baitlaws

Baitlaws is a beautiful old house that has been sympathetically added to over the years, and in recent years it has had a modern and "unusual architectural feature” added - a conservatory built on at first floor level, raised on metal “stilts”.  You can see it on the right of this photo, but you’ll see it in other photos of the gardens, as I loved it and used it as a feature in several shots!

You might have already guessed then that I was there with the U3A gardening group.  I decided that I would take more photos of garden views as opposed to individual flowers, and I did manage to do that, but I still took a lot of pictures of flowers as we went on our guided tour with the lady of the house!

The gardens had been open to the public one Sunday in July, this being the gate everyone came through from the car park.  I just love quirky little doors and windows so that was my first shot!

My next “door photo” wasn’t far behind, as we walked from the circular lawn through to the greenhouse and potting shed and found this.  it was from outside the shed that I took the next photo of the small pond with greenhouse behind it.  From there we walked down the side of the vegetable garden, admiring the bird scarers as much as the plants.  They were potatoes with pheasants’ feathers stuck in them, and they dangled on strings from these long poles to make birds with a fresh veggie meal in mind think they were predators and keep away!  Very clever!

Soon we were at the side of the house looking up at the glass conservatory . It must be equally  lovely to sit in there on a cold sunny day and watch the scenery, perhaps covered in snow, as it must be to sit there in summer and see the garden at its best.  Not being as high up I took this shot of the view from the garden.  I love the little stone owl!

The little corner here below the conservatory must be a very pleasant place to sit quietly and read,

 

 

 

and contemplate the large standing stone carefully positioned at the end of a narrow garden corridor between high hedges on either side.

I took a photo of some of the group through the hole, and I suspect Jennie took one of me taking the one of them!  Jennie is wearing the red jacket.

From the hedge-edged corridor we came through the arch down the stone steps to another lawn edged by flowerbeds.  The view from here was wonderful. 

in the middle of the lawn were two verdigris geese, looking very affectionate here, but it was the only way to get them to stand upright on the grass!  When we found them they were lying tumbled flat on the ground.

Here’s another of those conserv-atory views taken from the lawn with the geese.

We had wound round the garden and were now going back towards the house.  One of my lovely young Aussie cousins would have called this a castle when he was little.  A castle had turrets, he said!

 Soon we were back at the front of the house again, ready to thank our hostess for the lovely tour, and take our leave.  I haven’t shown you many flowers this time so one before I go…

 

…of the everlasting sweet peas on the front wall of the house.  I had never seen red ones before and they looked beautiful against the white painted harling.

Talk again soon.