Cheshire treats: the gardens at Arley

Exploring the footpaths and lanes around Arley has been one of my regular walking circuits this year – it’s about 14 kilometres from where I’m living so a good workout for my legs! – but yesterday was the first time I’d ventured inside the gates.

Arley Hall is home to the Viscount and Viscountess Ashbrook, and his family, the Egerton-Warburtons, have lived there for over 500 years. Each generation has made its mark on the land, and Arley’s magnificent gardens are the product of 250 years of imagination, experimentation and creativity by successive family members.

In 2015 the gardens have been opened to the public from March onwards, earlier than is usual and perhaps a little too early this year, as very few of the spring bulbs and blossoms were in flower on this early March day. Still, this is a garden with lovely bones – magnificent trees, a walled garden, elegant topiary, a series of well-defined garden rooms that leads you through from one wonderful vista to the next – and it is much easier to admire and enjoy these structural features without the eye constantly being diverted by the prettiness of colourful flowers. This is truly a garden to be enjoyed in all seasons. Take a walk with me …

The entry road is a statement in itself, flanked initially by woodland, then opening out on to large horse-studded paddocks.

The entrance is enticing – look at those trees, the rich warm bricks, the mid-19th-century archway through the old barn, the mid-18th-century clock and that weathervane. I’m hooked already!

Having recently blogged about lime avenues, I was amazed by this most unusual pleached-lime example, planted in 1856. Apparently, the limes are clipped annually to maintain their juvenile state, so they never produce flowers or fruit or grow to the size of mature lime trees.

The Grade I-listed Cruck Barn (‘cruck’ is the name of those huge oak beams running down each side) dates from around 1470 and was originally used to store corn sheaves prior to threshing. The herringbone brick floor is not original, having been laid in 1976 to a design by Elizabeth, Viscountess Ashbrook.

My exploration of the gardens began in The Grove, an informal garden in a woodland setting, studded with lovely pieces of sculpture, many not-yet-flowering shrubs, an exotic arboretum, and a large assortment of rhododenrons and azaleas. I did find some flowers to appreciate.

Back to the formal gardens - one of the views from the flower fountain, by Tom Leaper, which sits at the centre of the Walled Garden.

The impressive Ilex Avenue, with its seven pairs of holm oaks that have been pruned to the shape of cylinders.

The Fish Garden, a sunken garden with a small central pond, was created in 1930 on the former bowling green. I love the rounded shapes of the topiary bushes.

Another view of the Quercus Ilex Avenue. Those cylinders are about 30 feet tall and were planted by the present Viscount’s great-great-grandfather Rowland Egerton-Warburton in the 1830s.

One of my favourite things in the garden was the Tea Cottage, a tiny half-timbered building dating from the eighteenth century, that was once used for garden tea parties. Inside, you could almost hear the laughter of children past.

Though spring has not yet really sprung at Arley, there were some flowers, like this prolific-blooming polyanthus and a little touch of New Zealand lighting up one of the glasshouses, the kowhai.

A view along the famed double herbaceous border, towards the Alcove, a beautiful enclosed garden seat that acts as a focal point at one end. This border dates from 1846 and is thought to be the earliest to be planted in England. I particularly liked the topiary divides between the beds – more striking sculptural elements.

Looking back towards Arley Hall along the Furlong Drive, a 200-metre walk that was added to the gardens in 1856.

Arley Hall is only open to the public on Tuesdays, Sundays and Bank Holidays. At other times, it can be hired for private functions and is a favourite wedding location for the well-heeled. The vintage wedding car looked perfectly placed when I visited, liked a scene from history.

One last little gem I found tucked away by the toilets. Tick, tock, the bench sat by the clock!

And what better way to finish a perfectly magical day than to have Mother Nature put on one of her spectacular cloud displays as I slowly wended my way homewards.

A celebration of trees: February: Lime Avenues

Chirk, July 2014

Unlike last month, in February’s tree celebration we’re not focusing on one particular tree. Instead, we celebrate the Lime Avenue.

Initially, I was confused about the local Lime tree – where was the fruit? In fact, these are not the citrus trees that produce the limes that make your caipiroska taste so refreshing. This tree is a completely different beast, also known as the Linden tree. That name comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Linde and is the reason many parish and wood names in England are preceded by lynd- or lin- (as in, for example, Lincolnshire) – the name refers to the presence, either now or in centuries past, of the Lime tree. [1]

Great Budworth, November 2014

Britain is home to two native Lime trees, the small-leaved (Tilia cordata) and the large-leaved (Tilia platyphyllos), and also the Common Lime (Tilia x europaea), a hybrid of the two. The Lime is in the running for two superlative records – it is one of Britain’s longest living and also one of its tallest trees.

