Lifestyle Envy In The Secret Garden

This weekend was "Hidden Gardens & Courtyards of Wirksworth", where for a trifling £3.50, people like me, who enjoy peeping into other folk's gardens and houses can gratify their curiosity and enjoy a good deal of home made cake, all in one fell swoop.  Wirksworth is the ideal kind of town for this, where town houses and workers cottages rub shoulders in an "up hill, down dale" topography.  It's a place with many crooked alleys and narrow ginnels weaving between limestone walls, and being invited to have a snoop into some of them is an opportunity not to be missed. 

The 20 gardens are spread out all over town, so there is the added advantage of getting some exercise to work off the calories in between tea n' cake stops.    We began by parking at the Ecclesbourne Steam Railway station, where steamy types go to eye vintage rolling stock.  Tickets for the weekend event were on sale at the Wirksworth Community Garden, just up the hill.  This is a worthy project, in which townsfolk grow fruit and vegetables on a plot cleared from the weeds and nettles of the slope overlooking the railway.  As a saxophone quartet tootled in the background, visitors admired the raised beds and claimed their lapel stickers ready for the hike up Wash Green to the next garden. This is an interesting part of town which I had never explored before, full of all kinds of domestic and workshop buildings, thrown together in a higgledy piggledy way.  Prospect House had an acre of well tended lawns intersperced with fruit trees, and a good view down over Wirksworth.  The fairy cakes were most acceptable.

Back down the hill in Coldwell Street, "Greengates" was a perfect hidden garden, squeezed between tall stone houses and on many levels.  There were some beautiful old fashioned roses, a mossy old apple tree, a charming summerhouse and a tree peony with fascinating flowers. A couple of stalls sold vintage gardening tools and another plants.  It was all very Country Living.  Next door, some chaps with guitars and a washboard were entertaining the visitors squeezed into the mediterranean style courtyard of a B&B. 

 Church Walk, 15 St John's Street, Birch House...more tiny but inspired gardens full of flowers.  The smell of roses and lavender was delightful.  The worst thing about this type of event is that occasionally, as you pass the door to someone's perfect kitchen, the type with blue enamelled range cookers and Sweet Williams in artsy jugs on the sunny windows, you feel a dark undertow of bitter envy.  When are my lottery numbers going to come up, so that I too can have a house this cute and a potager this neat and a summerhouse this ditsy?

At Orchard House, just off the main road through Wirksworth, a young guy in dungarees with a long straggly white beard welcomed us friendly tones to a large, romantically rambling green oasis, which was a cross between The Good Life, Glamping, and Away With The Fairies.  A small rose garden redolent of perfume gave way to a wildflower meadow, beyond which was an enclosure for pygmy goats and a turkey.

 Further on was a pond full of wriggling tadpoles, overlooked by the perfect Hippy summerhouse, complete with floral curtains, pot pourri, a tigerskin chaise longe and a Still surrounded by empty gin bottles.  A hammock and one of those swingy lougers looked nice places to relax on a summer evening.  I bet it's fun with candles in the lanterns but I guess you have to be careful not to fall in the pond when half cut.  

This is the life!  Note handy gin bottles



Two small black sheep where cutting the grass near the neat vegetable garden.  A plant stand near the house displayed old shoes in which sedums and other plants were growing.  So many imaginative and amusing touches in this garden, like the Hansel and Gretel wigwam, and the fence panel made out of the tangled stems of an ancient ivy, cut from some wall where it had grown into hoary, hairy wood.  Sadly, just as we came within sight of the tea urn and cake stall, the sunny sky darkened and it began to rain.  This soon turned into hail.  It being nearly five, the gardens were beginning to shut up shop anyway, so we took refuge in the Mistral for a coffee until the shower blew over. 

With several gardens yet to be viewed, we were pleased to discover that our lapel stickers entitled us to another go tomorrow.  So we wended homewards with the hope that the weather would be kind enough to allow us a further afternoon of snooping on Sunday.