Blackland Park (Friday 21st April 2023)

Although I have lived in Calne since 1989 there are still places within two miles by road that I have not explored, and one such is Blackland House and Park. I have walked all the footpaths that surround it and have blipped Blackland Lakes and Blackland Mill in the past, but Blackland Park is not generally open to the public. It is owned by Ed and Polly Nicholson who run the Bayntun Flowers floristry business from the former coach house. They have planted 15,000 tulips. A collection of tulip cultivars is accredited with Plant Heritage under the National Plant Collection scheme. Until 1987 it had been owned by Rupert and Candida Lycett Green, the latter being the daughter of John Betjeman.

It was only open under the National Gardens Scheme on this one day, where I spent a very enjoyable afternoon rummaging around the grounds adjacent to the River Marden and having chats with visitors and with a woman guide from Bayntun Flowers, who tend to the five acres of the gardens.

I took about one hundred photographs with my red and yellow Pentax cameras and I am slowly working through them and uploading to my Flickr account.

I was told that there are normally dozens of Canada geese lining the opposite bank of the river, but because of the crowds on this day there was only one. As there was another sitting nearby on a nest on a river island, I imagine he was her partner.

Among the structures in the grounds are a grotto and a Twig House. In the Rose Gardens the dominant flower was the tulip but there were plenty of other plants. There was a Fritillary Lawn that still had a number of snake's heads still in flower, and there were a lot of wildflowers that I photographed for possible Wild Flower Week contribution. These included primroses, forget-me-nots, bluebells, wild garlic, cowslips and kingcups (more links to follow), the problem being that as they are mostly in close-up they could have been taken anywhere, and I thought my blip should be identifiably Blackland Park. The day's clientele seemed to be largely poshos and I remarked to someone as I observed the tables of the cake-eating public by the pool it was like being in an outdoor Waitrose.

I haven't visited any open gardens since before the first lockdown, but based on my experience on Friday I may well resume the habit. Black sheep with horns grazed in an adjacent field and two red kites soared overhead. I thought I had covered the whole Park but in retrospect looking at the beautiful supplied map (in Extras) I see I missed the entrance leading to the walled gardens and glass houses that lie below the Coach House. I shall have to return next year.

With thanks to BikerBear for Flower Friday.

L.
Sunday 23.4.2023 (1336 hr)

Blip #3860 (#3610 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #007
Blips/Extras In 2023 #068/266 + #044/100 Extras
Day #4773 (1172 gaps from 26.3.2010)
Lozarithm's Lozarhythm Of The Day #3000 (#2840 + 160 in archived blips)

Calne series
Blackland series
Flora series
Tulips series

Blackland Park, Calne, 21 April 2023 (Flickr album of 77 photos)

Taken with Pentax K-50 (Red) and Sigma AF 17-70mm F2.8-4 DC Macro HSM lens

Lozarithm's 3,000th Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Lavinia Blackwall - The Damage We Have Done (2023)
Lavinia Blackwall is from Glasgow and was formerly the lead singer with Trembling Bells. This new single will be on her forthcoming second album. I heard it on Mark Radcliffe's Folk Show (Radio 2).
"The Damage We Have Done was inspired by Percy Shelley’s poem Ozymandias. It’s about the brevity we have on this planet, the fact that we can’t take anything with us, hoping to leave behind something meaningful and the hope that one day we’ll all meet again, the realisation that there is an environmental and spiritual consequence to the lives we choose to lead. We initially recorded the single at the barn around the time of the pandemic. I wrote it at the piano, but there’s no piano on the final edit. We went down a bit of a rabbit hole with this one, with strings, thumb piano, far too many guitar parts. I must have recorded the vocals about 60 times and was really struggling to get it right, but got there eventually" - Lavinia Blackwall

One year ago:
The Woodland Garden (Tulips)