Calke gardens

Any excuse really and I'm off out for a wander round somebody else's garden. Last week I thought it was time to give those at Calke Abbey another visit - although we've been in the area a lot, visiting Melbourne Art Trail and gardens there, and skirting round the edge of Calke estate while walking, we didn't have time to drop in properly (and I think the last time we visited was at wisteria time).

Calke Abbey prides itself on being an 'unstately' stately home, where things have deteriorated and decayed over years of neglect, and been preserved in that condition by the National Trust.
The gardens fortunately have been restored - probably not as the original owners would have expected them to be, but once again filled with flowers and vegetables.

This is the one bit of formal bedding, and these flowerbeds underneath the palms looked far brighter in real life, but the camera refused to bring the bright yellows, purples, and reds to life.

A doorway leads out to what was once another walled garden but is now mainly grassed with the exception of two beds of annual flowers still flowering despite the approach of autumn

Lining the main path to the gardening sheds and boilerhouses are more flowerbeds. Earlier in the year these had red tulips growing through blue forget-me-nots while wisteria climbed up the walls. Now they're home to a stunning display of dahlias, ranging in colour from yellow through peach.apricot shades to darkest red, and in shape from small pompoms to huge cactus-flowered.

We wandered around the vegetable garden, unable to resist any gardener's habit of comparing the crops to one's own (I really want to know how they've grown such huge pumpkins), then to the lawned area in front of the house looking out into the deer park, but the deer were further away and not so easily seen. Heading towards the exit we discovered we'd taken more time than realised and were almost the last people there. The stables were all shut up for the night; the cafe and reception area closed.







With no one around, Calke definitely felt like a abandoned house.