* Home Page * Today's Paper * Video * Most Popular * Times Topics * Most Recent Help Register Now Login New York Times Articles IFRAME: http://nytimes.perfectmarket.com/pm/ad-nytimes.php?f=Middle1C&slug=trav el/england-s-overture-to-spring.html&dimension=88x31 Search All NYTimes.com ____________________ Go Travel COLLECTIONS England's Overture to Spring By SUSAN ALLEN TOTH Published: January 31, 1993 * Sign In to E-Mail * Print IFRAME: http://nytimes.perfectmarket.com/pm/ad-nytimes.php?f=Frame4A&slug=trave l/england-s-overture-to-spring.html&dimension=120x60 NOT many visitors seek out English gardens in early spring. Although the flaming colors of rhododendron and azaleas will light up hillsides everywhere by mid-May, in March they are only beginning to glow. Roses remain bare thorny branches, and those traditional herbaceous borders of massed perennials like delphiniums, day lilies, geranium and lupin are many weeks away from their glory. Lacking such spectacular displays, most gardens that invite the public do not open until about April 1. Yet the hardy visitor who finds the few gardens open in early spring will be amply rewarded. By mid-March, drifts of daffodils cascade down banks and valleys. Camellias have burst into profligate flower, and magnolia trees splash huge white blossoms across a network of black branches. Countless purple, yellow and white crocuses sparkle in the grass. For a winter-weary American whose home landscape in March is still brown and dry, even the rippling flow of bright green grass in an English garden is balm. IFRAME: http://nytimes.perfectmarket.com/pm/ad-nytimes.php?f=MiddleRight&slug=t ravel/england-s-overture-to-spring.html&dimension=300x250 A perusal of garden guides can provide a tantalizing list of possibilities in March, several lying within an hour's drive or less of Gatwick or Heathrow. Claremont Landscape Garden, in Esher in Surrey, and a few minutes' drive from London's orbital M25, is a popular recreational spot for local families and picnickers in season, but on a gray March day it is virtually deserted. Gradually being restored by the National Trust, Claremont was first created and then successively adapted by several of the great landscape gardeners of the 18th century: Vanbrugh, Bridgeman, Kent and, finally, the ubiquitous Capability Brown. Today its remaining 50 acres form a sculptured green park, with shrubs, fine trees, a remarkable grass amphitheater and wandering bark-strewn paths circling an eye-catching small lake. In mid-March, a high paved terrace overlooking the park is crowned by two giant camellias, soaring taller than most American suburban trees, with an astonishing profusion of pink and white blossoms. Restrained, quiet and elegant, Claremont is not only worth a leisurely visit in itself but also serves as an introduction to two nearby woodland gardens on an even grander scale. Five miles from Windsor, the Savill Garden and the adjoining Valley Gardens -- the latter begun by the royal gardener Sir Eric Savill when he ran out of room in the former -- are set in the 4,500 acres of Windsor Great Park. Though fences and boundaries exist, the gardens blend into the surrounding park. The Savill Garden entrance on Wick Lane in Englefield Green is hard to find, but the spot is hardly a secret. Headquarters include not only a well-stocked plant, book and gift shop, carrying everything from potted plants to floral wrapping paper, but also a self-service tearoom with floor-to-ceiling windows. On a blustery day, the restaurant offers a cozy vantage point from which to watch a sudden shower wash across the terrace or admire tame pheasants strolling a few feet away. When the rain passes, most English garden paths dry quickly. Last March, after a heartening lunch of hot shepherd's pie and strawberry meringue in the Savill tearoom, my husband, James, and I, walked for an hour among magnolias and camellias, all in such full blossom that they kept dropping soft pink and white petals at our feet. Early azaleas and rhododendrons added other notes of zingy color -- scarlet, purply pink, sun-glazed yellow -- accented by the lacy white of flowering cherries and the drooping creamy bouquets of lily-of-the-valley bush. On a gray day, daffodils and narcissus shine with an extraordinary light. In early spring in England, daffodils burst out everywhere, in flower beds and in meadows, along the banks of streams and under trees. Clusters of daffodils and narcissus edged the Savill paths, yellow trumpets all seemingly alike at first glance. Bending down, I could