Sketches from Tatton Park

Last Saturday [see footnote], I sketched at Tatton Park - these are views of the rear of the recently restored Japanese garden and the view of the park from the Italian gardens just in front of the house.
Tatton was one of those places I used to go when I was young - a special treat was rolling down the terraced lawns - the terraces were just wide enought to allow some speed to be generated and the rolling to be spectacular.

Nowadays I'm rather less mobile and mother (in her late seventies) is even less so. For those who like visiting gardens but have difficulty walking, Tatton is an excellent place to visit as it provides electric wheelchairs of the sort you see many older people now using to do their shopping. Mother whizzed around gravel paths and on and off grassy banks in one - she even managed the steep slope at the side of the Italian gardens! Fortunately I managed to persuade her to sharpen all my pencils for me before she started getting too ambitious!

The sketches are graphite with coloured pencil in an A4 size Daler Rowney sketchbook - the one with a hard black cover and perforated pages. I drew most of it on site, and then completed a bit more in colour and tonal terms soon afterwards while the images were still fresh in my mind.

[Tatton Park is the place where the Royal Horticultural Society have their big show in the north of England - see the link below for further information]

[This post was first published in "Making A Mark" on 18th April 2006. I've added the reference to the RHS Show in July and links to relevant websites]

Links:

• Tatton Park - the website
  
• Tatton Park - the RHS show (18-22 July 2007)
• National Trust - Tatton Park
  
• Google Maps - Tatton Park, Cheshire WA16