Chatsworth Gardens, 2013

We visited Chatsworth in 2009. It's one of the ones you want to see again. And probably again, too. I can't say it's either the best or our favorite. But, like Lanhydrock, Petworth, and Blenheim, it's one of the ones we liked best. Not the family nor home feel, like Lanhydrock, nor the art, like Petworth, nor the nation and the majesty, like Blenheim. No, although Chatsworth has great art, great history (the Dukes of Devonshire), and great architecture, it's the gardens that are of special interest: the work of two centuries of the greatest landscape architects, Grissel (Versailles), Capability Brown (nearly every English landscape of note), and Joseph Paxton (the 19th century's greatest). So we started with the gardens and first a garden tour.

The house from the Cascade/gardens side

What's left of Paxton's Conservatory and hot-house: probably the germ for the
idea of the Crystal Palace resides here

One of many, many water features

In the extensive rock garden/grotto area; all of it artificial

Ditto

A Monkey Puzzle tree in the Arboretum, with its 300 varieties;
the maze in the the distance

The grand canal and its fountain

The Cascade and its temple, from the house

From the top; designed so that every step has a different
sound...

Some of the grounds, from the Arboretum

All that remains of the original Elizabethan estate: the Deer
Stand, where the ladies could watch the gentlemen hunting
(the hill was bare then)

More of the grounds, from the carpark; not pictured...formal gardens, the "E" and
"R" on the hillsides in the distance, the sculpture arrayed all around the grounds,
and so on