Rococo Gardens

Arriving at the Rococo Gardens, on the edge of Painswick was a lovely end to our walk for today, especially as we were able to escape the rain while we ate our lunch.

Once we left the gardens, we only had a short walk into Painswick. I can hear you asking, "What is a Rococo garden?" Here is the best, simple description: of or relating to an artistic style, especially of the 18th century, characterized by fanciful curved asymmetrical forms and elaborate ornamentation. This best describes the buildings found throughout the garden. This garden was originally planted in the 1740s but was later abandoned. Over 240 years later, in 1984, restoration was put in hand, thanks to a painting made in 1748, showing the original design. It is claimed to be the only complete English Rococo garden still in existence. A large maze has been planted to celebrate the resurrection of this ancient garden.

Here are some of the small buildings scattered around the 6 acres which form the undulating garden. It was quite a walk around.

This is called the pigeon house. Inside was a huge sculpture of a spider.

Also spread throughout the garden was a sculpture exhibition, which gave the garden a whimsical feel. Allan felt very much part of the exhibition.

While Ammie and myself were wandering around the children's section we found more of the hares running around. We agreed that this was the type of playground you would expect to find in some of the woods we have walked through over the last five days. We had fun being kids again. As we were walking back up to the flowers section of the garden, a lady walking along in front of us suddenly dropped to the ground, dropped her bag and frantically started pulling at her hair. We were wondering what was happening when Ammie began to do exactly the same thing. She said that there was a bee in her hair. I looked three times but couldn't find anything but Ammie insisted that she could still hear it. Eventually she got her hair brush out and brushed her hair and out flew a bee! Now we understood why these signs were sitting around the garden.

A great feature of the garden was the veggie garden, it was huge with lots of espaliered fruit trees forming pathways around it.

Three giant flower windmills created another dimension of colour. The flowers were beautiful and one of our favourite trees, the Wedding Tree, sat as a feature in another part of the garden, near the tea house.

This was truly an exceptional visit to a wonderful and ancient garden.