Angerstein Lane Revisited

I had a tip-off that the gorgeous adopted garden in Angerstein Lane which marked the very first of my Favourite Front Gardens series.

Deep in the middle of the lovely, leafy pathway between St John's Park and Shooters Hill Road it's easy to miss if you're unfamiliar with the area. The owner of the tiny, low-lying cottage has quietly adopted a piece of what is, frankly wild land, turning it into a dappled oasis of beauty.

It doesn't photograph very well (well -okay - it probably does - but I'm no photographer as you can see from these shots) so you have to see it for yourself. It's currently full of forget-me-nots, punctuated by tulips, but this jumble of cottage garden classics is clearly for all seasons. I can already see paeonies poking through and ferns uncurling for later in the year.

This is a wonderful example of a gardener without a garden finding a way, somehow, anyhow, to express himself. It shouldn't work - when he first took it over it must have just been a bit of scrubland that looked far too overshadowed by trees and the giant houses surrounding it (I'm assuming the cottage itself was originally outbuildings servicing the posh piles) - but it's a lush little corner of greenery that, for my money, can hold its own with Greenwich Park's grand herbaceous border.

Angerstein Lane should really also go in the new Country Lanes series - a leafy, lovely way to slip from Greenwich to Blackheath - albeit a bit of a trek for people in West Greenwich. A trek well worth making, I promise.