Alice's Garden Travel Buzz

Veddw – Front Garden

Veddw Blooms - Doorway through Hedge (Alice Joyce photo)

Definition: Visionary – A person with unusual powers of foresight; utopian, chimeric, dreamer, enthusiast, escapist, exalted, idealistic, illusory, zealot.

Veddw House Garden has been written about and praised by such luminaries as Germaine Greer.

Veddw - Hedges Reflected - Pool Garden (Alice Joyce photo)

Created by Anne Wareham and Charles Hawes, the contemporary setting at Veddw is compelling in ways that only the rare gardenscape can reach deep inside and grab at one’s soul, even as the mind is busily engaged in noting the garden’s bones, appreciating the artful plantings, and bold forms.

Veddw grows up in the arcadian landscape of Monmouthshire in south east Wales, where my meeting with Anne and Charles was all too brief.

A sad fact of traveling: timing does not always play out as hoped for. And with too little time to wander about the garden – a place that deserves two or three lengthy visits to take in all the elements / the overall effect – I’ve struggled to write cogently about the experience of this rare contemporary garden. Moreover, an innovative work of art.

Having decided to wait no longer, I offer a photographic diary of my perambulations through the Gardens at Veddw House.

Do visit the web site: Veddw

to find stimulating essays describing the garden, and view photographs by Charles Hawes.

Stephen Anderton and Charles Hawes have written a wonderful book that I highly recommend, a lushly photographed, provocatively written effort providing insight and guidance for an au courant journey through the gardening scene in Wales, be it from your armchair or in real time!

Discovering Welsh Gardens – Available on Amazon.com

Veddw (Alice Joyce photos)