see each group was distinctly different and carefully labeled. After trying to separate and identify more than a dozen kinds of daffs, I lost count. Species daffodils -- small flowers initially grown from scattered seed -- also streamed across the garden's Alpine Meadow, thousands of tiny dots that from a distance looked like dandelions. After glancing at the overcast sky, I was not sure I wanted to continue to the Valley Gardens, a mile or more farther on. The Good Gardens Guide had somewhat disparagingly suggested that it had "something of the rather too open, amorphous, scrupulously kept, American golf-course feel." But James insisted. He was right, and, for once, the self-confident Good Gardens Guide was wrong. I have never seen a golf course remotely like the flowering Valley Gardens. Its 400 acres include deep valleys, towering trees, rare shrubs and ever-changing vistas, often focused on Virginia Water, an artificial lake first created in the 1750's, and now so naturally landscaped it is hard to believe the curving lake has not always been there. Ducks and geese hover on its placid water. A four-mile path circles the lake, but shorter walks, among flowering trees and shrubs, are also enticing. IN March the deep green hills are illumined by startling swatches of color, a primary palette of red, pink, yellow and blue, from early rhododendrons and azaleas. The Valley Garden is the national home of the Rhododendron Species Collection, and boasts that it displays "without doubt the greatest cultivated planting of wild rhododendrons in the world." In early May, the garden will be crammed both with bloom and with visitors, but now the displays of the relatively few trees and shrubs seem all the more remarkable. The National Magnolia Collection is accommodated throughout the Savill and Valley Gardens, with spectacular result. Camellias here can grow as high as 12 to 18 feet, and the sight of one of these splendid shrubs covered with white or rose-pink blossoms, set off by glossy green leaves, is breathtaking. Looking down as well as up, I blinked too at the daffodils and crocus that tumbled down the valleys toward the lake, wavy carpets of flowers so vast it seemed impossible to imagine any mere mortal had planted them. In another part of the Valley Gardens, an extensive heather collection is also in blossom from January to April, with a vibrant but muted range of color --lavender, gold, fuchsia -- that offers a contrast to the bolder, flashier hues of spring bulbs. The garden is also home both to the National Holly and Dwarf Conifer Collections. But despite these undoubted treasures, most spring visitors will be drawn inexorably to the flowering hillsides. A short drive from the Savill and Valley Gardens, Wisley Garden, the official showpiece and demonstration garden of the Royal Horticultural Society, is also open the year round. Its Alpine Meadow is luminous with daffodils in early spring, and the Rock Garden is worth a visit then, too, although its main flowering comes in April and May. Wisley is an awesome enterprise, with about 240 acres and almost 750,000 visitors each year, and even on a rainy March day, it is never deserted. One of my favorite gardens for long walks, Wakehurst Place, near Ardingly in West Sussex (less than half an hour from Gatwick), is a peaceful oasis in mid-March. When we arrived at 10:30 A.M., only one other car was in its capacious parking lot. An annex to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Wakehurst Place offers both formal and woodland gardens in a 500-acre site centered on an imposing Elizabethan house. (In early spring, the house and its National Trust shop are open, but not the restaurant.) In March, the Himalayan Glade, a narrow valley, is bright with rare early-blooming rhododendron and azaleas. The delicate blossoms of daphne add a lingering gentle perfume. PRIMROSES and daffodils accompany a walker along a romantic path that leads down through Westwood Valley to a hidden lake, along a rock walk and back through Horsebridge Wood, well-named Bloomer's Valley, and Bethlehem Wood in less than a leisurely hour. A trail map, obtainable at the entrance or shop is useful, though not necessary. Everything is marked, and flowers light the way. A garden need not cover hundreds of acres to give great pleasure. Under the National Gardens Scheme, more than 2,500 private owners agree to open their personal gardens for charity a few days every year. Last March, James and I drove one Sunday morning through the green countryside of Kent to Owley House, near