First jaunt of the year with my friend of longest standing, Liz, who kindly drove me and Cwtch to Painswick Rococo Garden in the Cotswolds, my impinged shoulder still being troublesome.
It was in a Painswick tea shoppe, on a very rainy day in 2008, that we adopted the idea of 'The Jaunt' from our former French teacher, Janet Foster, who'd died eight years earlier at the early age of 50. The inordinately enthusiastic Miss Foster had been an inveterate jaunter, and we decided that was what we'd do too - make time in our busy lives to go to new places. And we've both done that, although not often enough with each other. But now Liz has all but retired from teaching, there's a little more scope for getting out and about, and for novelty - something the dopamine-seeker in me craves.
Rococo is my least liked of all the styles when it comes to interiors and architecture - in fact, I loathe it - but nature improves everything, and the garden is a pleasant place to be. Having been laid out in the 1730s, it was subsequently altered as fashions changed, and by the 1950s, it was covered in conifers. It was restored in the 1970s, using a 1748 painting by local artist, Thomas Robins, as a guide to what the original garden looked like.
First, we went for a wander through the maze, which was a lot less challenging than it would have been in full summer foliage ...
... though of course, the experience we were mostly there for was the snowdrops.
There are, apparently, fifteen different species in the garden.
'The Fairy Tale Castle' carved into an old beech stump
The Gothick alcove
Winter aconite
The Pigeon House
Painswick House, built in 1737
Cwtch and Liz
No comments:
Post a Comment