Henry Monnington's Landscape Blog

 I regularly walk down the Honeybourne Line in Cheltenham as I head to and from the train station. Specifically the section between the station and the Churchill Gardens. As the year change the walk through the space changes as the plants lose and regain their leaves. When walking back today in the sun, the space looked the best I have seen it. Hemlock, Horse chestnut and nettle were all in full swing creating a bold green wall. 

This is my latest sketch design for Castlemeads. (Ignore the doodling!) My design has developed into a space that will be predominately wildflower meadows which aim to attract insects to the area. The vegetation buffer alongside the road will contain plants that provide food and shelter for wildlife, particularly birds. My next step is to develop the pathways and walking routes through the site before I take it into CAD to be drawn and then rendered.

The second part of my trip was to the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall. This was a great place to visit with such a range of spaces to visit. We listened to a detailed talk about the history of the site which was very interesting. There were some beautiful plants that have been there for 200+ years along with many exotic look tree ferns spread throughout the site. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the trip and will definitely be visiting again. 

I visited the Garden House as part of a trip with the Botanical Society before visiting the Lost Gardens of Heligan the next day. We visited on the day of the kings coronation and therefore the site was closed to the public, however, as we pre-booked they let us visit.  The Garden House was such a beautiful space with various different garden spaces, each with a different theme or style. We spoke to Chloe, a gardener who works on site, who told us of the history of the site as well as some plants that looked particularly special at this time of year. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip and would love to visit the at a different time of the year to see the seasonal changes.

Around this time of year thousands of swallows have returned from South Africa and Namibia, travelling around 320km a day for 6 weeks. Along this massive journey the birds pass through the Congo rainforest, the Sahara desert, Morocco and then Eastern Spain and Western France before reaching the UK. The birds return to the UK to hatch and rear their young, due to the reduced number of predators, before returning to Africa in September-October. Swallows feed on insects, catching them on the wing while they dart across the sky. I find this feat fascinating. The fact something only 20cm in length can travel these vast distances each year is so impressive. However, the champion of migration is most definitely the Arctic Tern. Also know as the 'sea swallow', the arctic tern travels 35,000km annually, going from the Arctic to Antarctica and then back again. This also means that the Arctic tern is the species that sees the more daylight that any other animal on Earth. Unfortunately, du