In England, October can be a particularly hit or miss month for weather. Sometimes we seem to get weeks of rain or fog. This year so far, we have been lucky and have had plenty of warm sunny weather. This followed a record breaking hot and dry summer.

Unfortunately our politics have not been so rosy and we have just lost another prime minister. One of my neighbours remarked that she did not even have time to sort out her knicker drawer.

I love walking in the woodland at this time of year and I have noticed a lot more nuts and berries as well as more fungi than usual. People have been reporting that bats and other small mammals that should be starting to hibernate are still out foraging.

Dyrham Park

This October the National Trust offered visitors a voucher for a free ticket for up to two adults and two children. We used our voucher to visit Dyrham Park which is our favourite local National Trust site and took a garden tour with one of the volunteer guides.

Dyrham Park is a late 17th century house and garden which was created by William Blathwayt and his wife. William Blathwayt was a minister for William of Orange (later King William III) and spent a lot of time in the Netherlands. His house has dark interiors with lots of Flemish still life paintings and a famous Delft pottery collection. It is being restored at present and a couple of years ago we were allowed to climb out on to the roof to watch work in progress.

Dyrham Park Garden

The garden is contemporary with Versaillles. Very detailed plans and sketches survive for the original garden and the National Trust is slowly restoring part of it. We have been watching, not all together happily as the Victorian features have been slowly replaced. The herbaceous borders which I loved have been replaced with more formal planting and the new bushes will be pruned into cones and pyramids when they have grown big enough.

The lawns where children used to play will become a formal parterre.

Our guide told us that the original garden was highly productive with fishponds, a pigeon loft, beehives, a kitchen garden and fruit orchards. William was also one of the first landlords locally to build an orangery, a greenhouse attached to the house.

Willam was able to use his connections to import a wide range of trees and exotic fruit and vegetable seeds from America and Asia. They experimented growing trees and flowers in different positions and using different soils. The park is on the edge of the Cotswolds with several natural springs and a variety of microclimates. The original landscapers used the water to create a canal and other water features. Because of the steep slopes they did not need to use pumps and the fountains and cascades never run dry.

Nowadays the garden is well known for its tulips which are planted fresh each year and for its perry Orchard. Perry is pear cider, and we could see the sacks of pears which had been picked ready to turn into perry and sold in the National Trust shop.

Autumn in the city

Everyone knows the iconic red telephone box designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1926. In 2006 it was voted one of Britain’s top 10 design classics along with the mini, the submarine, the spitfire, the London tube map, the World Wide web, Concorde and the Routemaster double decker bus. But have you ever wondered what happened to them when we all bought mobile phones. Little used boxes can be adopted for other uses. I have seen them used to house defibrillators, as small libraries and as kiosks but I think this one in Quaker Friars is rather special.

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