Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Gardening on the edge.

@brittarnhild

Cultivating a garden far up north, far out in the North Atlantic is a challenge. Terje and I went out for a morning walk, and I decided to look for gardens. Most houses had lawns, some of them quite huge. Most houses had trees and/or shrubs. But very few had a perennial garden.

A couple of weeks ago I got the summer magazine from the national Norwegian garden company, Hageselskapet, in the mail. There I read a very interesting article about gardening at Røst, about its challenges and about how daylight 24/7 during summer compensates for the short season.

We had beautiful weather during our two day´s stay. Gardening looked like an easy job. But I know there must be chains of days here with mist, cold, howling wind. Days when you have to hold on to every post and stone you find to walk a few steps, days when the icy cold wind fills every fibre of your body, making you believe a world without wind doesn´t excist.

As we walked along I started to dream about finding an abandon house, move in for a summer, and start a garden.

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Come back in a few days and may be I have a post about a couple who did just that!

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  Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods has been on the internet since 2005. The blog is my virual diary and a tribute to life and life´s Creator. I love to hear from my readers, in comments and in emails, and from time to time I am lucky to meet some of you, here, there everywhere.
I also have a few other blogs, you find them in the right hand bar. Welcome over, and welcome back here.

Up North, first stop

@brittarnhild

After a couple of days at home to unpack and pack again, and visit the St.Olav Festival, we are on the road again. This time together with my parents. Goal and adventures will be revealed in the blog as we go.

Our first stop was my special surprise for my prents, a coffee and fresh pastry stop at Høie garden and atelier, if you read my blog you remember the place from a few weeks ago. My parents had never been there, neither did they know that theplace, which is situated a couple of hours north of Norway, excisted.

 

During my last visit at Høie I scooped up a million idea and brought them back to my own garden. This time I scooped up a million more.

 Any my mother took as many photos as I did......almost.

 

We had sun while we were in the garden. An hour later we drove right into a heavy thunder and hail storm.

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More tomorrow.
Let me know if you want a postcard.

 

On the Road Again

@brittarnhild

It is vacation time, and for a month now Terje and I will be on the road, here, there, everywhere in Norway. We left Trondheim yesterday morning and spent ALL day on the road, the first stop up in the mountains where I wanted to strech my feet with a visit in Kongsvoll Alpine Garden.

An alpine garden, high up in the mountains, open only two months a year, the other months the are is often covered in snow.

This summer has been hot and dry, and many of the flowers were already finished. Other were in fuul bloom.

I didn´t have much time, we still had a long way to go, but the short walk I managed was refreshing, and my camera was busy.

From the pamflet I found at the entrance to the garden I read:
Kongsvoll Alpine Garden was designed in 1992 by Simen Bretten, who was then in charge of Kongsvoll Biological Station. It replaced an alpine garden that a botanist named Thekla Resvoll created beside the railway station in 1924.....

Another woman I would love to know more about.

 

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Later in the day we had lunch at a little homestead north of Hamar, Lilleberg.

Thank you Solveig and Sigurd for hospitality and delicious food.

A garden with glass and metal

@brittarnhild

Friends of us have bought a summer appartment at Inderøy, a penninsula in the Trondheimsfjorden, a couple of hours to drive from us. They are spending their summer vacation there and invited us to come for a visit. Yesterday we had no other plans, and decided to spend the day with Inger and Roger.

 

Let us know if there are anything special you want to see during the day, Inger texted me a few days ago. I never got around to reply to her message, and I am glad I didn´t, for Inger and Roger had made plans for us. Great plans.

Like taking us to a garden filled with plants, flowers, glass, metal and a lush of creativity.

As we walked around, my eyes got bigger and bigger.....

.....and bigger and bigger.......

.....and bigger and bigger.

In the end I had to pinch my arm.

My camera was busy. There were so many things I wanted to remember. Ideas I wanted to bring home to The Blue Garden, or just keep in my heart for rainy days.

Today, after work and dinner I eagerly started to do a few whimsical changes in my own garden.

No big changes, but the small touches,
here, there, everywhere.

