Garden at Ormeley Lodge

The Wilderness is my favourite part of the garden but the rest of it is pretty good too. I love the mixed planting in the thick borders around the main lawn that produces a wonderful confusion of shapes and colours.

Zooming out a little shows some more of the flowers and reveals the depth of the borders and the obsessively neatly trimmed hedge behind. Also in view is one of the two lions that guard the path to The Wilderness.

Zooming even further out shows the border in the context of the large lawn that it surrounds. This is exactly what a lawn and border should look like.

The final picture (for the moment) comes from a different part of the garden. This celebration of Box is at the side of the house, which is bit of a shame as something as magnificent as this deserves to be in a more prominent position.

Wilderness at Ormeley Lodge

 

The Wilderness is my name (copied from Ham House) for the section of the garden at Ormeley Lodge where wild grasses and flowers grown tall among some fruit trees. It is also my favourite part of the garden that has several sections with different characters and moods.

The Wilderness sits beyond the main lawn and formal borders that sit next to the house and are separated from it by a tall hedge. Within the Wilderness lower hedges give shape to the garden and curved paths provide routes through it that bring the grasses and flowers up close.

Sea Scout Field

The Sea Scout Field lies roughly between the German School and the River among the woods to the West of River Lane. It is reached via Douglas Footpath, the right-of-way mentioned in the sign.

Petersham Nurseries

 It is increasingly difficult to avoid the dining tables and the tea tables at Petersham Nurseries and while I appreciate that a lot of people go there to eat and drink that does not interest me. I like the flowers and the touches of industry used to produce them for sale.

 A plus side of the tea and cake crowd is that the place is kept tidy and pretty and these potted flowers are a good advertisement for what flowers in pots can do.

One greenhouse is still being used for the purpose for which it was built and new plants are being carefully nurtured for their future life elsewhere.

This is the last stage in most plants' journeys through the nurseries as they show off their beauty to the prospective buyers walking past.

Welcome to the Hand and Flowers

The Hand and Flower is going through something of a refresh at the moment and this is very obvious from the outside. Flower displays have been a strong feature in recent years and now they have got even better.

The welcome sign is new too, and very welcoming it is.

Ham is where the heart is

I have an extensive collection of cotton shopping bags dating back to a holiday in Austria in 1999 and large fed by conferences and other events since then but there is always space for another one, especially when it is for a good cause. So now I also have a Ham Parade shopping bag.

I think that this is an excellent idea and it is good to see so many of the shops on the parade selling them. Not surprisingly, the best display is in Wendy's Workshop.

Inside the Hand and Flower

The Hand and Flower has gone though a few changes in recent years, including a spell as the Legless Frog, and through all this the quirky front rooms have remained largely unchanged due to the physical constraints of the old parts of the building.

The rooms have changed appearance several times though, and after the latest refresh the entrance bar looks like this. It is an emptier look than some in the past, and I approve of that as getting to the main front bar has been challenging at times.

New paving, better for pedestrians

The freshness of the new paving stones caught my eye as I was walking up Broughton Avenue on my way from Teddington Lock to Ham Common, a regular route for myself and many others. The junction with Lock Road has been rebuilt to provide decent dropped kerbs and amble space for speedy pedestrians to navigate the corner.

Ham Lands by Locksmeade

Ham Lands is the best thing about living in Ham. It follows the river from North Kingston all the way round to Petersham and has several distinct sections. This is the area bounded by Locksmeade Road to the north, the road down to Teddington Lock on the west and Beaufort Road on the east.

It can look a little bare in Winter but once the sun arrives the grasses shoot up and the trees fill out to make a deeply green playground for wildlife and people like me who stray away from the main paths.