Batsford Arboretum

This isn’t my weekly entry, I will do that tomorrow and  will include, as promised to Kate, a bit about my ancestor who suffered a Traitor’s death following The Gunpowder Plot. Tonight I’m just posting some pictures from our trip on Tuesday to Batsford Arboretum.

One of the joys of my job at present is that I finish work at 12.45pm most days. That means if Mike isn’t working we get a chance to go out and do things, so I suppose you could call us semi-retired.

 

The weather this week has been beautiful and after the hectic week last week we thought we’d have a bit of ‘Me time’.

 

Batsford is a large house set at the bottom of an escarpment in The Cotswolds; just down the hill from Bourton on the Hill and before you get to Moreton in Marsh. Don’t you just love these Cotswold names?

 

Algernon Freeman Mitford, later Lord Redesdale, built the house in the late 1800’s. He was the grandfather of the famous, or should I say, infamous Mitford Girls, who lived in the house until 1936, when it was sold to Gilbert Willis, later the first Lord Dulverton. (If you want a good title, I suggest you buy this house!)

 

Lord Redesdale was greatly influenced by Chinese and Japanese landscapes. And there are over 1600 different species of trees and shrubs in the Arboretum.

 

 

   

I’m not an expert at photography but I was very pleased with some of the photos.  I think they explain themselves, although I have put a caption to the Magnolia seed pod, which are normally quite rare but for some reason they have turned up in their thousands this year and have been the most asked question at my husband's Gardener's Question time.