Sunday 8 March 2015

Gardens in the Pound, Cookham, Berkshire, Stanley Spencer, c1937
A Sunday afternoon stroll around Cookham, playing 'spot the painting.' The houses are still there, even if lobelias have gone out of fashion.
I saw a family coming out of Stanley Spencer's house on the High Street and was dying to ask if there was still a Williams pear tree in the garden, a laburnum, an apple tree with giant apples, a cherry tree and a walnut tree and yellow marguerites. You can't see the back garden from the street. But I missed my chance and they were gone ...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That reminds me of the years I lived in Eastcote, Middlesex, the neighbours all had those red Salvia, blue Lobelia and white Baby's Breath, every year, in exactly the same pattern. Comforting and boring as I look back on it now.

Don't you love Spencer's work?

mary said...

Of course, it's Salvia - that's what I meant! I'm hopeless on plant names.
I think if I owned one of these houses, I'd want to keep the garden the same as it was in the painting. They were so spruce and neat back then - and they look rather scruffy today.