..oh a good find, I've never been there actually, although I know the area as we used to live down that way, and walked those hills frequently....

..chalky, very alkaline soil I imagine but such huge gorgeous roses... I don't know why we never visited those gardens, they're not familiar to me...

No, I'd never heard of them before either. But they've only been there about 25 years (i.e. not long relative to many of the famous gardens, and perhaps before your time there), and are only open occasionally to the public, and for group tours, so perhaps that's why they're not much heard of.

I lived down in Hastings for a few years in the early 70s, and did (dutifully) visit some family friends at Ringmer, once, but my only vague memories of it were of arriving in the dark, and of the inside of their house... :-)

Comtesse, what a coincidence that you lived in Hastings. I lived in Bexhill for 15 years, and worked in Hastings. I have to admit I didn't like the area initially, but sort of got used to it over time. We only moved there because of our jobs. Bexhill as you might remember is, shall I say, fairly sedate...

I'm afraid my garden couldn't possibly compete with those glorious 8 acres, really no comparison, although I'm greatly flattered by your kind consideration, but I can console myself in that it's not so typical, most of us as you know have small plots to deal with, which sometimes I think is actually much harder...

Gorgeous gardens. Some of those roses do very poorly here, and it is a pleasure to see them in the right setting.

Rosefolly

Thanks, comtesse, for the delicious tour. If only he did B&B I'd go and stay there for a week. I should love to wander about in it, going for the occasional dip in the pool, with cocktails after in the Summer House.

Have you seen the book about The Manor House, Upton Grey? A restored Gertrude Jekyll garden. It's a good read. They have a website, but it's not nearly as good as this one. www.gertrudejekyllgarden.co.uk

Trish

Thank you, it is so nice to see such glory.

Comtesse and Trish, you have adde two new houses/estates for us to visit next year, 2017.

A few years ago an English friend and I visited Upton Grey--the owners were there and very welcoming and interesting, although we did mostly walk around by ourselves. We made an appointment ahead of time. Not sure what the requirements are now. It was fabulous to look at the beds with GJ's detailed plans in mind. I loved it. If you go, the pub in the village has wonderful food.

Beautiful! I think the "Tuscany Superb" is really a Rugosa.

I've not been to Upton Grey but I thought it sounded familiar. I had seen it on a BBC series called 'The Great British Garden Revival' from a couple of years ago, which highlighted herbaceous borders. It's on youtube, and the segment on Upton Grey can be viewed on this link
Here

...it starts about 5 minutes in, and lasts about 3 minutes. If you're interested then I hope you like it. I'm not sure a Jekyll garden is my thing but the house is very nice I must say...

Goodo David. Lucky you.

And thanks, Marlorena, I'm going to enjoy watching the series.

comtesse, you asked us to say what we liked and didn't like, and I'm afraid I'm very uninteresting, as I liked it all! What did you not like?

Trish

Thanks, Malorena.

Thanks everyone for your comments and links. :-)

Titian - my only reservations with this garden - at least as presented in the photos - are with the areas that are more formal/manicured and obviously contrived; there's something about a 'perfect' garden that kind of sets my teeth on edge, for some reason. I think I like to feel that nature is ultimately always the star of the show rather than the gardener - that the gardener is merely an invisible enabler in the background and not quite such an obvious controlling presence. For me it's a bit like seeing a beautiful wild animal in a tiny bare cage - plants in an immaculate flowerbed and grass 5mm high with those perfectly sharp edges and not a weed in sight... all that wondrous aliveness in total captivity/submission to the will of humans.*

And I'm not sold on the hot garden; I have seen hot colour schemes I've liked, but this isn't one of them. I think it needs a bit more in the way of restful relief and/ or delicate textures to make it pop and sing as opposed to glare and shout. The Grass Garden may well be better 'in the flesh' and at different times of year, but in this photo I can't see much in the way of interesting grasses. I expect the area is lovely when the apple blossom is out, and no doubt there are other seasonal changes that would show the grasses off better.

My favourite bits are

1) the abandoned swimming pool in the White Garden - love, love that whole past history/faded glory thing. Possibly a result of having spent much of my 1950s childhood in run-down English Rectories with overgrown gardens that no longer had gardeners and under-gardeners to maintain them in the manner to which they would once have been accustomed...

2) the wisteria and laburnum draped archway - I don't think I've seen them used together like this before, and for me, it's a most satisfying combination (and I have childhood laburnum memories too, so I just loved seeing those familiar cascades of golden pea-flowers).

3) the 'Between Borders' area and the other incidental wild-ish/higgledy-piggledy bits where nature's exuberance and delicacy are allowed to shine.

The herbaceous borders I'm 50/50 on - I've seen others I love more.

The roses are terrific, and of course my fave is the monster 'Seagull' without too-obvious control, towering over 'Buff Beauty'.

*This whole 'natural' garden thing is of course a paradox, and for me in particular, because I also really love a cool green formal arrangement of clipped box or other hedging in a symmetrical knot garden, or a traditional inward-facing Middle Eastern courtyard type layout.... just so long as there's also a big old headily-scented climbing/rambling rose or two somewhere in the picture, sprawled over an old stone or mellowed brick wall or dripping languorously from a shady pergola, along with some very well worn paths and preferably a crumbling archway or two - and hopefully a mysterious 'secret' door in a wall promising further wonders beyond...! :-)

Well, I apologise - I've rambled on far too long and tired myself as well as you lot out. I'll try and come back to the thread and answer some of your other comments later. Thanks again to all.