These are perhaps two of the reasons the lime tree has been used so frequently in the planting of tree-lined avenues, a landscape design feature that is centuries old. According to Glynis Shaw’s article ‘Tree Avenues’, one of the oldest tree avenues in Britain is the Spanish Chestnut avenue at Croft Castle in Herefordshire, which was planted with seeds from the Spanish Armada wrecks in 1592. [2]

In the 17th and 18th centuries, highly structured landscape design was the fashion, and tree avenues were a device to extend the formal design of the gardens around a mansion or castle into the surrounding parkland. The diarist John Evelyn is credited by many with introducing the idea of the avenue to England, by praising the French and Dutch plantings he had seen in his 1664 publication Sylva and subsequently planting the first double avenue of limes at Sayes Court in Deptford.

Here in Cheshire, we have several wonderful lime avenues and a lime walk close to where I am currently living and, last summer, I was also privileged to see the magnificent planting at Chirk Castle in Wales.

Chirk, July 2014

Chirk Castle

According to the Gardens of Great Britain website, the Lime Avenue at Chirk is the ‘surviving central axis of the seventeenth-century formal gardens’. Chirk’s magnificent oak-studded parkland was landscaped in the late eighteenth century by renowned landscape gardener William Emes, who has a long list of gardens to his credit.  

As well as the impressive line-up of trees, I particularly liked the placement at one end of the avenue of a version of the Farnese Hercules, one of the most famous statues of antiquity. This particular copy, cast in lead and dating from around 1720, was originally one of a pair of classical sculptures (the other was a figure of Mars) that stood outside the castle’s entrance. Hercules was moved to the surrounding woods in 1770 but relocated (with the help of an RAF helicopter!), restored and repositioned as a focal point for vistas up the Lime Avenue in 1983. A visit to Chirk is a must-do! 

Lyme Park, July 2014

Lyme Park

Returning to Cheshire, last summer I also enjoyed a superb day out at Lyme Park, with its 300-year-old Lime Avenue. According to English Heritage, 'The partial imposition of a geometric plan upon the park, with avenues and viewpoints, took place before 1676. It has been suggested that it was conceived by Richard Legh (1634-87), who was probably familiar with the work of the leading French landscape designer Andre Mollet (d c 1665).The principal view down the Lime Avenue formed the central spoke of a patte d'oie which radiated from the Hall. One lateral spoke focussed on Paddock Cottage to the south-west, the other on Game Keeper's House, at Bowstones, to the south-east.'

The original Lime Avenue was replanted in the 1840s but has also been receiving some much-needed maintenance in more recent years. For those fascinated by the details, the methodology and mechanism behind this maintenance are discussed in Samantha Gibson’s article ‘Exploring Every Avenue’. 

Marbury, November 2014

Marbury Country Park

Marbury Country Park, near Northwich, is based on the former landscaped parkland that surrounded Marbury Hall, the family seat of the locally prominent Barry family. Though the Hall was unfortunately demolished in 1968, the woodland that nestles so prettily alongside Budworth Mere has been redeveloped as a public park for all to enjoy. Its splendid double Lime Avenues were planted in the 1840s to the design of William Andrews Nesfield, whose influence on the structure of London’s Kew Gardens can still be seen today. 

Aston Park, February 2015

Aston Park

The rather grand country house at Aston Park was built in 1715 and seems originally to have been part of nearby Arley Estate as the Warburton family of Arley Hall lived at Aston Park between 1755 and 1763 while their own hall was being modernised. 

In his1903 book Picturesque Cheshire, Thomas Coward is of the opinion that the house ‘must have been more interesting still when it had its old front—for the front is much later than the rambling back—and its avenue of stately firs, which were replaced by the limes.’ I haven’t been able to establish when the limes replaced the firs.[3]

Tatton Park, July 2014

Tatton Park

With a Tudor-era Old Hall and a Neo-Classical Mansion set in 50 acres of landscaped gardens and 1000 acres of parkland, Tatton Park is one of Cheshire’s gems. At about the same time as the earlier house was being remodelled, between 1780 and 1813, the surrounding parklands were also being sculpted by the hand of man. Though a movement towards a more free-flowing landscape had by then largely replaced the earlier more rigid structural designs, the planting of lime avenues was still popular and the double Lime Avenues at Tatton Park are an excellent example, having been created during the latter part of the eighteenth century. [4] Humphry Repton is the landscape designer credited with ‘re-routing roads, sweeping away hedges and buildings and then planting thousands of trees and shrubs’. [5]

Tatton Park, February 2015

Great Budworth, January 2015

Great Budworth

Rather than a grand estate, Great Budworth is a small village of ancient cottages, clustered on a hillside not far from Northwich. And, rather than a grand avenue of limes, Great Budworth has a most beautiful lime-lined walkway no more than a couple of metres wide. Though parts of the village are much older, the village formed part of Arley Hall estate from 1469 right through to the 1940s, when much of the estate was sold off. I have not been able to find any information about the planting of the limes, but I assume the village’s close relationship with Arley may be the reason we can now enjoy a stroll down this sublime avenue.

Great Budworth, February 2015

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[1] Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica, Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 1996, pp.116-19.

[2] Glynis Shaw, ‘Tree Avenues’, Welsh Historic Gardens Trust Bulletin, LXII, March 2012.

[3] T. A. Coward, Picturesque Cheshire, Sherratt and Hughes, London and Manchester, 1903, p.79.

