Mauritius - Cap Malheureux

Such a beautiful spot with such a sad name! Many ships have floundered on the rocks in front of the coast. Maybe their skippers' attention was diverted by the beauty of the views and they suffered a fate like the Rhine-skippers under the spell of the Lorelei and her treacherous rocks ... 

A small catholic church with a bright red roof occupies a pretty position on the tip of the Cap.

Although we had been vacationing on Mauritius a few times with family already, it was the first time I visited Cap Malheureux on the northern tip of the Island and it was certainly worth the trip.  

Looks like octopus for lunch ...

The Gardens at Gravetye Manor

Gravetye Manor in East Grinstead, Sussex, was the home of William Robinson, horticulturist and author of several books on gardening, among them the classics "The English Flower Garden" and "The Wild Garden". He has influenced British and European gardening style for many decades since the end of the 19th century. He advocated a natural, less formal gardening style with plantings in drifts and well devised finely graduated colour schemes. 
Today his house is a beautiful country house hotel, with an excellent Michelin-starred restaurant. We had visited the place several times in the past already - mainly because of its kitchen. With a change of ownership, its gardens now have improved tremendously, offer an additional joy and are well worth a visit.  

So have a look for yourself: 

The gardens are well maintained and gardeners are very helpful and keen to explain about the plantings or plants' names. The head gardener used to work at Great Dixter; this creative influence can clearly be seen. 

Yellow Tropaeolum canariense  delicately draped across a camellia giving her additional flowers extending her showy time. 

a peek over the wall 

 Photogenic Veratrum decorated with flowers from a bush above:

 Veratrum niger - in camera image-overlay: 

a very fine-leaved Euphorbia - I don't know which. 

 a tiny clematis 

Dactylorhiza on the meadows

To the Walled Garden, which not only supplies the kitchen ... 

 Yellow Aquilegia chrysantha "Yellow Queen" that I also admired at Great Dixter

Eremurus 

The Walled Garden is also used for growing flowers for the house.

So, in addition to seeking out this beautiful garden, you can stay overnight in cozy rooms and have an excellent meal - or simply a sumptous afternoon tea on the lawn or one of the numerous places to sit and relax  - which seems like the perfect holiday!  

Yellow Corydalis

"Robinson style" 

Visiting Sissinghurst Castle Garden

Visiting Sissinghurst Castle Garden seems like stepping into the reference book on perfect English gardening. The garden is so well known from Vita Sackville-West's writings about her creation which she planned together with her husband Harold Nicholson, that a visit feels a bit like an inspection round, checking off images in your head: the white garden, the rose garden, the lime walk, the nut garden .... Her columns on gardening, compiled in her four "In my garden" books in the cycle of the seasons and Tony Lord's excellent photographic book and all the later books about it helped me develop my first own garden twenty years ago. What to grow unter hazelnuts? Which old roses can be recommended? I tried to obtain a Stewartia pseudocamellia, Millium effusum or Aster frikartii "Mönch" ... which most gardeners in Germany had never heard of then. 

But books and written words are permanently fixed, while a garden is always developing and provides fleeting images only. Great expectations for the visit, and also slight worries whether the gardens would be able to live up to these expectations, decades after the property joined the National Trust's portfolio and the creator is gone. 
These are photographs I made during our visit in June.

The White Garden:

view from the tower towards the white garden and the Kentish countryside

Peony-shaped white poppy "White Cloud"; 

A gardener told me, the heads are so heavy that they droop in rains and even here on this picture when it was dry. I will try them nevertheless ... 

Rosa mulliganii on the pergola not yet in flower

The Rose Garden:

I had not seen these Allium christophii in such mass plantings before - usually they are used  in singles. These clouds though look great! Another idea to try out... 

A view from the top: 

Panorama towards the long main house and library: 

View towards the tower where Vita had her study

Stewartia pseudocamellia ? 

lupins ...

.... and delphiniums

 a pale Kniphofia 

 red and yellow Aquilegia

 difficult to grow Eremurus

 Martagon lilies

 view from the pond

the lime walk in the background is under reconstruction, no Aster frikartii "Mönch" today

wild meadow  

Welcome to the shop ...