Comtesse :-)

Comtesse, are you a published writer? If so, I'd like to read one of your books.

Laburnum was a big part of my childhood. My mother was a keen gardener, and planted one, and for three years, I had the same classroom at school, and sat in the same seat where I looked out onto one.

Back to the garden........ I had another look after reading your comments. My favourite bits are the Between Borders, and that Buff Beauty, the Spring border - love that photo of the tulips and wallflowers, the Shrub Rose border, and what I think is the new Magnolia Walk. I agree about the edging in the formal parts; it does look very severe, now I go back and look through your eyes. I think I'd prefer the beds to be edged with box. The White Garden would be a lovely cool, serene place to sit in on a hot summer's afternoon, but I'd prefer to be able to dip in that pool.

Trish

Thanks again to everyone for sharing your thoughts. Please forgive me for not getting back sooner; I had a bit of an 'off' period and then I sort of forgot for a while.

Marlorena, coincidences are abounding around here, what with us both having lived in the Hastings area and my family connections in Norfolk, and now I find Ingrid and I both honeymooned in the same small town in India a few decades ago! I was one of the long-haired hippy mob in Hastings, though - I'm sure you would have been in with a far more respectable crowd! (Or maybe not?!) We used to go hop-picking in the summer and hang around the folk clubs and pubs in the Old Town. I went to the art school in the old Brassey Institute, doing a bit of modelling and then as a student... oh, and even called the Bingo numbers on the Pier for a while... :-D

David, you'd need to check out the open days for Ringmer Park if you're hoping to visit, I think it said it was only one weekend each year... unless you have a large group in which case you can book in for a tour and afternoon tea, etc.

Sheila, I think you're right about "Tuscany Superb" - it looks distinctly rugosa-ish to me too - well spotted.

Caritas, I agree, there's nothing like a bit of 'borrowed landscape' in a garden, if you're lucky enough to have some worth borrowing. I expect most of us have to plan more around screening off unpleasant views, ugly fences, etc. - or we have a great view and someone comes along and plonks an eyesore in the middle of it... I imagine moving from rural Maryland to Chicago must've been a bit of a shock to the system for you. I stayed with friends in Maryland - near Annapolis - for a few weeks in mid-summer once, and remember those gently rolling green hills and also the warm, rainy nights that I suppose must be what helps keep the hills so green. I suppose Chicago would be a lot chillier and rather more on the grey side?

Titian, I'd join you for a dip in the old swimming pool, amongst the waterlilies for sure. :-) Wallflowers... not to my eyes the most beautiful of flowers, but oh, that warm, sweet scent. (Did you read Brideshead revisited where their scent used to waft in through Charles Ryder's study window at Oxford? Only he, or rather Evelyn Waugh, called them by their old name, gilly-flowers.) It was nice of you to ask about my writing, but no, I've never had anything published, other than a couple of reviews and poems a long time ago. I muck about a bit with poetry and song lyrics from time to time. My sister's a proper writer, currently working on the 392nd rewrite of a novel. Now of course you've got me thinking... :-)

Thank you for posting the link to this garden. It is just beautiful, would love to see something like this in person. I just love the idea of having enough space to have different garden "rooms" in one property. As mentioned above about the long gardens extremes edging; I personally really like that. It's a nice contrast between the informal wildness of a flower bed & the more controlled formality of the mown grass. I also really like clipped box woods to do that job as well. Unfortunately, boxwoods get easily winter burned in my area. The variety of perennials, roses, shrubs & trees is wonderful to look at. Oh if I just had a rambling estate to plant in!

comtesse, I do remember that bit about the gillyflowers, and I had always thought of them as carnations, so I just googled it. Carnations or dianthus is the usually given flower, but one definition also says any scented flower. I actually love the look of wallflowers, though I have to agree, I can't say they're beautiful individually.

Glad to hear you're getting busy on that book!

Trish

Comtesse.... I never had you down as a bingo caller, although I realise it must have been a long time ago now... what fun!... I know the Old Town well, had many an evening around there, you know, a meal out with friends that sort of thing... Hastings was never my cup of tea though, to tell the truth, but they have a good museum, I enjoyed my visits there, Alexandra Park is worth a stroll round, some interesting trees and shrubs, and the Country Park above the town...

I was there when they were filming the David Attenborough production 'Grey Owl', about a local man who went to Canada and faked being an Indian living in the wilds. Some of it was filmed around the town. Also the period crime drama 'Foyles War' was filmed in Hastings mostly I think, or is set there..

Did you emigrate to Australia in the 1970's?.... my sister did in 1970, she went on a ship called the 'Angelina Lauro'... as a £10 Pom...

When I step outside my door what I see is an unirrigated garden in August, meaning out-of-control plants, weeds, limp or dying foliage, and nothing in bloom. I'm not inclined to play the critic. I like this English garden, its order, its lushness, its cool greenness, its exuberant flowers--everything we don't have here at the moment in our sun-dried Apennines foothills garden--very well. What I admire, what I most envy, in a garden like this, are 1) flat ground, 2) good-sized trees, 3) water. Oh, yes, and the economic means to hire people to do things like cut the grass. All the same we're extremely fortunate here, and I know it; I just need for temperatures to drop and some rain to come (and it has rained recently, so we're not doing badly at all), for my enthusiasm to re-inflate and for me to be once more eager to get out in the middle of my plants.