HAPPY NEW YEAR!
in my garden this morning
It’s now 3 years to the day that I started this blog and after a bit of an erratic start it has been appearing regularly every Saturday mornings. This is the 152nd post!
Readership hit 37,700 this year compared with 25,000 in 2015 and just under 7000 in 2014. That means readership is now averaging just over 100 a day, 700-800 a week and 3000+ a month. There have been 21500 visitors, compared with 10,200 last year and under 3,000 in 2014. Since the blog started on 31st Dec 2013 there have been a grand total of 69,800 views from 34,653 visitors.
There have been some unexpectedly popular posts and some which, for some reason hardly got read at all. The most popular this year have been one on Stumperies [May 2015] which has attracted 1805 views this year closely followed by one on the colour of Carrots [Dec 2015] with 1770, then the Wentworth Feud [June 2106] with 1386. Bizarre things like a post about the straightness of cucumbers also scored highly at 1297, and a piece about the almost forgotten artist Beatrice Parsons [November 2014] continues to find 1302 readers. But can anyone tell me why some of my favourite [ie most enjoyable to research and write post have just not found a wider readership… what is it about Mechanical elephants, Roses and class, or Kensington Roof Gardens that fails to attract? Click on the links to read them!
from my kitchen window this morning
Anyway enough rambling… and thank you for reading. Please continue to do so, and of course tell all your friends about it!
And now what you’ve all been waiting for – another end of year quiz to test your powers of recall from posts over the course of the year. Good luck – answers at the end
In my garden this morning
As usual there are 50 questions…
Who’s this? No.2
Who’s this? No: 1
who’s this? No.3
who’s this? No.4
Who suggested making this? No.5
Who’s this? No.6
Who’s this? No.8
Who’s this? No.7
Who is this? No.9
Who’s this? No.10
Where’s this? No.1
Where’s this? No.2
Where’s this? No.4
Where’s this No.3
Where’s this? No.5
Where this? No.7
Where’s this. No.6
![http://www.holfordtrust.com/westonbirt-house/#iLightbox[gallery_image_1]/5](https://thegardenstrustblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/screenshot114.png?w=640&h=456)
Where’s this? No.8
Where’s this? No.9
Where’s this? No.10
What’s this? No 1
What’s this? No.2
What’s this? No.3
What’s this? No.4
What’s this? No.5
What’s this? no.7
What’s this? No.6
What’s this? No.8
What’s this? No.10
What’s this? No.9
Phew…. almost there!
- Who ordered Merlin’s Cave?
- Who demolished it?
- Who built “a temple of the druids” with “pyramidal greens”
- Where might you find Syon House, Maid of Kent, Webbs Invincible, & Cheltenham Surprise?
- What held a “Royal Botanical Lottery” to save his temple?
- Who said, rather surprisingly perhaps, “I ought to know I am quite an old woman. But I can still – when no one is looking – climb over a five-barred gate or jump a ditch.”
- Who found the world’s oldest pot plant?
- Where in a garden might you find kegel, quilles and cheeses ?
- Who had “an aerial orchestra”?
- Who danced with a kangaroo and kept a parrot in his trousers?
- What’s in the Monkey Room on Monkey Island?
- Why Hastings peas?
- Why might Lady Elizabeth Dallingridge be more significant than her husband?
- Who first used the word gazebo?
- What did Robert Gauen invent?
- Who took gnomes to Chelsea and got away with it?
- Whose face inspired a sphinx?
- Who first put gardens on the wall?
- Who aimed to create variety without confusion?
- Which garden writer “lived in a great degree upon Tea” and “smoked without interruption”
***********
ANSWERS….
Who’s this?
- The Earl & Countess of Burlington
- Clarence Birdseye
- Kitty Lloyd Jones
- John Abercrombie
- Gertrude Jekyll
- Queen Anne
- Sir Nathaniel Bacon
- Frederick Vernon Wentworth
- Harry Higgott Thomas
- Lady Dorothy Nevill
Where’s this?
- Hardwick Hall, Co.Durham
- Penshurst Place
- The Warren House, Mildenhall
- Eleanor Coade’s Factory on South Bank, Lambeth
- Temple Newsam
- The Birdcage, Melbourne
- The China House,
- The Italian Garden,Westonbirt
- Blenheim
- Upton House
What’s this?
- Gauen’s machine to put the bloom back onto cucumbers and grapes
- A manure heap in the garden of Sir Nathaniel Bacon at Culham Hall, Suffolk
- A sack seal from Carters Seeds
- A Welwitschia
- Repotting the world’s oldest pot plant at Kew
- A cucumber straightening glass
- The blackamoor statue in the conservatory at Wentworth Castle
- The duck decoy in Hardwick Park
- A page from Robert Furber’s catalogue
- A canna rhizome
The other questions…
- Queen Caroline, from William Kent
- Capability Brown
- William Stukely
- They are varieties of cucumber so probably in the kitchen garden
- Robert Thornton
- Gertrude Jekyll
- Francis Masson
- A skittle alley or nine-pin court
- Lady Dorothy Neville
- Evan Morgan, Viscount Tredegar
- Murals of monkeys fishing
- They’re very early – from the French hatif – not the place
- Because she probably designed the gardens/landscape at Bodiam
- William Halfpenny
- The cucumber bloom replacing machine and the solar powered fruit ripening machine
- Carters Seeds
- Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough
- John Baptist Jackson
- William Sawrey Gilpin
- John Abercrombie
The Gardens Trust 
Congratulations on the success of your garden history blog!
Saturday’s posts come at the right time on the right day of the week for me. In the tsunami of posts from blogs I follow that arrive in the week (especially on a Friday afternoon) generally don’t get read or hang in the Inbox for days or weeks before being deleted unread, yours arrive quietly on a rest day and I read at least each opening paragraph. The depth of your research offers a plethora of interesting topics and all free! Thank you. You are much appreciated.
Happy New Year…and keeeeeep posting!
Can I, on behalf of lots of readers I am sure, thank you very much for the most interesting blog in the field – much enjoyed and hugely appreciated! Happy New Year!