A disappointing Hampton Court show prompts me to seek rose Mecca (and Arts & Crafts heaven)

Before I headed to the Cotswolds, I started my holiday at the Hampton Court Garden Festival. It was, to be honest, deeply inferior to past years. But it was so exciting to actual be at an annual milestone after 16 months of COVID cancellations ... and to be out in a crowd (limited to the fully vaccinated) ... that I could forgive its shortcomings.

Those included a decline in show gardens, sponsors and vendors. For the first time there were open plots where organisers obviously hadn't been able to sell space. The gardens themselves were bland in their near-uniformity. Everyone varied on the same themes: save the planet, and stay calm during a pandemic. The result was a lot of of shady spots for relaxation, outdoor kitchens, and naturalistic planting verging on the unkempt.

Only two gardens even inspired me to take out my camera. Tom Stewart-Smiths meadow planting gives a vision of the future of the UK that looks surprisingly like a field in central Missouri on a good day. I loved it, but even with climate change I'm sceptical about many of these heat-lovers would survive on our shores. The second I photographed for pure shock value. 

Its visual hook was an airplane crashed into a wheat field (representing genetically-modified monocultures) with luggage spilling from its severed tail. In case you missed the point, the "airline" branding was Homo Sapiens. Through the plane's shattered

cockpit you could see a small collection of plants that had survived multiple extinction events.  At the time I had a viscerally negative reaction, believing the wrecked plane was in spectacularly bad taste, but a week later it's the main thing I remember about this year's event. If a show garden is meant to get a message across, there’s probably never been better.

Amongst the vendors not attending was flower show stalwart David Austin Roses. Instead of their usual booth manned with staff ready to offer copious advice and sell you the year's latest varieties, they planted a curved bed of roses around some benches, put up labels with their flower show offer, and stayed home. Ironically, this decision on their part triggered the first day of holiday sightseeing on mine.

I had always wanted to get to their headquarters just north of Birmingham. It was rose season. From my Cotswolds starting point I was already halfway there. What the hell.

David Austin started selling his specially-bred roses in the 1960s and by his death in 2018 had become the leading light of the modern Rose world. His special genius was for combining the colours, shapes, and sense of old-fashioned roses with the repeat flowering of new ones. Today, I doubt there is a major garden anywhere in the world that doesn’t feature his creations. If gardening were a religion ... and for many, it certainly is ... then this might be its Mecca.


The gardens here are essentially the company showroom, demonstrating what more than five decades of patented roses look like in their full maturity. Breathtaking is a word that's lost its impact from overuse, but it's appropriate here. The beauty of this place in the middle of rose season is so overwhelming I was, briefly, physically overcome and needed to sit down to recover.

You start off on a patio full of enormous pots showing off the latest introductions. Beyond is the vast Long Garden, a connecting network of pergolas stretching more than 100 metres with three wide aisles, all packed with different roses. It's the biggest assemblage of roses I've ever seen in one garden. And I've seen a lot of gardens. Bushes, ramblers and climbers all jostle for your attention as they tumble together in a riot of colour. If the festive assault on your eyes isn't enough to overwhelm you, the scent will finish you off. It's incredible.

There are three walled gardens off this long walk, each walled to concentrate the aromas further. The Victorian Garden is circular, inviting you to explore different varieties in a contemplative spiral. The Lion Garden, named for a large sculpture at one end, is the most varied of the planting schemes with a mix of species alongside the headliners. The Renaissance Garden is the one I would most likely transplant to my own home, should I win lottery. A long, still pool runs from the main entrance to an Italian-style loggia. On either side of the water are aisles framed with undulating box hedges from which roses spill. A pergola runs down one side. Combined with the framing walls and the back of the loggia, it’s an exceptional stage for climbers. Here, as in the Long Garden, roses bloom at every level your eye rests upon, overwhelming both eyes and nose.

There are plenty of benches throughout for lingering appreciation. If you need more significant sustenance there is a lovely little café surrounded by more roses and staffed by locals who radiate pride in their garden. They serve simple country fair done well. Soup, sandwiches and cakes, all obviously handmade rather than from an industrial kitchen.

The purpose of these gardens is, of course, to sell roses, and this is one of the world's better examples of exiting through the gift shop. Austin’s greatest hits are organised by type in an enormous outdoor garden centre. I have bought many of these roses from garden centres and have been delighted, but the quality here is even better. I doubt that the “Boscobel” I purchased will ever look as good as it did in its pot at its birthplace. These gardens aren’t just special because of the roses, but because of the care and knowledge of the experts who tend them. Every spent bloom is dead-headed, soil beneath is turned gently, branches are pruned in the optimum spots and I’m sure every bit of feeding is done to its proper schedule. I must do better.

