July

July 2015

My calendar shows me that July was too busy for us to do much visiting, so this posting is likely to be shorter than the last.

I was delighted to be home again, and we enjoyed the lovely weather. Even the High Street in Oxted looked good in the sunshine.



By mid-July we had more or less finished unpacking, organising and putting away all the things we had taken to Manchester, and we found a little time for a day out to Riverhill Himalayan Gardens, which are not far from Oxted, along the A25.

As befits something called a Himalayan Garden, the hillside on which it is situated is very steep and necessitates a lot of climbing. It was originally bought In1840 by John Rogers, a scientist and classics scholar who was a friend of Charles Darwin, also one of the first members of the Royal Horticultural Society and a patron of the plant collectors of the day. He chose Riverhill because its sheltered situation offered an ideal lime free hillside where he could hope to establish newly introduced trees and shrubs.

Until the beginning of the 2nd World War, eight full time gardeners were employed at Riverhill. Since then, however, lack of money has meant that the garden was allowed to deteriorate, with many parts of the original planting lost.
The estate is now owned by the great-great-great grandson of the original owner; he and his family live in the adjoining house, and have been working to restore the gardens, which they re-launched in 2010.

As part of the re-launch, a partnership was set up with a local gallery and various pieces of British sculpture can now be viewed in the gardens.



I'm not sure whether the sculpture above is a permanent piece or whether it's for sale, but I suspect the former, since it seems to fit in here so well. The summer house you can see beyond is a popular place for sitting admiring the view.

There are even more spectacular sculptures in other parts of the garden, and you can see from my photo below that this is not one of the best maintained areas of the garden.


These particular statues are for sale, though I recall they were extremely expensive. This was the first time I had encountered sculptures being displayed for sale in a garden, though not the last. The ones in this garden were all very modern, and I was far from sure about some of them.

There were few flowers in bloom, but interesting shrubs and trees, and we climbed steadily until finally we climbed up to what is known as the 'Little Everest Viewpoint'. The view was certainly spectacular, though you probably can't really appreciate it from my photo.




The garden literature describes it as ‘one of the finest views in Kent’, and claims you can see up for to 20 miles across the Weald of Kent. It was a reasonably clear day, and we could certainly see for quite a distance.

Before you climb up to the viewpoint, you can see the Himalayan hedge maze, planted with horn beams in an intricate design based on the patterns found in Tibetan wood.




When we visited, it was full of families trying to find the centre, though, with the hedges less than three feet high, at least there would be no chance of them getting hopelessly lost.

After the school term ended, my daughter-in-law and children went off for a few days in France, and we drove up to Manchester to collect the rest of our belongings and give my son some help with his DIY. By the 27th we were home again, and getting ready to receive them all at our house for a week. My sister came as well, so we had a very busy end of July and beginning of August.

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