After returning from visiting the filming locations of "Pride and Prejudice", I have only one feeling
A week later, "UK Study Tour Garden Chapter 2" is finally here again. In today's article, we plan to introduce all the gardens we didn't finish talking about last time, and continue to express the beauty of gardens in my heart (even though you're all following the World Cup and not looking at me, hmph).
The first 4 gardens either have royal connections and are rich plant treasures, or are exquisite private gardens with outstanding taste. The gardens we're talking about tonight are closer to the concept of "landscape gardens", where lakes, mountains, water and architecture blend together. If you don't spend a whole day or most of a day wandering slowly, you might as well not come at all!
Among them is the Rococo Garden that you chubby friends have been thinking about (a picture of it accidentally appeared last time hhh)~
Rococo Zephyr
Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
Bill Callahan
00:00/05:42
{Peony Girl Vol.781 }
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UK Study Tour Garden Chapter 2
Compared to the helplessness of most domestic costume dramas only being able to film at Hengdian, English gardens have always been the best choice for adaptations of classic literature and British dramas. These gardens come with a time-travel effect, not only saving directors the effort of building sets, but also possessing a depth and historical charm that constructed scenery cannot match.
For example, the British drama we all know well, "Downton Abbey", and the one where the scenery is even better than the show"Pride and Prejudice"：
Zero resistance, I've been drooling over the screen all afternoon _(: зゝ∠)_
The filming locations of "Pride and Prejudice" include multiple English gardens. Quite a few public accounts have already written a separate article about them, and this drama also successfully stirred up many netizens to travel to the UK, so~ if you can't go to the UK, or think you're too poor to go, it's fine, just binge-watch classic British dramas at home more often, and soon you won't be able to hold back either~~
Leaving aside other estates (after all, I didn't get to visit them this time), Peony Girl went to Stourhead Estate. The 2005 version of "Pride and Prejudice" was briefly filmed here and it once became a classic scene. So today's introduction will start with Stourhead Garden in Wiltshire.
Stourhead Garden
Stourhead Garden
As soon as we walked into Stourhead Garden, Dr. Zheng from the study program immediately said: "This place has been used as a filming location for many dramas..." However, until we finished touring the garden and walked out, he still couldn't say which drama it was (being forgetful is deadly).
On the list of "Top Ten Gardens in the World", Stourhead Park is prominently listed. Besides "Pride and Prejudice", many BBC programs love to come here to film. The most famous is that iconic domed rotunda: across a lake, on the opposite shore isthe Temple of Apollo, it is deeply hidden in the garden's vast greenery, quiet and romantic.
Temple designer Henry Flitcroft
This is exactly the place in the drama where Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth. Perhaps because of the movie, more and more couples like to come here for dates and proposals, and it briefly became a popular wedding venue.
The wonders of Stourhead Park are by no means limited to this. It was built between 1745-1761. The Temple of Flora, the Pantheon and the Palladian Bridge are all classic sights. Some say Stourhead Garden is a model of the "nostalgia" trend of the British upper class. For 18th-century British aristocrats, the more classical, the more valuable.
English gardens all share one characteristic: from the entrance they don't look big, and it's easy to think this is just a small park or something. But once you walk in, oh boy, the mountains are high, the roads are long, the lakes are wide, the trees are sturdy, and the further you walk, the further it goes...
After passing through a casual garden, a glass conservatory and an old castle, we finally discovered that this was only the appetizer. Architect Henry Hoare II designed for the parka lake area with a perimeter of about 3 km and the surrounding plants, while another designer Henry Flitcroft designed the Temple of Apollo. These are the real main course of Stourhead (writing this, my leg muscles tightened).
The park takes the Roman poet Virgil's "Aeneid" as its background. The lake symbolizes the Mediterranean, rewriting this epic in the form of space, praising the birth of Roman civilization.
Although translated as garden, in fact "landscape garden" is a more accurate way to describe Stourhead, becauseit has the typical "objectivity" of an English landscape garden.
Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote in "Schopenhauer's Aesthetic Essays":
These flowers and plants, with their unhurried, natural charm, and their elegant arrangement and composition, show that they did not grow under the strict supervision of people's inflated egos, but followed the free dispatch of nature. Every small patch of ground that is neglected by people will soon become beautiful.
Stourhead Park seems to hide human traces to the greatest extent, making the plants and landscape look like the result of nature's free dominion.
While marveling at the mountains, water, weather, birds, insects, fish, and great architecture, don't forget to take time to pay attention to the plants at your feet or above your head. Although it doesn't hide all plant treasures like Kew Gardens, it still has quite a few lovely, even surprising varieties.
This is said to be Solomon's seal
Bright orange rhododendrons
Ferns that I absolutely love
Suddenly, classmate Xiao Yu from the study program cried out,
She works at a botanical garden,
She saw a, huge, dove tree~
Too far and too high, the photo came out a bit blurry, please forgive me
Anyone who can recognize the dove tree is no ordinary person~ This plant is currently calledthe "living fossil" of the plant kingdom, and is a national first-class key protected wild plant.
The dove tree once went extinct one after another during the Quaternary glacial period, surviving only in some areas of southern China. Wild species can be seen in southwestern Sichuan Province and central Hubei Province and surrounding areas in China. It is said that Luoyang has already achieved large-scale breeding and cultivation success.
Spring at Stourhead Park may be flourishing and splendid with rippling blue waves, but its autumn is even more enchanting. A certain UK travel website rated it as "possibly the park with the most beautiful autumn scenery". Indeed, Stourhead in autumn seems like another unfamiliar, fascinating world.
A good garden is not a product of artificial affectation, but displays in the purest possible way the ideas of those flowers, grasses, mountains and waters, that is, the unique essence of flowers, grasses, mountains and waters.