The artist behind the garden at Inderøya has a webpage which you can find here. Some of the garden photos here are a bit out of date though, but you can also follow her on facebook here.

 

PS - the difficult part of writing this post has been to limit the photos. I want to show them all, or even better, I want to take you to this very special garden :-)

 

Now I know how it feels to breath colours…….

@brittarnhild

For years I had heard about it, the rhododendron nursery out on the island, not far from our cabin. But for some reason or other, time for a visit has never been there. Not until now that is!

We had to ask a few questions to find the place, but with the answers to help us, it turned out to be easy to find the place. A sight down near the road told us the garden and nursery was open from 12 and for a few hours. We came a quarter past 12, tried the doorbell, tried to call but found no one at home, But since the sign said OPEN, we took the chance and walked in.

 

I could hardly leave the place. So much beauty! So many colours!

After a long, lon while Terje and I left the place and went back to the cabin filled with dreams for our cabin garden. And then worked in it for hours.

Now I am reading about Olderviks Rhododendron Garden on internet, from when the family bought their house and garden in 1980, and till today with their 250+ different rhododendrons.

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To see more of my garden photos, both from the cabin garden and The Blue Garden, go to @akeleiehagen on instagram

 

And then the rhododendron garden

@brittarnhild

The weekend ended up being a kind of a rhododendron safari. It started already in Granny´s garden, continued when we stopped at a garden center between Granny and the cabin. Saturday morning we visited a local rhododendron garden (worth its own post, and it might be one some day.....), but then the climax came on Sunday with a visit to Svinviks Arboret.

The arboret is only two hours south west of Trondheim, and only a detour from our cabin. I have wanted to go there all my life, but somehow yesterday was my first visit. Now I know I will go back every year!

Halvos Svinvik and his wife Anne started the garden around 1940, 20 yeras later the collection of trees and bushes was the biggest private one in Norway. In 1971 the couple gave the garden to the University Museum in Trondheim and from 2010 the local municipality of Surnadal has been the owner.

Halvor Svinvik, the creator of this truly amazing arboret, was visually impaired and also colourblind. I have heard that he was kind of allergic to the light from the sun and had to do his work during the night. I don´t know if this tale is true, but day or night, what this man has created on a tiny little part of wild nature on the north western coast of Norway, is amazing.

Walking in the park was like walking in a jungle, a rhododendron jungle. With bright, shining colours everywhere, like you see nowhere else in Norway.

As I sit here, trying to figure out how to best share this unique experience with you, I google both the garden and Halvor Svinvik. Sure, I find some information, but far from enough for my curiosity. Why are there no books about Halvor, about his wife Anne. Did he create this beauty of colours, a man himself colourblind, for his wife, to show her his love? Tales starts to knit themselves together in my mind, dark winter evenings when the couple sat together dreaming of summers to come, the days the postman came with envelopes with packets of rhododendrons seeds from all over the world, spring days when the seeds were sprouting, light summer nights when they sat in the forest, inside the rainbow of scented colours or late autumn days when rain and howling storms hit the valley.

There must be so many tales.
I wonder if they still are there, in the wind, in the fragrances, in the colours.

One day I will search for them,
paint them, write them, hum them, feel them.

 

The inspirational garden. Blue Garden Letter #8

@brittarnhild

You have been to Granny´s garden before. I blogged from a garden walk there last year, and here I am again. Granny is one of my long time blog readers, and she lives with her big family, on a dairy farm somewhere between The House in the Woods and our cabin. After visiting her last year, she inspired me to start a new bed in the shadows of a tree stump. This spring, she has inspired me to do something creative with an old tree root in my praying garden, The Serenity Garden.

Granny´s garden is filled with fun, colours and life,

and with nooks and corners where you can sit down,
just to dream, or.....

....let your eyes rest on the beautiful view.

I never leave Granny´s garden without a few new plants for The Blue Garden. That´s one of many wonderful things about gardeners, isn´t it, the love of sharing.

Granny knows the names of all her plants, and she has buckets filled with garden knowledge. One day I would love to stay on her farm, being Granny´s apprentice.