Wittersham, for one of its scheduled public days. Settled amid a working farm, Owley House was handsome, a traditional Kentish red-tiled house with two conical-roofed oasthouses, once used for drying hops. Its large windows overlooked an expansive green lawn that swept down to a small pond, alive with ducks, and edged with clustered daffodils, bluebells and hyacinth. Next to the house was a tidy knot garden, low geometric shapes of closely trimmed box, surrounded by brick paths. After a brief pleasant stroll around house and lake, trying to imagine we lived in this gracious setting and could enjoy such a walk every day, we happily repaired to a high-timbered barn, where volunteers served tea and homemade cakes. (Recently I heard that Owley House was for sale, so whether the garden continues to be opened will depend, of course, on the new owner.) To finish our garden-visiting that day with a flourish, we stopped at another old favorite, Owl House (not related to Owley) in Lamberhurst, also in Kent. A relatively unknown but enchanting year-round garden, this informal woodland retreat with many shady walks and several small ponds is owned by the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, who donates proceeds from its entrance fees to her own charity, a guesthouse for arthritics. In early spring, the long Versailles Avenue -- a rough track through the woods leading to an open meadow with a pergola -- is lined with daffodils that march on and on. A garden lover who plans to travel beyond the so-called home counties close to London will find several significant gardens open in other parts of England. A visitor to the West Country, for example, would not want to miss East Lambrook Manor in Somerset. This small but marvelously designed garden was created by the late Margery Fish, author of "We Made a Garden" and revered as the dean of modern cottage-style gardening. In March, her garden is particularly rich in helleborus, the English "Easter rose," which blooms in all shades of lavender, red, white, and a greenish white that is almost phosphorescent. A short distance south, Forde Abbey, near Chard, a former Cistercian monastery that has been a private home since 1649, overlooks rolling lawns brimming with crocuses, a rock garden sheltering primroses, and a lake reflecting statuary and graceful trees. Like East Lambrook, the Forde Abbey gardens are open all year; both include nurseries to sell some of their excess plants. No trip to England, whatever the season, is ever complete for us unless we can walk all the way around Stourhead, an 18th-century landscape garden in Wiltshire that many experts consider the finest of its kind. Constructed with varying viewpoints centered on small classical buldings, the garden, with its renowned rhododendrons and magnificent trees, is set around a lake in a valley. Horace Walpole once called the view from the Temple of Apollo "one of the most picturesque scenes in the world." In early spring, the tour buses have not yet descended on Stourhead. On a cool but sunny morning, only three hours after our arrival at Gatwick, we walked the lakeside path, admiring daffodils and scattered flowering rhododendrons. When we reached the other side of the lake, we stopped to look across at the Temple of Flora. I breathed deeply. Perhaps because we had been so long in a stuffy plane, the air seemed peculiarly fresh and moist, redolent of earth, spongy new grass and crushed blossoms. This, I thought, is what spring is supposed to smell like. Stourhead seemed ours that late morning. On rainy days, it is often possible to have an early spring garden almost to oneself. And rainy days abound. In March cool sunshine is possible, but showery spells are more likely. A wise visitor arrives with raincoat or umbrella and wears layers of warm clothing, to be rapidly peeled and redonned, as "sunny patches" follow showers. Even a sudden heavy rain, however, need not be unduly daunting. In an English garden of any size, one can almost always find surprisingly good shelter under thick foliage. Last March, we waited out a cloudburst in the Valley Gardens while sitting on a sturdy lower branch of a venerable rhododendron. (Of course, in an electrical storm you definitely do not want to stand under a tree.) Its tangled leaves and branches kept us almost entirely snug and dry, and it was rather fun to feel like small children in a hideout. Although I am sure we will return to midsummer roses and perennials in full bloom -- the bright blue of tall waving delphiniums, white clusters of