Do you remember the first time you saw a Willow Pattern plate? I’d guess it was when you were a child and that probably like me you asked yourself at least some of the same questions as this writer did in 1849...
Who is there…who has not inquisitively contemplated the mysterious figures on the willow-pattern plate? Who, in childish curiosity, has not wondered what those three persons in dim blue outline did upon that bridge? Whence they came, and whither they were flying? What does the boatman without oars on that white stream? Who people the houses in that charmed island?—or why do those disproportionate doves for ever kiss each other, as if intensely joyful over some good deed done?
I’d add one more question of my own: Why are there so many variations of the pattern?
So do you know the answer to any of those questions? If not read on…and if you think you do then read on and prepare to be disillusioned!
The National Trust holds many of our greatest historic houses and gardens but I often think its greatest holding is not those but the many less well-known, less grand and yet more typical small country houses and estates.
I’ve just spent a long weekend in high winds and pouring rain , exploring some of the gardens around Bournemouth. Not ideal conditions, even in February, but the unusual advantage was that we were usually the only people on site! The one garden where the wind and the rain didn’t matter that much was Compton Acres at Canford, between Poole and Bournemouth.
Browsing second-hand books a few months back I chanced up a shelf that had a stack of similar looking volumes which all came from a series called “Handbooks of Practical Gardening”. They covered almost every aspect of horticulture you can imagine from Asparagus Growing and Bee-Keeping to Daffodils and Fruit Bottling via Garden Pests, Window Gardening and Rarer Vegetables.
The Garden History Blog 
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