I can't begin to express how overjoyed I was to discover a compact and bijou Japanese Garden in Craigtoun Park when my sister and I visited near the end of October! I must have walked straight past there without realising what was hiding the last time I was here, but the bright maroon of the turning maple leaves immediately caught my attention.
And when I say tiny, I really do mean it:
Small but perfectly formed. Why did we miss it the first time? I can't say, but for anyone new visiting, once you've walked through the entrance, follow the path to the right for a couple of hundred or so metres to the end the lake, and it's just to the left. If you're still not sure, there's a wee plaque at the entrance that says ‘Japanese Garden' that's a bit of a giveaway! Mind you, looking at the layout of the park from 2013, there's no mention of it at all, so there's always the possibility that we never noticed it before, simply because it wasn't there!
But it wasn't just the Japanese Garden putting on a grand show - the whole park was on fine form, from the Italian Garden reposing in dappled sunlight,
and the beech-girdled park before it,
the Cyprus avenue, standing majestic behind its entrance piers,
and the pathway leading to it,
to the Dutch Village resting on the tranquil boating pond,
surrounded by multicoloured pathways of fallen leaves.
It wasn't just the grand vistas, either. (And why isn't the plural form of vista ‘vistae' or ‘visti'? I mean, yes, it's probably a remnant of the ancient Old English versus Latin plural battle, but English can be so fickle when it wants to be...)
Where was I? Ah yes... close vistae! Mwahahahah!!
Himalayan honeysuckle (Leycesteria formosa) and Chinese Barberry (Berberis julianae). And I'm not going to tell you how long it took me to find the name of the latter. Apparently both fruit are edible, but as much as I'm a willing experimenter when wearing my Fake Food Blogger™ hat, this is slightly beyond the realms of my culinary ‘expertise', plus I suspect I would have been on the receiving end of a stern telling-off from the park workers had they caught me filling my backpack with pilfered berries!
I was happy to revel in the whizz-bang of their colour-tastic display, though, as I was with the demonstration of Autumn glory throughout the park. It's quite as spectacular a place out of season, as it is in, and for my taste, made even more enjoyable for the lack of people! ...And if you've read any of my posts about the Japanese Garden in Den Haag, then you'll know how I feel about gardens teeming with humanity! :: insert winking emoticon here ::
*Scottish Autumn, in Japanese! :)
But it wasn't just the Japanese Garden putting on a grand show - the whole park was on fine form, from the Italian Garden reposing in dappled sunlight,
and the beech-girdled park before it,
the Cyprus avenue, standing majestic behind its entrance piers,
and the pathway leading to it,
to the Dutch Village resting on the tranquil boating pond,
surrounded by multicoloured pathways of fallen leaves.
It wasn't just the grand vistas, either. (And why isn't the plural form of vista ‘vistae' or ‘visti'? I mean, yes, it's probably a remnant of the ancient Old English versus Latin plural battle, but English can be so fickle when it wants to be...)
Where was I? Ah yes... close vistae! Mwahahahah!!
I was happy to revel in the whizz-bang of their colour-tastic display, though, as I was with the demonstration of Autumn glory throughout the park. It's quite as spectacular a place out of season, as it is in, and for my taste, made even more enjoyable for the lack of people! ...And if you've read any of my posts about the Japanese Garden in Den Haag, then you'll know how I feel about gardens teeming with humanity! :: insert winking emoticon here ::
*Scottish Autumn, in Japanese! :)
