Prospect Cottage

Many people will recognise this as Derek Jarman's cottage in Dungeness. In fact Popsie64 reminded me of it a day or so ago. We have driven past it many times, but strangely never stopped to look. Today we stopped and wandered through the garden. 

Derek Jarman was an English film director and, when he went to live in Dungeness, he created this garden, a garden like no other. It was made on the shingle, has no boundaries, but has many bits and pieces, like flint circles, standing stones. In the summer there is, amazingly, lots of colour. 

He said about gardens: "Paradise haunts gardens, and some gardens are paradise. Mine is one of them. Others are like bad children, spoilt by their parents, over-watered and covered with noxious chemicals." (Our garden at home is definitely not the latter!)

On the side of the cottage is the John Donne poem 'The Sun Rising'. The side view in Extras shows this and more of the garden. 

Jarman died in 1994, but the garden still attracts many visitors. Currently there is a big fund-raising effort, fronted by the Art Fund amongst other agencies,  to try to buy the cottage and garden and put it into public ownership. 

I have no idea why, on a day of high winds, we went to the place where the wind howls across the shingle, with nothing to stop it and no shelter. Madness! But I think we are both fascinated by Dungeness - its landscape, geology and history.