In the course of doing this blog I’ve noticed that whenever I take pics of someone’s garden, there’s a pretty high chance that the owner will be around. Just as I had got my camera out to take pics of this garden, the man of the house came home. Far from being alarmed that someone was snapping his property, he invited me into the garden so that I could get a better view, and then went off to find his wife. Funnily enough a similar thing happened earlier in the year in the same road – clearly nothing fazes the residents here.
Anyway, the garden, which is packed with colourful pots and topiary, looked vaguely familiar, and the greenfingered lady of the house, Jan Morgan, told me that it’s been featured on TV and has won numerous awards. Jan is a property consultant by trade but designs gardens as a hobby. The front garden is a riot of colour but Jan said that not everything she plants turns out as expected – the purple wisteria against the house was supposed to be white, and the white hyacinths that she planted in the front bed turned out to be pink! Sadly some of the topiary has been stolen recently.
Jan also kindly took me into her kitchen to show me the view of the back garden. It makes clever use of the space, with a covered walkway down one side, an arbour at the back, lots of deep beds and a pond. And as you’d expect, it’s packed with plants, which create various colour themes throughout the year. Jan used to open the garden for the Yellow Book but is taking a break now, so I was unexpectedly lucky to glimpse it.