Mottisfont
This is Mottisfont Abbey. Its garden also contains the national collection of old roses. I go every year, make lists, take too many pictures, and complain about the tourists. * This year I had at least three friends I’d said ‘Hey, let’s go to Mottisfont this summer’ to. They’d all said varying degrees of ‘yes’. And then none of us got around to it. Penelope finally said, right, it’s already past midsummer, the roses will be going over, get out your diary and choose a day.
Today was the day.
* I’m not a tourist! I live here!
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Goooorgeous. I want to go!
Me too.
It isn’t fair that there is an ocean in the way. And that I am distinctly lacking any [magical or otherwise] flying abilities, so to cross said ocean.
Humph.
:)
These pictures are all so beautiful!
*sigh* I WILL get to England. Eventually… Someday……..
And in the meantime, I guess bemoaning the current state of things [specifically the inability at present to make that 'eventually' significantly closer to 'very soon' or even 'right now'...] will have to do.
Hugs and chocolate all round.
–Julia
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Dang. Just had to add another “place to visit” on the list. (The list that keeps getting longer ::sigh::)
Good lord, it’s gorgeous!
For a moment, I thought I was looking at snapshots of gardens in your past. Ah, you must have had a wonderful day! How long were you there (and how did the hounds live without you)??
Thank you for the beautiful pictures.
This seems to be how so many things go. You say we want to do it. Let’s do it. And then two months later, it’s already over? What do you mean we missed it. The last couple of weekends I went to two exhibitions that I really didn’t want to miss, to make up for the half a dozen or so over the winter that zipped by, sometimes before I even realised that they had started.
Mottisfont looks lovely. Could we have some info on the roses, for us rose-incompetents?
In the 70s the grand old man–not so old then, but already grand–of old roses, Graham Stuart Thomas, was given the (delicious) job of creating a national collection of old roses in the old walled kitchen garden at Mottisfont, already a National Trust property. . . . Blah. I’ve just been looking it up on the internet and none of what I’m seeing is all that good. Okay, maybe one more post tomorrow. . . .
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I’ve been thinking about Mottisfont… curse you for bringing it back to the forefront of my mind. (Maybe next week.)
I have taken a lot of pictures of roses this year, and am *really* enjoying mine – they all took root and flower like mad.
EXCELLENT about yours. :) But Mottisfont as an old-roses garden is going over fast. You’ve still got the Abbey and the old Abbey garden, but if you want the *roses* you need to have gone last week.
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‘you should have been there *last week* she said (b_twin_1 will recognise the quote) – well, that’s not much use, is it? You need to tell us in advance, not after the fact.
So basically, I ought to go when the misspelled cardinal is showing itself? That one seems to be the earliest. Hah, I lie, because the white and red unidentifieds were first, then my four, and the yellow one that came with the house is just about starting to bloom.
And roses in other people’s gardens are in full bloom *right now* – would they be modern ones or what?
(Boo sucks to this not being LJ, or I could post pictures.)
So post pics on lj, and post us a link. :)
You need to tell us in advance, not after the fact.
*********** You can’t be paying attention to the underlying truth of this blog if you’re expecting me to tell you in advance about ANYTHING.
Roses in other people’s gardens: yes, no, maybe. When things bloom is as much a risk as what colour they’re going to be when they do, whatever the catalogue says or whatever they look like in someone *else*’s garden. And there are a lot of roses still blooming like mad at Mottisfont. But the huge midsummer hurrah of the old-fashioned once-only midsummer roses . . . yes, tends to come at midsummer.
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