[4] Maggie Campbell-Culver, A Passion for Trees: The Legacy of John Evelyn, Eden Project Books, Random House, London, 2006, p.126.

[5] Norman Bilsborough, The Treasures of Cheshire, Shanleys Printers, Bolton, 1991, p.121.

Grey squirrel v. Red squirrel

It seems to me that Grey squirrels are more than a little like cats – those cats that know when someone doesn’t like them and purposefully seek out their laps to leap onto – or, at least, that is certainly the personality of the Grey squirrel that inhabits our garden. Let’s call him Sammy.

Sammy, our resident grey squirrel, and Bert, one of our fence-sitting pigeons

My housemate / landlady – let’s call her Jane – hates him, with good reason, as the little imp nibbled all the apples and pears off her fruit trees well before they grew big enough for her to harvest but he didn't touch a single one of the plump juicy delicious apples on the neighbour’s tree.

Sammy's Uncle Jim lives in a park in Runcorn

Jane loves most wild creatures and has worked in environmental management so she runs a wildlife-friendly garden, not cutting the hedge when the birds are nesting in it, leaving little piles of branches for hedgehogs to burrow under, littering the back lawn with bread, seeds and apple cores for the birds to eat when times are lean. Trouble is, Sammy likes to pinch the birds’ food as well – and he’s not very smart in processing it, rather stupidly choosing to bury pieces of bread in the flower borders. Jane is not amused, neither by the waste of a good bit of bread, nor by the damage to her borders.

Sammy's cousin George, who lives in the graveyard at Great Budworth

And just as cats are vilified for killing birds, so Grey squirrels are vilified for their adverse effect on the local environment. Though he was undoubtedly born in England, Sammy’s ancestors were North American immigrants. First introduced to the British Isles in the late 1870s by local landowners who considered them ‘exotic’ (what were they thinking?), Sammy and his fellow American Greys have made themselves at home throughout most of the British Isles, much to the detriment of the native Red squirrels. Not only did Sammy’s ancestors bring with them the squirrelpox virus (SQPV), which didn’t harm them but kills their Red cousins, Sammy and his fellow Greys compete with the Reds for food. And as the Greys have a broader food range – they’re able to eat nuts with high tannin contents, like acorns, which the Reds cannot digest – they have a better chance of survival when winters are hard and food resources scarce.

Sammy's cousins Huey, Dewey & Louie scavenging under the bird feeders at Marbury Country Park

Nowadays, there are estimated to be around 2.5million Greys in Britain, while only 10 – 15,000 Reds survive, mostly in Scotland and the north east of England. I was lucky enough to see a couple of Reds when I was here in the UK on holiday last summer and visited the National Trust’s pine woodlands at Formby, part of the National Red Squirrel Refuge and Buffer Zone. Although their local Red population was decimated by SQPV in 2008, numbers are once again on the increase, with help from the local rangers and an appropriate woodland management plan.

A Red at Formby pine woodlands

Luckily, there are plenty of other folks out there trying to save the Reds – and you can too, by supporting organisations like the Red Squirrel Survival Trust. Let’s hope they’re successful in their efforts as I’d hate to see the very cute locals overcome by the brash interlopers from across the Atlantic.

Along with the fine work being done by the RSST, there does seem to be a glimmer of hope in other quarters as well. Just last week I was reading environmentalist / activist / journalist George Monbiot’s piece ‘How to eradicate grey squirrels without firing a shot’, in The Guardian online, championing a natural solution to the grey squirrel problem, in the form of pine martens. He cited the current situation in Ireland where, it seems, pine martens have the Greys in full-scale retreat across the island and the Reds are moving in to territory abandoned by the Greys. Long may the Red repopulation continue!

Sammy's Aunt Jessie lives in a woodland near Hale

In the meantime, here in Cheshire, we still have Sammy scampering through our tree branches and hippity-hopping across the back lawn. Jane intends getting a trap and killing him but, if it were my choice, I just couldn’t do it. I do want to be environmentally friendly. I definitely want to help save the Reds. My mind tells me it’s the right thing to do but Sammy is such a little cutie that my heart wants to forgive him the sins of his ancestors and his kin.

There’s just something about the way he sits back on his hind legs, nibbling on the nut he’s clutching in his front paws. There’s something about those big doe eyes, and the way he quivers and shakes his bushy tail. And Sammy’s not the only Grey in the neighbourhood. I’ve seen at least two others chasing each other through the trees at the end of the garden so, if Sammy goes, will those two just settle in to his vacant place?

And that’s not my only question. Did pine martens ever live in this part of England? Would / could pine martens survive in our semi-rural garden? Wouldn’t Red squirrels need a lot more pine trees in the area before they could be reintroduced? Wouldn’t we need a lot more woodland in general for both creatures to survive here in Cheshire? And, if that’s true, then, in the meantime, should Sammy be allowed his particular place in the English sun? 

For me, the issue of Grey squirrel v. Red squirrel is a conundrum and I don’t know the solution. But, secretly, I will continue to enjoy Sammy’s antics while I can.

Sammy's second cousin-once-removed, Cyril, also lives in Runcorn