Piddle Valley News & Views - Piddle Valley Community Website

Dorset Gardens Trust
2012 Garden Day at Waterston Manor
Sunday 1st July from 10am – 5pm
£5 entry (children free), no dogs
Waterston is a magnificent setting for a great day out
There will be about 40 stalls including many selling specialist
plants and garden crafts, as well as displays, lunches and
cream teas.
Waterston Manor is on the site of an earlier property recorded in the
Domesday book as belonging to King Harold. The present house is
Elizabethan and the River Piddle runs beside the formal gardens with water
meadows, woodland, walled orchard, pollarded lime walk, sunken garden,
and water garden. The owner has been developing the garden since
acquiring the property in 2007 and it is a delightful garden to visit.
The novelist Thomas Hardy used Waterston in “Far from the Madding
Crowd” as the model for Bathsheba Everdene’s Weatherbury Farm. There
will be a lecture by Dr Tony Fincham, Chairman of the Hardy Society, at
11.30am 'Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy & Waterston Manor'.
Tickets £7.00, available on the day, via www.dorsetgardenstrust.co.uk or
from Rosemary Agg.
The funds raised from the garden day will enable DGT to continue its work in
protecting the historic parks and gardens of Dorset and supporting many
nursery, primary and special schools in Dorset in their educational gardening
projects. Recently a grant was awarded to the Piddle Valley School to develop
their school grounds.
More background about the Trust and its activities can be found on
www.dorsetgardenstrust.co.uk
Rosemary Agg (01300 348835)
Letters ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Editor
I would like to express my irritation at being confronted with a full page
advert for Sunninghill Preparatory School on page 1 of News and Views.
I understand that advertising revenue is vital to the running of the publication
but surely a community magazine should have at the heart of its ethos, a
desire to support its local school. On the contrary, by its very nature this
advert is designed to encourage parents away from the school that we are so
lucky to have and which needs all the support it can get. To put the advert on
the first page of the magazine is beyond belief. What a shame.
Yours faithfully Lucy Mitchell