Batemans & Standen

I've mentioned Monday Club before - it's a little weekly outing that my Parents, Toddler F, myself and my little nephew, Toddler Z have been doing for a couple of month's now on a Monday morning. Dad has been working up to retirement and had a lot of holiday days to use up before his official leaving date so he took off every Monday to go through it, which meant that we were then free to all go out somewhere exciting. 

It was always fairly local and Toddler F and I would usually hop on the bus in the morning, get off nearer to the parents' house and we'd all pile into the car - The Mother squeezed in the back between two child seats - and head off to somewhere. 

We've also enjoyed some really lovely weather this Spring so, although it wasn't always the warmest, there were lots of beautiful sunny moments. 

Quite often we've headed to fairly local National Trust spots as we are all members and it gives the boys somewhere to rush around and explore, throw sticks into rivers and examine worms and ants in great detail. For the grown ups there was guaranteed delicious cakes and coffees so it was a definite win-win. 

This particular National Trust spot is Batemans, somewhere we've been to lots of times before and has appeared on this blog before (in 2015 for definite). It was the family home of Rudyard Kipling, the chap who wrote the Jungle Book, and it has been preserved pretty much in the way he left it, as if he'd just walked outside for a bit. 

The gardens aren't that big (in comparison to other National Trust sites, not in comparison to the average person's garden! Especially considering that my garden consists of a balcony with a few pots) but they are always beautifully manicured and planted, with different sections to it. 

There are a few walled gardens, and you walk in from the carpark and ticket office just at the top of the vegetable patch with pleached fruit trees and a little orchard and all sorts of things growing. 

Another section of the walled garden leads to more apple trees (which the boys found great fun in autumn, collecting the apples into little piles) and the back of the cafe. 

There are more ornamental type gardens, a very controlled rose garden around a fish pond, but then, through a little archway is a much wilder planted area with a stream, beautiful wild flowers and a dirt path which takes you to the flour mill at the end of the garden. This is the bit the boys like most, you can play Pooh sticks and there are some children's things to do in the mill, or you can spend hours watching water filter through little grates in the millpond and trying to spot newts. 

Another of our little adventures took us to Standen, with a couple of extra family members this time. It had its Easter finery on so there were lots of different activities to play with as you walk round. 

This has definitely appeared several times on my blog before and, if you click through to this post in April 2017, you'll see what we had expected to see this time around - but wasn't there....tulips!

It turned out that we actually knew one of the gardeners there who came up to say hello, and we asked her about the lack of tulips as it's a well known part of the Standen calendar. Apparently they had planted them all as usual but everything had been afflicted with Tulip Fire, a fungal disease which makes the plants look like they've been scorched in a fire, and they had to be dug up which is such a shame. 

They still had some very pretty areas of planting, although slightly barer than usual perhaps, and there was a lot of work going on in the garden, it was teaming with gardeners and wheelbarrows. There isn't such a lot of ornate garden planting here, it's much wilder or looser with lawns surrounded by shrubs and trees rather than boxy flowerbeds.

We did do a very whistlestop tour around the house, but with three boys under the age of 5, their interest in comfy chairs and William Morris wallpaper wasn't held for long. We stayed longest in the room where a volunteer was playing the piano as they wanted to dance to the music, or in the conservatory with all of the Easter cacti and succulents but mainly it's easier to just let them be small boys out in the wilds of the garden. 

The house is full of Arts and Crafts workmanship, and Morris & Co wallpapers and textiles - the servants corridors are completely papered in Morris Trellis, and there is now an exhibition about Morris in some of those rooms. 

It's another house where you have lots of vaguely tamed but not orderly areas. Follow this little path, trip up some wide steps and suddenly you pop out into a little wooded clearing with a funny little shack and a balcony area looking down over the house and entrance road. 

There's a wooded walk with the trees mostly on one side, and the other side there is this view! 

As part of the Easter trail there were lots more little activities in the woods and a big marquee with some games in to play. It changes up here every now and then; sometimes there's a planted maze, or a stack of rocks to climb on but it's just a fun place to be free. 

I would really recommend that if you have smalls and live near to National Trust properties that you sign up. We aren't affiliated with them at all but sometimes being able to go out (and obviously the more you visit the more viable it is to expense the membership fee) to these places, park for free and wander round these fantastic gardens is such a godsend - especially as we don't have a garden ourselves. Having a rambunctious toddler in the house can be quite overwhelming sometimes but, release them into a wide open garden or field and let them explore and dig and play in a wide open space doesn't feel quite so much like you are trapped. And they are beautiful to boot.