Only a select few can visit the gardens at Highgrove House, the Gloucestershire estate owned by Prince Charles, which lies nearly two hours west by train from London. However, it was one of the highlights of my four-day walking tour of England's great estates. On the coach hired by my tour leader, David Brech, the chairman of the Board of Governors of nearby Cirencester College, I was the sole American among two dozen local educators and their guests.
Entering the 300-acre site near Tetbury, formerly owned by Maurice Macmillan, son of the British prime minister in the 1950s and ’60s, we strolled 14 garden areas of the 18th century Georgian neo-classical home for two hours. Closest to Charles' residence is a massive cedar tree in the Terrace Garden, surrounded by flowering plants chosen by the prince himself and, in June, a veritable sea of purple and yellow blooms.
One of the most dramatic sights is an avenue of clipped golden yews along the Thyme Walk, turned into whimsical triangular and circular topiary, like something out of Alice In Wonderland. For my own California home, I lusted after the T-shaped pergola, lined with climbing roses and constructed from Cotswold stone, English oak and stainless steel.
Sites like the rebuilt thatched treehouse, where sons William and Harry once frolicked in the Woodland Garden, and the memorial to "Tigga," the Prince's beloved Jack Russell terrier, on the Azalea Walk, touchingly show the Royal Family's personal side.
On another day, our touring group of four visited Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, and resting place of Queen Katharine Parr, sixth and last wife of Elizabeth's father, King Henry VIII. White flowers, including lilies and the single hybrid tea rose "White Wings" Madonna, mark the gardens outside her tomb in the Queen's Chapel. Among the original Tudor parterres, or raised sections, English roses and herbaceous clematis are entwined where once Katharine, Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey walked. Taking a break, we stopped for tea in the castle restaurant.
History is a living, breathing entity in Gloucestershire. One day in Stanway, the16th-century village built by Elizabeth for her estate workers, we met two bell hangers, repositioning four bells restored from the 1640s, in St. Michael's Church. In adjacent Stanton, we encountered workmen rethatching a roof using an ancient tool called a "leggett." And when we were not crossing through deer parks from the Middle Ages filled with cattle and black sheep, we were navigating Fosse Way, the old Roman road used by King Charles II to evade Oliver Cromwell's men in the 17th century, or paralleling the Sapperton Canal Tunnel, a green area along the Thames, once Britain's longest tunnel, used in the 18th- and 19th-century wool trades.
I stayed at Susie Brassey's horse farm near Shipton-Moyne, now used as a bed and breakfast, and either dined with my hosts, or at excellent pubs. It was a healthy, stress-free, easy ambling tour of five to eight miles daily that I'll long remember!
09-01-2006