If you are making a long drive to get to David Austin’s, you may want to expand your day with a visit to a fascinating National Trust property that is only 20 minutes down the road on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. Wightwick Manor is probably the most beautiful of the small handful of Arts and Crafts houses on the heritage circuit. 

That it has few peers is probably down to a visceral hatred of Victorian art and architecture that ran through much of the 20th century. I admit many Victorian interiors can be gloomy and overwhelming but Arts and Crafts, embraced by industrialists who wanted to be seen as edgy, intellectual non-traditionalists, is different. The combination of William Morris, his colleagues in the decorative arts and the pre-Raphaelite painters brings a lightness of touch, a confidence with colour and a devotion to romance and comfort. My instinctive reaction in an Arts and Crafts house is to snuggle on a sofa with a great book. (To match the environment, probably something by Oscar Wilde.) Here, I could do so for a very long time.

Though Wightwick was built with all of the “mod cons” available in 1887 (electricity, central heating, proper bathrooms), it is meant to feel like a fairy tale bower. William Morris’s lush floral wallpaper surrounds you, and there are several original drawings from his tapestries.

His fabrics beckon you onto overstuffed chairs and sofas. Stained glass windows and de Morgan tiles around fireplaces send shards of jewel-toned light across rooms. One of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the country brings those fairytales to life on the walls. One of the unique elements of Wightwick is its large collection of female Pre-Raphaelite artists, and these days they really celebrate that part of the collection. On my visit the gallery in one of the outbuildings was dedicated to the little-known wife of William Morgan, Evelyn, who was an accomplished artist whose work inspired her husband’s pottery.

Outside, the house is all romantic gables, half timber and and mellow brickwork. Master craftsmen were as much at work here as inside, evident in carved animals and decorative bits that adorn the timbers. 

There are some pretty rose gardens here. Though they pale in comparison to David Austin’s.

The staff inside the house were both chattier, and more knowledgeable, than your usual National Trust volunteers. Maybe it’s the extra time they’ve had in lockdown, or maybe just a deep pride in this region that isn’t really on the tourist track. If you are anywhere near here, especially in rose season, it is worth a detour. Both these sites are jewels that deserve to be better known.

A week of solitary sightseeing in the Cotswolds takes me back to my English roots

The United Kingdom is caught in the grip of a collective case of cabin fever.

Last summer, everyone embraced “staycations” with a Blitz spirit. We were all doing our bit in the battle against the pandemic, felt virtuous injecting some cash into local attractions deprived of foreign tourism, and actually had a bit of fun discovering British locations that could rival continental hot spots.

More than 15 months after the first restrictions, patience is running out. One summer of local holidays was charming, but nobody expected a second. The closer summer came, the more confused the travel picture grew as regulations shifted back and forth with little notice. The only dependable option is getting in your car and staying local again, if you can manage to stay clear of the NHS’ increasingly notorious Test and Trace app surprising you with your own personal quarantine. (As I write, the app had pinged half a million people in just one week, with rising numbers ignoring its advice because the overwhelming majority of the population is now fully vaccinated and precautions are starting to feel pointlessly excessive.) Every news broadcast features disgruntled holidaymakers, British-owned businesses on the continent facing bankruptcy without this summer season to refill their coffers, or frustrated owners unable to get to holiday homes in France and Spain.

The Bencards aren’t attempting to break our island shackles until September (and I have no real confidence that trip will take place). For a much-needed summer pause, we headed for the Cotswolds.

Regular readers will know this is familiar territory for BencardsBites. We spend at least two weekends a year at the Longborough Festival Opera near Stow-on-the-Wold. Thanks to both being able to work remotely, we thought we would mix things up for our second opera of the year by decamping to Stow for a whole week. We’d work during the day, enjoy someplace different in the evenings, and get a feel for what living in the Cotswolds might be like. (One of my long list of retirement fantasies.)

It didn’t go quite as planned. A 10-day COVID quarantine as June turned to July knocked me out of my annual girls’ trip and forced my husband to reschedule some important appointments into the week scheduled for our Stow residency. The result: I took the whole week off with the unused girls’ trip time, but was on my own for the first four days and solo sightseeing for the whole week.

