10. Wisteria Bridge

Narrator:

This bridge gets its name from the fine old wisteria that grows here. Its trunk has become thicker and more characterful since Bowles’ time. But even then this plant was special. In 1941 Bowles wrote that the previous year it had been ‘the star turn of the garden’. It already covered about 25 yards of wall and had climbed to the top of the yew tree. When it flowers it is a beautiful sight from the road. One passer-by was overheard telling a friend, “It’s what they call a Blueburnum”.

The wisteria is most striking in May, when it is covered in long, pendulous stems of lilac flowers. By late summer or autumn it bears a crop of what look like imitation runner beans. These are seed pods, which are covered in fine, short hairs that all point downwards. When they are seen from above the pods appear silver, but from below we see only the tips of the hairs and they look green.

In Bowles’s time two lead ostriches stood here. Now you can see these on display in the Visitors’ Centre.