March - week 3. The Russells are coming home!

Hugely exciting week: we received a visit from Maud Russell's grandchildren (donor family of Mottisfont to National Trust) this week! Emily and Julian Russell visited with their cousin Marcus to see the property.

It was so interesting listening to their recollections of the house, when Maud and Gilbert Russell lived there, entertaining their guests. Everything from brass band on the lawn, to tea parties under the Great Plane tree, to waiting up for Maud to return for her dalliances with Ian Fleming. Great stuff.

And they managed to time the visit with the arrival of our new bed:

We are delighted with the bed, which is a replica of the one Maud would have had in the room in the 1930s. For her grandchildren to see it being installed was just fantastic. 

Emily has also very kindly donated 3 pieces of furniture from the original house, which will be "coming home" on 8th April. We are so chuffed with that and many thousands of people will take so much pleasure from seeing them back in their original home. Here is Emily signing over the donations:

So, a big week in the life of Mottisfont!

 

March - week 2: I'm a shopaholic!

As Spring is starting to "spring," the Mottisfont estate does look wonderful. I love the way the plants seem to perform to order and know when they're on! We've had the Snowdrops, next up are the daffodils, right on queue:

This field at the front of the property was completely flooded a few weeks ago. The "Catflap" around Romsey took about 40,000 tonnes of water and dropped the level inside one morning, which was a relief. Now the sun has been out for a couple of weeks, it's drying out quite well.

The other plant out at the moment is Chionadoxa, which is under our Lime Walk. I mentioned this last week, but here's a better picture:

This is still one of my favourite views at Mottisfont and the view from my office window isn't too bad either:

I took the opportunity to work in our shop this week, which was good fun. We have a lot of new peat-free plants in stock now, including pots of Chionadoxa. My line: ”Is this to go under your own Lime Walk" every time we sold one, still wasn't that funny after the 26th customer just looked at me quizzically! Poor Nicky, who was working with me - a very patient woman!

We also had the team over from Tyntesfield, who came to see what we are doing around volunteers and visitor experience. 

I've not been to Tyntesfield yet (...going in November), but it sounds like a really interesting property, with many similarities to Mottisfont in terms of their development, which we can learn from.

Wednesday evening was also a Mottisfont Parish Council meeting. These Parish Councils do so much good work in the communities they serve and the councillors are all volunteers themselves. Good people, making an important contribution. We discussed some interesting ideas for the youth group at Mottisfont and I hope we can make it happen in the not too distant future. More on that as it develops.