Kitchen Garden at Ham House

The Kitchen Garden at Ham House always has something pretty on show. It is a busy garden, providing food and flowers for the cafe and house, and the businesses means that there is always something to see.

The garden is divided in to sections, just as the main lawn is on the other side of the wall, and each bed is planted differently. Clean crisp gravel separates the plots and gives the garden a formal grandeur that belies its purpose.

These purple things were in one of the vegetable plots. I have absolutely no idea what they are but I do know that they are purple and pretty.

Inside the Glasshouse

I had been in to the garden at the Glasshouse in River Lane a few times but it was not until Open House London 2013 that I was able to get inside.Not that there were many surprises as the walls facing the garden are almost all glass so a lot of the house is visible from the outside.

The long side of the house has a kitchen area (shown here) and a separate dining area of a similar size that form one large room.

In the corner of the almost L-shaped house is a wide corridor that leads from the kitchen/dining area to the sitting room. It also contains the staircase to the upper level.

The sitting room has the garden on two sides so is very light and has great views. The garden is bounded by a high wall so it is very private, expect when visitors are in the garden.

Above the corridor is a reading area that cannot be seen from the garden so it was nice to be able to go inside the house to discover it.

There are some bedrooms and bathrooms above the kitchen/dining area but these are not very interesting rooms and they were not all open to visitors. The one that was is spacious but it is just a room with a bed in it and I cannot get too excited by that.

Behind Langham House

The road that runs alongside Langham House, the appropriately named Langham House Close, is private and so I have avoided the temptation to walk down it for several years then Open House London gave me a legitimate excuse to be there, so I went.

The back of Langham House is almost as pretty as the front though it is nothing like as stately without a grand door to set it off. Both sides of the house have a healthy climber covering a lot of the bricks and trying to cover some of the windows.