It was an unexpectedly pleasant trip down memory lane. On my earliest expat assignments in England, any moment I wasn’t working or sleeping I was exploring on my own. Unencumbered by the interests of others I threw myself into historic sites and wandered miles down country lanes in search of some much-lauded view or quirky ruin. Often the only conversation I had across a whole weekend was with guides in historic houses about some interesting artefact or architectural nuance. And that’s exactly how I spent much of my week.

With no-one’s patience to try but my own, I could drive almost two hours just to see one garden. (Of that spectacular visit to David Austin’s headquarters, stay tuned for my next article.) I could indulge my love of the Arts and Crafts movement with a lingering visit to Wightwick Manor and savour every layer of history at the beautifully curated Sudeley Castle. Many might find Broughton Castle too similar to do in the same week, but not me! I could take the long and winding route to wherever I was heading, down tiny lanes, regularly pulling over to take in a view or let traffic that actually needed to be somewhere hurry by. I could linger unbothered in the seconds area at Whichford Pottery, debating how big a flaw I was ready to accept in exchange for a proportionate discount. (With no one to question whether or not I actually needed new pots.)

One of the great delights of this trip was aimlessly strolling around some of the smaller, particularly picturesque villages. Places like Bibury, Upper and Lower Slaugher, Great Tew and Lower Swell have made the Cotswolds famous the world over. Golden-walled, slate-roofed, rose-covered cottages of mellow antiquity gather around tiny village greens or line little streams crossed by ancient stone footbridges. Wrought iron gates offer views of  gabled and pinnacled manor houses that might have welcomed Elizabeth I. Fields of golden wheat, hello rape, blue flax, sheep and cows extend up the encircling hillsides. 

For years, these little slices of heaven have been partially destroyed by the worshippers who travel here to drink in their atmosphere. Rural charm is hard to preserve in the face of busloads of tourists alighting to photograph every angle and stick their noses against people’s windows. At their worst, foreign crowds can make these places feel more like the British pavilion at Epcot real communities. This summer, with foreigners mostly absent, these idyllic villages retained their original charm. And I made the most of it, strolling slowly to take in architectural details and picturesque scenes, or finding a comfortable spot from which to draw or watercolour for an hour or two. (My attempt at the famous row of cottages in Bibury called Arlington Row is below.)

I even indulged in the takeaway curry that used to be my staple on those long-ago sightseeing weekends. Now that I am married to a man who is allergic to tomato and doesn’t like spicy food, an Indian takeaway has become a rare and solitary indulgence. A Sunday-night order from Stow-on-the-Wold’s excellent Prince of India kept me going until the husband’s arrival Wednesday.

While I have no desire to return permanently to the solitary travels of my 30s, I enjoyed the self-indulgence of my week enormously. You, dear reader, can look forward to a stream of articles in coming weeks as a result.

Our home in Stow-on-the-Wold was called The Little House, and little it was. In square footage, it was about half the size of the flat that we rented at The Unicorn up the street when we came up for Wagner last month. Just a small kitchen, sitting room and loo downstairs, and a snug double, single and bathroom up. Basic rather than luxurious, but excellent value for money at £540 for an entire week in contrast to around £300 for two nights at the  boutique hotels we’ve typically used for weekends.

The Little House is in the lower part of Stow-on-the-Wold, just up a lane from The Bell pub. It was only a few hundred yards beyond the main circuit most tourists take around the little market town, and yet the “neighbourhood” felt more local. It was quieter, parking was easier, we discovered new restaurants and pubs, yet we were still within easy walking distance of all of our regular favourites.

Despite my celebration above of the lack of foreign tourists, I am happy to report that those visitors … particularly Americans … are missed by the hospitality industry. In several conversations with locals I heard the same refrain. Local tourists are different. It’s not as simple as Brits spending less money than the foreigners. (Though I was assured most of them do.) The big differences came down to research and appreciation.  People who invest in plane tickets and spend a week or two in the country put effort into preparing for their holiday. They plan what they want to see and often read about things in advance. They research comparison sites for hotels and restaurants and generally have set their expectations accordingly. In summary, foreigners are coming for a heritage and cultural experience, while Brits are looking for new places to kick back, eat and drink. (I suspect what heritage sites are losing in revenues, pubs are making up.) I was both delighted and saddened when one of the guides at Sudeley Castle volunteered that the Americans who visit almost always have a better grasp of British history than the natives wandering through at the moment.

There’s plenty of history to come. And gardens. And one particularly fine new restaurant tip. Read on…