Members of the Gardening Club visited Chippenham Park Garden on 12th October 2014.
We were very lucky with the weather and, with formal and wild areas, this is a garden that has many interesting features including a wide range of animal sculptures. There is a wild walk that takes you round the ponds and brings you back via either the long border (which still had plenty of colour) or the box tunnel. You re-emerge by the lake, which, in summer, is full of water lilies. We spotted a number of large brown carp swimming around when we crossed over the ornamental bridge.
There was a tea room situated in the vegetable garden and we had a lovely cup of coffee and cake by the wood burning stove. There were a number of good quality nurseries selling plants and bulbs, which meant we came home with a full boot! One of the nicest things was the round ornamental raised pond that had various comical bronze frogs spouting water from various angles (shown above).
This is a garden that will be interesting at any time although it is only open to the public on selected dates throughout the year. We will certainly be making another visit in the spring to see the snowdrops.
Our final downfall was a very up-market cheese, pasty and pie stall, which we couldn’t possibly ignore!
Roger Haines