Through all four seasons of the year, Stourhead Parkis great because it objectively presents the will of nature.
AddressHigh Street NearMere, Warminster
BA12 6QD, England
Painswick Rococo Garden
Painswick Rococo
On the morning we went to the Rococo Garden, fog had risen. The air carried a clear, damp cold. This atmosphere paired with Rococo was simply like arriving in a fairyland.
The garden looks very, very small, but actually covers 10 acres (about 40,000 sq m). It was built in the mid-18th century and is a typical Rococo style. Since the 1980s, large-scale renovation began, and a wide variety of plants were planted extensively in the garden.
Rococo style is actually a decorative art style.
It originated in France in the 1720s and was popular among the French aristocracy. Interiors often used bright colors and delicate decorations, and furniture was also very refined and inclined toward the ornate. Rococo colors are very tender and bright, such as soft green, pink, scarlet, etc., and gold is often used for the trim lines.
These small pink buildings are typical Rococo style
There are many interesting little details in the garden. For example, a tree was struck down by lightning, and someone made it into a "little castle":
The lace on the hillside comes in large patches after large patches. As I strolled, I thought of the lace article I wrote before coming to the UK (ReviewWhat is lace? It is the wind passing through the hall, the fragrance of the green grass, the flower of wild carrot). In my heart I once again sighed that nature is the best creative director, and we can get all the answers and inspiration here.
The Rococo Garden has a plant maze, and within the maze there are three play centers (now I finally know why I got lost ┑(￣Д ￣)┍). It is simply a paradise for children. Various man-made yet perfectly natural toys are embedded in nature, and even I wanted to go wild and play.
It's a real swing!
It's a real seesaw!
And various outdoor climbing structures
Being playful like this is so fun!
Arriving at Rococo, I felt like I had become smaller. And perhaps because I hadn't seen big, complete dandelions for too long, I happily blew on them for a long time along the way~
One more thing, autumn at Rococo is also stunning. Secretly clenching my fists, looking forward to going again!
In spring you look at lace, in autumn and winter you look at snowdrops. This is also one of Rococo's rather proud promotional points.
Outside the Rococo entrance there is a small garden restaurant. After touring, if you need to continue on your way and want something to eat, you can choose to simply fill your stomach here.
Two classmates from the study program ordered the "British national dish" fish and chips here, paired with a cup of hot chocolate. Very Rococo~
Image from study program member @Wu Yanan
AddressGloucester Road, Painswick GL6 6TH, England
Oxford University Botanical Garden
Oxford botanic garden
If in the previous article my favorite garden was Abbotsbury, then in this article my favorite should be Oxford University Botanical Garden. Probably because "small but complete", and also, because it's small, there's no rush to hurry along.
Usually before visiting this botanical garden, you can also visit Oxford University and the churches along the way. Walking in Oxfordshire, there's a faint sense of Harry Potter.
That day I also ran into top students taking exams. Oxford University students have always had a tradition,during final exams, they all wear black robes. For the first exam they wear a white carnation, for the last exam they wear a red carnation, and for exams in between they wear a pink carnation.
Secretly photographed an elegant top student girl
After touring, you can enter the Oxford Botanical Garden. The entrance is also very, very small. Usually there aren't many tourists who come here specifically. Rather than a botanical garden, it's more accurate to call it Oxford University's "physic garden",its main function is to support the university's teaching, research and species conservation.
Oxford University Botanical Garden was founded in 1621, located at the southeast corner of Oxford University's city center. It now collects more than 7,000 different types of plants.
The botanical garden consists of 3 parts: the old garden enclosed by the ancient wall built in the garden's early days, the new garden located north of the old garden, and the greenhouses.
In the old garden, I found an odd yet sturdy old geranium
In the glass greenhouse, you can also feast your eyes on dense tropical economic plants. The area is not large, but there are many plants, arranged in order, and moreover, I got lost once
Here you can see many native Chinese plants. From time to time you encounter teachers leading groups, followed by students or survey teams of varying ages, all seriously taking notes.
Likewise, the rock garden was not left out either,
an even more mini rock garden.
Compared to the scientific research functions of the old garden and greenhouses, the new garden mainly displays varieties and layout forms for home landscaping.
Image from study program member @Queen Mother of the West
There is also an Easter egg hidden in the new garden,
the prototype of the screaming Mandrake from Harry Potter.
You can have a competition with friends to see who finds it first,
it just depends on whether your legs are fast and your eyes are sharp.
Humorously, the official website of Oxford University Botanical Garden also seriously introduces their cafe, and this cafe is actually more accurately called a "coffee cart".
It rained, and I was forced to stop in front of the coffee cart waiting for the rain to stop, and then I felt like having a cup and watching the rain.
The coffee is also a tiny cup,
the pattern on the coffee cup is very pretty,
and the latte art is also very complete.
While not many tourists know about this place yet, I suggest that those of you going to Oxford must take a stroll, and buy a cup of "small coffee", haha~
AddressRose Lane,Oxford,OX14AZ
On this trip, we encountered cloudy days, rainy days, sunny days and foggy days,
a unique experience that no amount of money can buy.
Seeing a beautiful scene can make us feel especially happy,
because scenery can filter and purify our thoughts,
and because of this we also seethe universal truth of nature.
May life be natural, and may this life be natural.
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Last week we created Study Tour Highlights Group 1,
Due to WeChat restrictions, only 100 people can enter,
Many friends came late and said they couldn't get in.
Today we'll create another one
(Those who have already joined Group 1, don't be naughty)
In the group we'll discuss details related to the study tour, food, drink and fun,
and also gossip that can't be disclosed in the article :)
More reading
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Some images from Hongyue study program member @Zheng Pei,
@Wu Yanan, @Queen Mother of the West