Saturday 1 September 2012

An Hour at Apple Court Garden



On Friday, we needed a change of scenery and decided to walk around the peaceful gardens at Apple Court, near Hordle on the southern edge of the New Forest. This garden is set within the old walled kitchen garden of nearby Yeatton House. It has been created since 1988 and has plants which provide interest throughout the seasons.

 "The garden was designed as a series of interlocking areas each of which was intended to create a distinct visual impression and to have a microclimate well suited to the particular plants intended to grow in each. The form of the garden was partly dictated by the need to break the force of the coastal winds, the sea being less than a mile away." Excerpt from the Apple Court Nursery and Garden Information Leaflet.

The Nursery at Apple Court specialises in ornamental grasses and hemerocallis (day lilies).






Walking around the garden "rooms" in late August gave us an opportunity to see the combinations of flowers, ornamental grasses, shrubs and trees which give the garden a luxuriant softness in the late summer light.






These young, ornamental silver birches with bright , white bark, looked lovely with their underplanting of santolina and a background of softer pinks and greens.




Mature clumps of grasses, catching the light.





An unusual greenish white "red hot poker" growing through an old rose.



Flowers on the Indian Bean Tree........





....and under the tree, in the corner of the old garden wall, was a door straight out of "The Secret Garden".



Lacecap Hydrangeas




In the White Garden, sculpted cranes centre the lawn, which is surrounded by "an ellipse of pleached hornbeam", behind which there are year round flowers and foliage of white, against a background of dark green yew.






Through a gap in the flowers, a little boy sits reading his never ending book.



Behind tall hedges is the Japanese Garden, where we stood in the wooden tea house, watching huge carp swimming like coloured submarines in sunlit green water.










Three square ponds, where smaller fish swim and yellow waterlilies grow.




In their shady corner of the garden, a family of Croad Langshan chickens wander and investigate beneath the shrubs for food. The beautiful, glossy black cockerel accompanied his wives........







and joined them to rest and bask in the warm sunshine.



Before we drove home, we chose a few more plants for our own garden from the good variety of healthy and unusual plants for sale in the Nursery. Now we have to decide where to plant them!

Apple Court`s own website is at www.applecourt.com

11 comments:

Lucy Corrander Now in Halifax! said...

I want to live in a house with a garden with a secret door like that!

P.S. I'm sitting here having go after go at getting the Captcha right. Blogger is making the codes harder and harder to read. I don't suppose there's any way you could do without it?

Crafty Green Poet said...

certainly looks like a lovely garden to visit!

Em Parkinson said...

What an absolutely beautiful place. I feel you have taken me around it - thank you. Very impressed you managed to take pictures of fish underwater!

Karen said...

You are so lucky to have these wonderful gardens open to the public. We don't have such things here in North Carolina. We do have arboretums; some owned by universities and some owned by the state. But the closest one to me is 50 miles away at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dartford Warbler said...

Thank you all for commenting. It did cheer us up to get out and enjoy this lovely garden.

I too have had real trouble doing the word verifications on other people`s blogs and wondered if my eyesight was getting worse than I thought it was!

I have hopefully set the comments to "No Word Verification" now.

If that hasn`t worked please can someone tell me in a comment?

helen tilston said...

What a perfect day and the garden and your images are spectacular
I love the hens too.

Have a beautiful Sunday

Helen xx

Morning's Minion said...

What a lovely and interesting place. The name, "Apple Court" would entice me there, but I think I would need several visits to absorb it.
The usual walks where Old Dog has been your companion must be difficult just now. The memories of departed pets come at us unexpectedly and we miss them afresh.
My cat, Mrs. Beasley, so often sat on my desk while I read or typed, or on my lap, hanging rather heavily over the keyboard. On Friday I tipped up the keyboard to free it of dust and crumbs and realized it was her silvery cat hairs which were floating about under my dust cloth.

angryparsnip said...

What a beautiful place and the day looked quite lovely ! Loved "The Secret Garden"

But I was very homesick when I saw the photo for the Japanese Garden... le sigh !

cheers, parsnip

Down by the sea said...

It looks such a lovely garden I will have to add it to our list. It must have been a good time of year to visit it too. Glad it cheered you up.
Sarah x

Bovey Belle said...

I enjoyed the walk around such beautiful gardens. Ideas for planting too, but not here. I am trying to put right misplantings here from previous decades!

I hope you have had reasonable weather today to get your new plants in the ground.

Pam said...

That looks lovely but I've just read the post about Old Dog. I'm so sorry. How sad.