Landscape Blog

As you may know, the park and wider landscape at Compton Verney, as well as being a designed landscape, features many different ecological habitats that are very attractive to wild flowers and creatures. Whilst we naturally manage the venue for its landscape garden qualities, we are also therefore, very much aware of its ecological...

We’re moving rapidly into the month of April now, and whilst I set out to deliver a March Landscape & Garden Update, such has been the workflow that an April update is just having to suffice! The variety of tasks the team has been involved with over the winter and early spring period has...

Fungi, as fascinating and prolific as they are, are a world away from the ‘comfortable’ horticultural world I occupy. They are hugely valuable though, and their presence in a natural landscape or garden offers much more than a short term unusual feature or splash of colour. For example,

Time Flies Time has certainly flown of late, as you’ll know by the scarcity of landscape articles since the summer! Back we are though with a busy autumn period, and enough on the task list to see us through to the New Year. First of all I have to make reference to The March of...

There are many times in each year when we reach a milestone, and the honey harvest is certainly one of our favourites. As such, and knowing how many honey bee supporters there are out there, Rod Oates has prepared a short report about the year he’s experienced as volunteer bee keeper at Compton Verney: The long hard winter was a...

Welcome to the Landscape & Garden Update – 19.06.18. It’s been a while since we caught up but then, it has been an incredibly busy season thus far. Meadow Flowers The delayed start to spring due to the cold and wet weather seemed to result in the landscape unfurling more slowly and gracefully than ever. From...

The grass may squelch under foot and the sky may yet have more rain for us, but the atmosphere does feel markedly different outside today at Compton Verney. I’ve just returned from carrying out a few odd jobs in the park and was uplifted as always by the flowers that are, despite the weather,...

Whilst the exhibitions and the main gallery do not open until Saturday March 17, I take delight in writing this blog post on the very first of the grounds-only open days of the 2018 season at Compton Verney. After a particularly tough winter period where snow and storm force winds have left their mark, I’m glad...

I find myself sitting down for a while after a heavy morning of work putting the courtyard in order, following recent disturbance due to snow clearing. I’m pondering, as I do, what I should create in terms of this, the last Landscape & Garden Update of 2017. It certainly has been a long and very busy two months...

I’m not sure if it is just me, but haven’t we enjoyed some dramatic skies this year? Maybe I’m just taking more time to look, or the weather is simply more theatrical than usual, but time and time again I have found myself standing back in awe of the cloudscape that clothes the landscape.  Painterly...