Report on June activities.

My comparatively quite summer produced more activity than planned with 20 post in the month despite the fact that I took a holiday in Devon and had the problems of a "minor accident." (To complicate matters further the courtesy car was scrapped by another car when properly parked - but as the culprit and an independent witness left notes on the windscreen my insurance should not be affected,). All this meant that I had to shop round for a newer car in a hurry. The result seems to fit all our requirements - of which having comfortable seats was an important requirement when you get older and stiffer. The only problem is that the tailgate of the estate is too high for a short person to be able to close.

The Japanese Garden at Cottered

One post during the month caused a lot of activity - and there was marching activity on the main web site. On 21st June the BBC TV programme Gardener's World included an item on the Japanese Garden at Cottered, I had earlier been approached to see if they could use the c1930s old post card I had on the web site showing the garden so I watched - and within half an hour of the end of the programme I posted The Japanese Garden in Hertfordshire. Within half an hour there had been 60 hits rising to over 250 within 24 hours - and over 1000 within the week. There were over 800 hits of the Cottered page on the main site, possibly because my 1930s picture came out top on the relevant Google images page. The total page views on the site in June was 6,372 and the total number of visitors to the main web site was 23,456.

I am thinking about the long term plans for this web site, and I feel the priority must be to document areas where I have original, unpublished material in the "queue" and also to get the support library in better order - and possible sell of unwanted items on ebay to try and clear some space.

The Japanese Garden in Hertfordshire

Herbert Cooke (1865-1937) began developing a 6-acre garden in Cottered in 1905 after a visit to he made to Japan in that year. Japanese garden features were imported and the design was developed over the following 30 years. In 1923, Japanese designer Kusumoto Seyemon was engaged to complete the design, incorporated a lake, streams, cascades, stone work, buildings, gates and arches with maples, azaleas, wisteria, bamboo, iris on dwarf conifers. Kusumoto worked periodically over the next three years. The Japanese-style garden still occupies 2.5 hectares with additional ornamental garden and woodland of 2 hectares. The house is on the English Heritage Register (GD1545). 

Cottered Japanes Garden

Cottered

This garden was featured on the BBV TV programme Gardeners' World earlier this evening and will should be available to view on the BBC site for about a week. The garden is private and not normally open to the public, but will be opening on Sunday (June 23rd) from 11.00 am – 4.00 pm as part of the Cottered Village Festival. 

The BBC approached me to see if they could use the above picture of the gardens in about the 1930's, from my Cottered page, but finally decides to use a somewhat earlier newspaper cutting.