Caxton Manor

This would make a fine jigsaw puzzle I feel. In any case, it captures the overwhelming, somewhat surreal (or should that be, 'hyper-real') feeling on entering the gardens at Caxton Manor, in Ashurstwood, near Forest Row in Sussex, open for a couple of days this weekend under the National Gardens Scheme.

It is a somewhat startling sight to see an Elizabethan manor house set precipitously above a Japanese-inspired water garden. Neither the 'honey pot' aspect of the garden on open day, nor the traffic on the busy A22 (just across the fence at the foot of the garden) manage to detract from the essential tranquility of what has been created here.