A corner of Ham House

It is easy to see where this picture was taken from as the main entrance to Ham House is just over the wall on the left but this is not a view that many people see as there is usually no reason to go in to this little walled garden that only has one entrance and exit.

I was in there for two reasons. Firstly I like going to place that most people ignore as that allows me to get different views of things and the other reason was to hear a sound installation that plays out across a number of speakers that have been put in to the garden.

The sound installation is part of Ham House's Garden or Reason, and I will be showing more of that in here over the summer.

Alien landscape

I keep coming back to Lock Jumps Club by Teddington Lock because the shapes are dramatic and I love the concept of the club, all this has been built by local people. On the damp day I took this a group of boys were repairing some of the jumps that had been damaged by falling rain and bouncing bikes.

A walk on the wild side

Riverside Drive is behind you but there is no evidence of that here, or of anything else that is man-made. This is a path that takes you deep in to the heart of Ham Lands and it is hard to resist the temptation to take it just to see where it takes you.

A sparkle of solar panels

I did ask what was happening to the pavilion in Riverside Drive and, thanks to a comment made by a reader, I learnt that solar panels were being installed and so I made a mental note to go and take a picture of them when the work was finished. And I did.

The surprise is just how many there are. One panel generates about 250W and a typical installation will have 8 or 16 panels, here there are over 100! I presume that they are doing that to sell the electricity back to the grid, either that or it is very very hot in there.

Matching door and flowers

I like this door by itself because of its colour and the way that the substantial frame sets it off. I like it even more when the wisteria is in bloom to challenge the door in the battle for the purple prize. But flowers come and go and so the door wins out in the end.

Where the wild things grow

Great South Avenue can be quite dull. It is too straight and too clean, especially when the mowers have been allowed to wreak their carnage on the wild flowers and grasses that dare to grow anywhere near the pristine path.

But just before the mowers come the borders are resplendent in their wildness and, just for a moment, everything is right with the world.

Farm Lodge

Farm Lodge is one of the neat cottages squeezed in between Montrose House and The Fox and Duck. The trellaced porch is typical of Petersham and they can safely be used to define its borders. The shutters and flowers are nice extras.

Colourful elephants

The rear garden at Montrose House is full of unusual objects, some of which have featured in this blog before, but they have all been upstaged by the arrival of two extremely colourful elephants.

I presume that they were part of Elephant Parade London 2010 and were bought in the charity auction afterwards. I liked most of the 260 elephants that I managed to find but I am not sure that I would have bought either of these let alone put them in a prominent position in my garden.

Wisteria and glass

The garden at Montrose House is bit of a curate's egg. One of the good parts is the old wisteria that cloaks the wall above the sympathetic conservatory and leaves just about enough space for the windows.