonably confined area. I decided I wanted to visit some actual garden squares this time, and picked a selection from the 'Kensington, Brompton and Chelsea' section of the guide.

Ruth in Thurloe Square

First up, after brunch at the Carluccio's opposite South Kensington tube, was Thurloe Square, which Ruth later decided she liked the best of all the squares we saw - unlike all the others, it was divided up into different zones rather than having a central lawn surrounded by paths.

We then visited the nearby Ismaili Centre - a building I've noticed before but never gone into - as its roof garden was open as part of the weekend. This one had a 'no photography' rule, so no pictures - but here's a photo of it in the guide, sans the crowds that were there when we visited. We were escorted in the lift up several floors and then joined a small group for a mini-tour. The garden was apparently designed as a traditional four-part garden or 'chahar bagh'. It's very lovely.

After this we visited the Brompton Food Market for a cup of tea, then headed westwards along Cromwell Road to visit Courtfield Gardens (East) and (West). The 'East' garden is mainly occupied by a church, though apparently it now houses a theological college.

In Courtfield Gardens (East)

The 'West' garden is a more standard lawned area surrounded by paths. We failed to locate the handkerchief tree mentioned in the guidebook. On the way in we were handed a guide to the plants in the garden, but with only their Latin names given, which wasn't too helpful - though quite a few Latin plant names give the impression of being crudely made up from English words with Latin-type endings (admittedly we couldn't spot 'handkerchiefium' on the list, though we did look for it).

Courtfield Gardens (West)

On a couple of streets away to Bramham Gardens, with a different feel of house (variously red-brick Victorian and Dutch-Gothic style, apparently).

Victorian houses backing onto Bramham Gardens

Then on to Collingham Gardens - these are really lovely, bordered by interesting terraces of houses - including these - that back directly onto the gardens. The lucky residents must really get a peaceful green oasis feeling in the middle of London.

Collingham Gardens

The last garden we visited was Gledhow Gardens. For whatever reason - possibly garden saturation by this point - I didn't take any pictures of this one, but was very charmed to see the actual two cats that grace the photo of these gardens in the guidebook (below), together with their elderly owner and two cat baskets. Does she bring the cats into the garden every day? One of them looked like a British Blue, lovely- if slightly cross-looking cats that you don't see often. Both were lying around in the sun when we arrived at the garden; after a while both headed back into their cat baskets when the owner got up. Intriguing - clearly they know the form and don't wander off.

We headed back to Paddington across Hyde Park, feeling extremely constructive at having visited seven venues in the space of only a couple of hours or so. Park was full of people sunning themselves. Lovely sunny day and thankfully I didn't get too much hay fever, given the awfulness of the pollen levels currently.

Ruth in Hyde Park

June musings

June mixed and rainy so far. Some impressive rainfall in Milton Keynes lately, accompanied variously by thunder and flash-flooding, with inevitable long traffic jams. An entire stretch of grid road was closed last week due to flooding – bizarre.

Well, today is EU referendum day. Headed to Milton Keynes Christian Foundation this morning to vote, half expecting a long queue, but there was only one person ahead of me. Perhaps they were all biding their time until later. As a memento of this historic day, here's Google's reminder:

Looking back to the previous entry: the damp treatment to the living room external wall did indeed delay the living room project a bit, though it has been delayed longer than necessary by a) the fact that it’s us; b) our plasterer Mark has been injured, plus is also in the process of moving to Norfolk. Tried to think quickly what else we might need plastered before he goes. The damp treatments were carried out by a very nice man (whose name I've forgotten) from Thames Valley Preservation Ltd. Luckily I don't think we're afflicted by wood boring insects, but we know who to go to if and when.

As of last week the rest of the plastering is now done. As, after much to-ing and fro-ing, Ruth decided against installing a woodburning stove (for which I am profoundly thankful – had had visions of being obliged to strip down to underwear in order to sit comfortably in the living room), we got the inside of the fireplace plastered as well, which looks dead smart. It was still a bit damp when Ruth took this picture to send me, but the idea's there.

