Scotney is not one of the Great Houses, but its house/garden perspective is among the best, a pre-eminent example of the "picturesque" style of landscape architecture: a great line of sight, dramatic plantings, roughness, a ruin or folly, water, and so on. Scotney has it all, in the generation following Capability Brown, with the smaller, graspable scale unlike Brown's vast estates. It was also the first place we began to appreciate the rhododendra and azaleas some years back. This visit was our best yet, the plants in nearly full bloom, as dramatic as the colors can get. Earlier pix are at
but I'll indulge with two posts here. In the first, we walk (actually on a garden tour) from the house down to the pond and ruin. In the second, we walk back to the house, through the quarry, and then have a quick look in the house itself.
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| Tiny wild orchids on the lawn |
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| Looking toward the pond and ruin |
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| Cherry blossoms |
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| Blue bells beneath a huge copper beech |
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| Among the older redwoods |
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| Love the giant rhubarbs |
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| The ruin: Tudor, the tower older |
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| Swamp cypress (from Florida) |
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| View back to the house |
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| Ancient oak |
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| I like to think of reflection shots as two-fers |
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| The ice house |
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| Us, there, attempting to recreate a shot from 2013 |
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