Chartwell

The following day we ventured a little further from Rye, heading up to Chartwell in Kent to meet my friend Jamie who is also training on the National Trust Careership (see the Chartwell blog here). Tootling along in a motor car (poop poop!) through East Sussex and Kent, one can’t fail to notice the great number of brown tourist signs by the roadside. It seems you can’t go up a single street in this region without a glorious garden waiting for you at the end of it! Chartwell is one such place, and has a great history, it being the home and garden of that great Briton Sir Winston Churchill. The garden peers out across the Weald of Kent, and has varying levels affording views back up to the house from the Kitchen Garden at the furthest point below. The garden has an extremely relaxed atmosphere, with this feeling enhanced by the sight of some people lying on the grass and others sat in a chair reading the papers. Churchill was quite a creative so and so, with many of his paintings on display at the garden. Also, to the front of the house stands a large wall separating the property from the road, and this was built by the big man himself!

Castello Churchill

Shifts in levels, banked by rosemary and buddleia

These fascinating mounds are in fact Lunaria annua, Honesty, who missed their moment for flowering and decided their time would be better spent putting on masses of leaves instead! Jamie is hoping for gigantic flowers next year, fingers crossed!

Salvia horminum ‘Pink Sunday’, in the cutting patch of the Kitchen Garden

View down on the hedging surrounding Lady Chruchill’s rose garden

A pleasant spot to sit at the centre of the rose garden

Churchill was a butterfly fanatic and this Butterfly House was where he raised his own species to release in the garden!

One of the highlights of the trip, a Small Copper butterfly! The first one I have ever seen just casually breezed past as Jamie was showing me the cold frames. Interesting piece on such topics here

Winston looking wonderfully eccentric