 

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Last Sunday´s Blue Garden Letter, #7, goes to Marilyn, who is the owner of the most beautiful Delights of the Heart blog.

Today´s Blue Garden Letter #8 will go to one of you.
I am eagerly waiting for your comments :-)

 

Growing up from the ruins, the Garden of Ninfa

@brittarnhild

An hour south of Roma there used to be the small medieval town of Ninfa, founded in the eight century and destroyed by the inhabitants of hostile neighbours in 1381. Ninfa and the surrounding land has always belomged to the venerable Caetani family, and in the 1920ies members of the family started to plant a garden among the ruins of Ninfa.

 

The garden, which is not far from Terracina where our friends Brit and Hans have their apartment, is open to visitors only one Sunday a month, and so far I have not had any possibility to go there. This time our stay in Terracina included no Sunday, but then, quite by chance, we learned that the garden would have an extra opening day on Friday April 25, a red calendar day in all of Italia.

We knew there would be queues, so we were up early and were among the first ones let into the garden. We had to follow an Italian guide, but Brit, who speaks fluently Italian, translated some information for us, we could understand some ourselves, and also we soon discovered, as we already knew, that the language of garden beauty is international.

I have been to many botanical gardens around the world, and I´ve taken you to quite a few of them as well, but this is the first one built on the ruins of a medieval city. This gave it quite its own charm.

 We were a big group walking together, and we had to follow the guide. I would have loved to walk around by myself, taking my own time, exploring the nooks and corner, finding my own treasures. But actually, our walk worked fine, and people were very good at paying attention to each other for photographing.

 

Ninfa means nymph, and as we know, nymphs love water.
Water plays an important part in the garden.

Walking around was like walking inside a painting.

Walking around was like living a dream.

I might go back to the Garden of Ninfa, or I might not.
But no matter what happens, I will bring this first visit with me. 

Deep in my heart.

Thank you Brit and Hans for taking us there :-)

 

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You can read more about the garden here.

 

Frost

@brittarnhild

We came early and had the botanical garden to ourselves.
Winter is a perfect time in the garden. You don´t need to be annoyed because of the weeds.
Instead you can walk hand in hand with your lover, enjoying life, enjoying beauty. Knowing that spring will come, some day.

And when we knew we couldn´t stand the icy cold wind for one more minute, the two young men working in the restaurant opened the door for us half an hour early, letting us sit near the heater while the air around us filled with fresh coffee and waffles.

@

 

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Link to BrittArnhilds Blå Café

 

 

A Tale in the Garden

@brittarnhild

The phone rang when I sat at the cabin terracce with my books and my writing. Jorunn and her husband were in Trondheim, they would soon pass The House in the Woods and wondered if we were at home.

Jorunn and her family lives on a big, old farm, somewhere along the fjord, between The House in the Woods and our cabin. She has been reading my blog for many years and comment as Granny. Two years ago, when Jane and Lanny spent three weeks in Norway, Jorunn invited us all to come and have fish soup.

Monday we stopped at the farm on our way back to the city.

100 years ago Ingvald Tøndel, the grandfather of Jorunn´s husband, bought the farm. The family will celebrate it the coming weekend.
While we sat down and had coffee we started to talk about the old times. Jorunn told me that her grand father in law had been an elected member of Parliament when he died in 1952. My brain did a jump. My own grandpa, Johannes, was elected in Parliament, starting his career there in 1952 when another elected member suddenly died.

I phoned my father, and got my suspicion confirmed. Grandpa Johannes succeeded Ingvald Tøndel as elected member of Parliament in 1952.

Start sharing and you will soon discover what a small world we live in!

Back to Jorunn´s garden.
The apple pie was still in the oven when we came, so Jorunn took us for a walk.

Jorunn´s garden is several gardens actually,
all growing abundantly, with funny details wherever we looked.

Jorunn knew the name of every plant,
and from time to time she bent down to gather a few seeds for me, or to weed a little in between, or to emphasize the beauty of a plant.

Thank you Jorunn for coffee and apple pie, for sharing your family tales and your magic gardens,
but most of all for being a friend along the path where I walk my life.

And thank you for a million new ideas for The Blue Garden :-)