Part II: Enjoying the Sights of Spring

This was our second year visiting the private gardens of Dunsborough Park in Ripley, Surrey. Read last year’s blog about this beautiful tulip festival here. It was clear to see that the gardeners rotate, redesign and reimagine the garden’s borders, so we were treated to different displays of tulips, bluebells, rhododendrons and other spring beauties. 

We arrived at opening time and spent several hours lapping up the delights of the garden. Tulips in shapes, sizes, and colours we had never seen before were at every turn. Some reminded us of lemon meringue pie, one border looked like a fiery sunset and as you entered you were greeted with a sweeping meadow of blooms in colours that reminded us of a jar full of hard-boiled sweets.  The gardens are a treasure trove of delight and a feast for the senses.

Teal-tinged chairs dot the route where you can sit for a moment or two and absorb the beauty of your surroundings. We were particularly fond of the stone greyhounds flanking the shrubs delineating hidden areas of the gardens.

We also got to see the wisteria framing the fairytale bridge that welcomes you to Dunsborough, something we’d missed last year after visiting slightly earlier in the season. The drooping clusters of amethyst added a touch of magic to an already enchanting landscape.

We finished our visit with tea and cake served by a Ukrainian charity. We chose chocolate marble cake and vanilla sponge topped with perfectly piped purple flowers, all homemade, and served on chintzy tablecloths. The sun was shining and it was a charming conclusion to a delightful morning.

Dunsborough is very close to the Ripley side of the River Wey Navigation, a stretch of canal we discovered last summer after walking part of the route from Dapdune Wharf. After a long morning marvelling at the formal gardens, we enjoyed the equally idyllic but wilder stretch of local landscape along the canal.

One of the oldest river navigations in the country, the River Wey Navigation was created between 1651 and 1653 to provide a thoroughfare to London for Guildford merchants. It’s a waterway of almost 20 miles connecting Godalming in Surrey with the River Thames at Weybridge. Until the 17th century the River Wey’s meandering made it all but useless as a practical means of transport. This was transformed by Sir Richard Weston, who lived on the banks of the river at Sutton Place. Inspired by the canal systems of the Netherlands and Belgium, Sir Watson transformed the route with weirs and locks, making it a viable route to transport goods to London to meet the demands of a growing industrial nation. Rural tranquillity and urban heritage meet along this waterway and walking parts of its 20 mile route is the perfect way to spend an afternoon.

We first headed to Newark Mill and Lock. While only the house of the mill remains after a fire in 1966, the mill was mentioned in the Domesday Book, highlighting the rich history of this bucolic landscape. Charmingly decorated houseboats line the banks and it’s always quite exciting to reach one of the Navigation’s historic locks. Just after Newark Lock you get a fantastic view of the ruins of Newark Priory, framed by bramble and cow parsley. Newark Priory dates back to the late-12th century but was dissolved during Henry VIII’s reign. It is an impressive monument on the Wey towpath. We then switched direction towards Papercourt Lock. This is one of the prettiest and most remote locks on the waterway and has a large tumbling bay to cope with the overspill water. This lock was built in 1766 and then moved to its present location in the 1780s, although why it was moved remains a mystery. The route was filled with lilacs’ syrupy scent and the nearby meadows were full of grazing cows, who were particularly inquisitive when we framed them up for photographs, many dutifully staring straight down the lens. There are many different sections of the Navigations that can be walked, and we look forward to finding more delightful routes this summer.

Osterley Park is one of our closest National Trust properties and is always a delight to visit. We visited many times last spring and you can read about those visits here.

The lake was full of spring life, including mandarin ducks, a majestic heron and an Egyptian goose with her very inquisitive gosling. It was a chilly spring day, so we first visited the house before heading for lunch, where we were treated to a rather fabulous sighting of someone’s pet parrot in a specially altered carrier that allowed its owner to transport it on daytrips on their bicycle. After a warming lunch of soup, we headed to the gardens.

One of the home’s most famous owners, Sarah Child, lived at Osterley between 1763 and 1793 and was a passionate gardener. Her green-fingered work has certainly stood the test of time as the gardens are as magnificent now as they would have been in the eighteenth century. From the Garden House, a series of beds fan out with twisting paths through them, and one route will take you to the Tudor walled garden. Walk through the wrought iron gate and you’ll be transported to another area of bliss with borders packed full of forget-me-nots, tulips, blossom, cornflowers, and irises.

The semi-circular Garden House provided a magnificent display of seasonal flowers, including amaryllis with candy cane stripes, lilac alliums, aubergine-coloured tulips, and white peace lilies. The Garden House was built in 1780 and was once used to entertain guests with exotic plants, including pineapples, grapes and, according to the 1782 inventory, forty-five orange and lemon trees. In celebration of this tradition, the garden team continues displaying various plants for visitors to enjoy.

Behind the folly in one of the far corners of the garden is a woodland awash with bluebells. You can wander through the woodlands, finishing at the top of the long walk which presents a splendid view of the entire house. Birds chirp in the trees and while some are still waiting for their summer coat, a copper beech tree with its rusty red leaves provided the perfectly canopy over the purple ground.

With British summertime being quite short, often beckoned by numerous false starts as the weather threatens warmth and sustained sunshine, one thing we can depend on is that spring – with its reliable showers, cool breeze, mellow sunshine and blooming bulbs – can feel like quite an elongated season. Yet, this provides the perfect opportunity for countless adventures to landscapes of local beauty, and we continued our spring excursions into the early-summer months, something you can read about in Part III of our spring blogpost.

Catch up with Part I here.