rudyard

 I went walking through Kipling's Garden in Rottingdean (East Sussex) recently, I'd been looking forward to going for a long while, and it proved to be both a winning and a disappointing experience.

Winning, you say? Yes. The garden is quite large and sub-divided into several smaller 'rooms' with different planting, and features, in each. And I was able to wander down brick paths from one room to another, in a haphazard way, enjoying the cobblestone walls, and the peep-hole windows, and the shrubs that were still blooming in November, one with a gorgeous scent, and small pale pink flowers, that I guessed was a Daphne but I couldn't be certain.

Disappointed? Yes. Although the garden did originally belong to Kipling when he lived in the nearby house, it didn't look anything like the garden that I walked through, which was transformed into it's current layout/design by a subsequent owner. Hmmm. I wanted to imagine Rudyard wandering through it, and pausing to sit on a bench while he wrestled with the plot line of his latest novel, or that tricky rhyme for the poem he'd started after breakfast. So I do feel a little misled by the advertising, although I don't feel too hard done by as it was still a lovely atmospheric garden, and there was no charge to visit.

Also, I stumbled upon this door in the wall of the garden, and I'm telling myself that this feature was there in Rudyard's time, and that he came and went through it on a regular basis when using his garden. Is there anything more intriguing than a door in a garden wall? People seem to think not, because when I posted this same photo on FaceBook it got more likes and comments than anything else I've posted in a long time.

Photo is the author's own.