Through the letterbox: Stratford Park

CleanSteve and I popped down to the Museum in the Park this afternoon, to see the exhibits from the Secret Artist fundraising initiative. Local artists/makers, and some famous names, were invited to contribute a piece of original art, no bigger than A5 postcard size. These entries were displayed in a gallery, and visitors could buy a £15 ticket, which entitles them to win one of the artworks. No one knows what they are going to win: it really is a lottery!

I'd entered one of my photos, which I was delighted to see on display (I can't reveal which one it was until next Sunday) and CleanSteve and I bought a ticket. Fingers crossed....

After a cup of tea and a catch up with friends who happened to be visiting the museum at the same time as us, we joined one of the very infrequent tours of the Secret Garden: a walled kitchen garden from the Victorian era, which served the mansion. This now houses part of the museum. The garden is being redeveloped after years of neglect and decay, and part of it will be open for use next year, once the winding, fully accessible path has been built from the back of the museum up the steep slope to the top of the garden. At the moment, another £50K is needed to complete the path work. Seems like a lot! That's what the Secret Artist event is about, though of course the museum will need a hefty donation or three in addition to the funds raised from the exhibition. I hope I can report back here on blip in a few years' time when the garden looks less like a building site and more garden-y.

Today's blip is this pano shot of the park in its autumn colours. The spectacular range of trees is the result of a friendship between the Holfords, who planted the nearby Westonbirt Arboretum, and the then owner of Stratford park and its mansion. The park doesn't have quite as many tree varieties as the national arboretum, but we're lucky to have this park, and lucky that the mature trees were saved by eco-protestors in the early 90s when Tesco wanted to chop some of them down for a spot of totally unnecessary road-widening!

More images of the mansion here.