daisies, apricot-tinged day lilies -- I hold a special place in my heart for England's early-spring gardens. Defiantly flowering in near-wintry conditions, these daffodils, crocuses, magnolias and camellias almost sing aloud about returning warmth and sunshine. In the quiet gardens of March, one has time and space to stop and listen. ADMISSIONS AND HOURS AT A CLUSTER OF GARDENS Where to Go Claremont Landscape Garden, Portsmouth Road, Esher, Surrey, KT10 9JG; phone (0372) 469421. National Trust property. Open all year. Until the end of March, Tuesday through Sunday, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. (or sunset if earlier); April to end of October, Monday to Friday, 10 A.M. to 6 P.M., Saturday and Sunday, 10 to 7. (Gardens close at 4 P.M. July 14 to 18.) Admission: about $2.30 weekdays and $3.85 Saturday, Sunday and public holiday Mondays (calculating the British pound at $1.55). Both the Savill Garden and Valley Gardens are in Windsor Great Park, (0753) 860222. Savill Garden, Wick Lane, Englefield Green, Surrey, is open all year, weekdays 10 A.M. to 6 P.M., weekends to 7 or sunset when earlier. Admission: $3.85 until March when it goes up to $4.55, children free. Valley Gardens is at Wick Road, Englefield Green., Open all year, sunrise to sunset. Free; parking, $3.10. Wisley Garden, Wisley, Woking, Surrey, (0483) 224234. Open all year, 10 A.M. to sunset (or 7 P.M. in summer). Admission: $6.50, children under 6 and visitors in wheelchairs free, children 6 to 16, $2.70. Wakehurst Place Garden, Ardingly, Haywards Heath, West Sussex; (0444) 892701. National Trust property. Open all year: November through January 10 A.M. to 4 P.M., February, 10 to 5, March and October, 10 to 6, April to September, 10 to 7. Admission: $5.40, children $2. East Lambrook Manor Garden, East Lambrook, South Petherton, Somerset;(0460) 40328. The owners participate in the National Gardens Scheme under which private individuals open their gardens for charity. March through October, Monday to Saturday, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission: $3, 75 cents for children. Forde Abbey, Chard, Somerset; (460) 20231. National Gardens Scheme (listed under Dorset county). Daily the year round from 10 A.M., last admission 4.30 P.M. $4.65; accompanied children, free. Stourhead, Stourton, Wiltshire BA12 6QH; (0747) 840348. National Trust. Daily year round, 8 A.M. to 7 P.M. or sunset if earlier (except July 21 to 24 July when garden closes at 5). Admission: $6.20, children $3. Owl House Gardens, Lamberhurst, Kent; (0892) 890230. Open all year 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. Admission: $3, $1.55 for children. Owley House, Wittersham, near Tenterden, Kent; (0797) 270388. Participants in National Gardens Scheme, but the house is up for sale; whether the garden will continue to be open depends on future owners. Current owners expect to be in the house at least until the end of March and will open the gardens on weekends. Visitors are asked to phone ahead. Admission: $3, children free. What to Read To locate English gardens open in early spring, one or more of the current garden guidebooks is essential. The most comprehensive is "The Good Gardens Guide" (about $20), a hefty annual publication edited by Graham Rose and Peter King. It lists, describes and rates (according to a one- and two-star system) more than 1,000 gardens open to the public in Britain and Ireland. A useful supplement is the annual "Gardens of England and Wales: Private Gardens Open in Aid of the National Gardens Scheme," which lists more than 2,600 private gardens, with brief annotations of each garden's open days, features and admission fee. It is distributed by Green Shade, Post Office Box 547, Cape Neddick, Me. 03902-0547; (207) 363-6787. Available end of February, $12.50. Almost any medium-sized bookstore in England will carry these guidebooks and others. The British Travel Bookshop, 551 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10176, with a mail-order service, is also a good source. Phone: (212) 490-6688. A free map folder showing gardens is available free from the British Tourist Authority -- same address as the bookshop -- by sending a self-addressed envelope with 52 cents' postage. SUSAN ALLEN TOTH is the author of "My Love Affair With England: A Traveler's Memoir" (Ballantine). More Like This * Digging Out After the Storm In England * THE GARDEN PATH TO EUROPE * England Mourns Its Storm-Felled Trees Home Times topics Member Center Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Index by Keyword DCSIMG