Indoor Lily Pond

There is something about Fletcher Moss Vicarage Garden to which, like Monet to his own Lily Pond, I am always drawn to return. It is full of specialities - this time a tree covered in large blooms scented like lime flowers, hydrangea flowers  bigger than dinner plates (for all is somehow supersized) and a herbaceous border which is quintessentially English garden. The indoor pond is housed in a greenhouse, now locked, where I used to go in years ago to admire the orchids growing there. Now it grows alpines and no doubt some find their way to the planting in the Alpine garden rockeries once you move on from the bees in the lavender and the unusual plant collection begun by Fletcher Moss himself, incumbent Victorian reverend. He believed the vicarage to be haunted but I have only ever seen it spilling over with sunshine through its stained glass windows on afternoon vists in the summer.