Next job is painting: I agreed a while ago to have a colour other than white (my default) on the living room walls, as Ruth thought a darker colour would look cosier (can’t decide whether to file the notion of ‘cosy’, along with ‘character’, in my list of poisoned interior decorating concepts). However, inevitably, it’s been a job fixing on one: I agreed to a tasteful earth tone, following which Ruth changed her mind and tried to sell me on slate grey, which I was initially doubtful about but which have now come round to, with the inevitable result that she’s now changed her mind and is trying to argue for a darkish blue. I don’t care for blue as a decorating colour, but am inclined to agree to it just in the interests of getting the job done – and also because the trade off is (and I'm recording this in writing) that I get sole choice over the dining room décor.

Our planned whole week boat trip next week has been scaled down, largely because Ray is understandably behind with his refurb due to having to work lots of weekends recently. His employer Lawrence has decided to sell his house near Hurley and move to Poole, so there has been lots to do prepping the property for any interested viewers who can afford five million pounds. Ruth and I went over a few Saturdays ago to visit his place of work and admire the immaculate gardens. Here he is in a couple of poses on the property. The plan is for him to work on the boat Saturday through to Tuesday and for us to go out up the Thames (as opposed to along the Kennet & Avon) for a few days from Wednesday.

Ruth and I went up to London on Saturday morning to visit a few places as part of Open Garden Squares weekend (photos here). Arrived a bit later than we intended as we discovered on arrival at Reading station that all the fast trains to Paddington appeared to be cancelled, presumably connected to Thursday's derailment. We duly got on a slow train, which took about an hour, and were surprised to be passed en route by several fast trains. Pondered deceitful nature of Reading’s departure screens.

After breakfast at Carluccio’s we took the Jubilee Line south from Baker Street to Canary Wharf to visit the roof garden at Crossrail Place that was opened in 2015 (the planting's now a good deal lusher than in the photos in the link).

Roof garden at Crossrail Place

We retraced our steps one stop on the tube to Canada Water, where we emerged into a part of London new to both of us and attempted to find Lavender Pond Nature Park, another garden on the route, apparently built on the site of a pond that was used for floating timber when the docks were active in that area (I didn't know anything about the Surrey Commercial Docks, but there's some blurb here.) After what seemed like a lot of walking through housing developments, we did eventually locate it, though it was a bit underwhelming – but in fairness it looked like there was some work going on to the boardwalks.

View towards Canary Wharf

From there we walked to join the Thames Path and looked at the river for a bit, all looking splendidly choppy and tidal. Looked across the river to Limehouse and kind of hoped that Ray doesn’t ever attempt to take his narrowboat out on to the river there, though I know you can only do it at certain times of day and accompanied by a pilot etc etc.

We walked westwards along the river for a bit towards the Brunel Museum, which has a garden that was also part of the weekend. On the way, passed one of the quite attractive little round brick buildings (one of two, I believe) housing the now-closed spiral staircases leading down into the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Apparently pedestrians can still walk through the tunnel, though I can’t imagine it’s too pleasant - see these blog entries here and here.

The final garden we visited ended up being the Garden Barge Square at Downings Roads Moorings. An amazing place - they claim to be London's only floating gardens. Access was a bit blustery and wobbly - we were warned by the guides to hold onto the railings - and the walkways are so narrow that more time was spent trying to avoid other people than actually looking at the planting.

View across the Garden Barges

We took the train back to Reading after two slow bus journeys back from the Tower Bridge area to Paddington - we had the bad luck to get on two buses in succession that both announced changes of destination en route. Once back in Reading, we went for dinner at ASK Italian where they seem to now serve half bottles of wine in these adorable little round carafe things.


The OU noticeboard continues periodically to amuse, in a cheap and childish sort of way: