Vacation, continued
Aug. 4th, 2005 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienOn Wednesday, another mostly sunny day with occasional showers, we visitied the Botanical Gardens.
The Sheffield Botanical Gardens were one of the haunts of my childhood, goal of holiday afternoons and school excursions. The school I attended from age 11 was just down the road, and I used to picnic with my mother in the Rose Garden when my presence at school wasn't required until the afternoon. In the sixth form, I occasionally used my lunchtime roaming privilege to go over there and walk under the trees in the quiet, wild back corner where the daffodils grew and the squirrels played. There was an aviary in the largest of the three glass-roofed pavilions, its most memorable denizens the macaws that would be put outside, chained to their perch, on sunny afternoons.
Later on, like all the Sheffield parks, the Gardens fell into decline, with the bright displays of annuals empty or grassed over and the shrubs running wild. Five years ago, the place was a sad shadow of its former self, and the pavilions were empty and locked. A few volunteers made a token effort to help with the weeding, but it was too little, too late. The bronze Peter Pan statue in the rose garden lost most of its embellishing animals to vandals or souvenir hunters, and any plants that were put out were only too likely to be 'rescued' for visitors' own gardens.
Then came the Millennium, and an ambitious restoration project. It's taken years, but the Gardens are finally starting to look good again. Leggy old rhododendrons and laurels have been ruthlessly culled; the rose garden has lost its yew hedge and been re-laid in its original 1830's design, with the lovingly restored statue at its centre; the ugly old Crimean monument at the bottom of the Broad Walk has gone, replaced by an elegant fountain. The pavilions have been completely restored, with the lost glasshouses joining the three buildings replaced, and stocked with delicate plants. (I feel a little sorry for the prickly-pear cacti: I wonder if they'll ever get enough light and warmth to flower.) Everywhere there are new plants, looking rather bemused in a sea of bark chippings. There's even water in the rock garden ponds again, though no plantings around it yet. It will take a few more years for everything to settle in, but already it's a pleasant place to spend a morning or afternoon or lunch-hour. The squirrels are still there, and as cheeky as ever.
Today the weather was less enticing. We took the bus to Totley, a village-suburb a few miles up the road on the outskirts of Sheffield, and hiked over Blacka Moor, where the authorities plan to introduce grazing cattle before what was once open moorland disappears under bracken and birch forest. It was rather bleak, particularly as we were climbing the last slope of windswept grass and it came on to rain, but there was heather. It isn't in its full glory yet, but it's there, satisfyingly purple. After we ate our lunch huddled in the lee of a stile, the rain cleared up and we pressed on, over to Fox House -- an isolated inn and bus stop -- and the Longshaw estate. We made a loop around the estate, down to the lake where the ducks stubbornly refused to pose on the rippling silver water, and over to the open part where the families of Sheffield bring their children to paddle in the stream and run half-dressed on the grass, then back along the stream and up to the road and the bus home. I saw -- and photographed -- the skyline in the icon, Carl Wark and Higger Tor, and the camera did better with the purples in the heather than I feared it might. I'm still discovering what the new camera can do with these very familiar landscapes; not too bad at all, if I use the zoom to bring the skyline closer.
The weather turned briefly sunny later in the afternoon, particularly when we were waiting for a bus in town, and then we had a brief heavy shower later still, after we were home.
Ino other news, I've been making good progress scanning in the South Africa photos; I might even finish those tonight. That still leaves France, Holland and Denmark, and probably some of the early US trips when it was all exotic and exciting.
The Sheffield Botanical Gardens were one of the haunts of my childhood, goal of holiday afternoons and school excursions. The school I attended from age 11 was just down the road, and I used to picnic with my mother in the Rose Garden when my presence at school wasn't required until the afternoon. In the sixth form, I occasionally used my lunchtime roaming privilege to go over there and walk under the trees in the quiet, wild back corner where the daffodils grew and the squirrels played. There was an aviary in the largest of the three glass-roofed pavilions, its most memorable denizens the macaws that would be put outside, chained to their perch, on sunny afternoons.
Later on, like all the Sheffield parks, the Gardens fell into decline, with the bright displays of annuals empty or grassed over and the shrubs running wild. Five years ago, the place was a sad shadow of its former self, and the pavilions were empty and locked. A few volunteers made a token effort to help with the weeding, but it was too little, too late. The bronze Peter Pan statue in the rose garden lost most of its embellishing animals to vandals or souvenir hunters, and any plants that were put out were only too likely to be 'rescued' for visitors' own gardens.
Then came the Millennium, and an ambitious restoration project. It's taken years, but the Gardens are finally starting to look good again. Leggy old rhododendrons and laurels have been ruthlessly culled; the rose garden has lost its yew hedge and been re-laid in its original 1830's design, with the lovingly restored statue at its centre; the ugly old Crimean monument at the bottom of the Broad Walk has gone, replaced by an elegant fountain. The pavilions have been completely restored, with the lost glasshouses joining the three buildings replaced, and stocked with delicate plants. (I feel a little sorry for the prickly-pear cacti: I wonder if they'll ever get enough light and warmth to flower.) Everywhere there are new plants, looking rather bemused in a sea of bark chippings. There's even water in the rock garden ponds again, though no plantings around it yet. It will take a few more years for everything to settle in, but already it's a pleasant place to spend a morning or afternoon or lunch-hour. The squirrels are still there, and as cheeky as ever.
Today the weather was less enticing. We took the bus to Totley, a village-suburb a few miles up the road on the outskirts of Sheffield, and hiked over Blacka Moor, where the authorities plan to introduce grazing cattle before what was once open moorland disappears under bracken and birch forest. It was rather bleak, particularly as we were climbing the last slope of windswept grass and it came on to rain, but there was heather. It isn't in its full glory yet, but it's there, satisfyingly purple. After we ate our lunch huddled in the lee of a stile, the rain cleared up and we pressed on, over to Fox House -- an isolated inn and bus stop -- and the Longshaw estate. We made a loop around the estate, down to the lake where the ducks stubbornly refused to pose on the rippling silver water, and over to the open part where the families of Sheffield bring their children to paddle in the stream and run half-dressed on the grass, then back along the stream and up to the road and the bus home. I saw -- and photographed -- the skyline in the icon, Carl Wark and Higger Tor, and the camera did better with the purples in the heather than I feared it might. I'm still discovering what the new camera can do with these very familiar landscapes; not too bad at all, if I use the zoom to bring the skyline closer.
The weather turned briefly sunny later in the afternoon, particularly when we were waiting for a bus in town, and then we had a brief heavy shower later still, after we were home.
Ino other news, I've been making good progress scanning in the South Africa photos; I might even finish those tonight. That still leaves France, Holland and Denmark, and probably some of the early US trips when it was all exotic and exciting.
