Levens Hall, part 1

Our last day in the Lake District was sunny, the perfect day to enjoy the Levens Hall gardens. We had truly lucked out!

We took the same bus we took to Sizergh Castle, but this time—probably because it wasn’t raining—it was on time. Again, we changed drivers in Kendal. (I don’t seem to have managed to get any decent pictures of Kendal. It’s an old market town that we also passed through on the train.) I think the stop for Levens Hall must have been the first or second stop after the one for Sizergh Castle.

When I was researching historic homes to visit in the Lake District, it was this video that sold me on including Levens Hall. I’d forgotten that the video mentioned the Alice in Wonderland feeling, but that is exactly right. I’d meant to ask the docents in the house if Lewis Carroll had ever visited, but I forgot. Since the garden dates from the end of the 17th century, it would be possible for Lewis Carroll to have seen it. Mr. M and I took lots and lots and LOTS of pictures. Here are a few.

I love the different colors of the evergreens. One of the docents did say that it was possible to find topiaries of all the chess pieces in the garden.

There’s also a little bit of a Dr. Seuss feel—see the topiary in the back with the multiple “tufts.” Here it is, again, in the foreground.

Or this leaning fellow.

Here you can see the hall in the background.

It may be hard to tell from these pictures, but the topiaries were very large. The gardeners need scaffolding to keep them trimmed. To get a sense of the scale, I asked Mr. M, who is 6’ 3” to pose for me.

Here’s a picture of the hall from the shrubbery.

I had to laugh, too. One of my books featured “obscene shrubbery” (said in my best Monty Python voice). There wasn’t any of that in this garden, but I can now see how it would be very possible to have such horticultural decorations.