Nymans in autumn

We visited Nymans in early summer, when the roses were just starting to bloom, and were keen to return to see the garden taking on its autumn colours. It's a very large garden in Sussex, owned by the National Trust, surrounding the ruins of a pastiche medieval manor house built in the 1920s and destroyed by fire in 1947. It has many wonderful specimen trees, tree lined walks overlooking rolling countryside, areas of topiary. There are formal gardens, including a rose garden full of beautiful and varied flowers and scents, small walled gardens close to the house, a sunken garden surrounded by columns of clipped yew, and wonderfully planted, gloriously colourful long borders converging on a central fountain. There's a Japanese style garden, an area of beds of heather with small, grassy paths winding between them, and a wide lawn with a huge cedar tree. Everywhere there are benches with views, delightful for sitting contemplating, sketching or picnicking. I think it's my favourite National Trust garden to date, much as I love Sissinghurst. 

We thought it would be the last of the warm, sunny days; in fact by the time we got up the forecast had changed, and the weather was overcast and dull with flat, grey light, turning to drizzle by mid afternoon. It was still lovely to be there, but both the experience and the photography would have been better with a little sun. We picnicked simply on P's home made hummus and bread, with home grown tomatoes and cucumber, and J, who is not as enthusiastic about visiting gardens as her parents, had been won over with the promise of cake, little brownie style cupcakes which I made on Tuesday evening. While J finished her slow lunch, P went to explore the adjacent woodland, which is not accessible, and I helped J with a little digital sketch - she chose to draw the very impressive cedar. It was lovely to enjoy a day out in such a beautiful place; we look forward to returning in the spring to see new leaves and carpets of flowers.

I've just searched for my blip from our late May visit, and discovered it's one of the handful of days for which I've not posted - probably because I took so many photos that I didn't finish sorting through them and choosing. I'll try to remedy this very soon. The hardest days to blip are the ones when I take most photos!