Saturday at Rockwood

kw: travel, sightseeing

Saturday afternoon, after the rain had stopped for a while, we visited Rockwood Park, home of the Shipley Mansion, which houses the Rockwood Museum. We've visited before on a couple of occasions for the Ice Cream festival, and had one tour of the mansion. This time, we walked the grounds. I was scouting photo opportunities, because I plan to lead a field trip for a Photography class in July, and this is one place that the grounds are free.

Shipley Mansion at Rockwood Park
The mansion is quite impressive. But I discovered something several years ago when I took my parents on the tour here in the morning, and to Winterthur (the biggest DuPont mansion) the same afternoon. Captain Shipley was decidedly rich. The DuPonts were filthy rich!

HaHa (Recessed Stone Wall)
The Shipley family and those who followed produced an English landscape garden surrounding the house. The landscaped grounds and those further away, left in a more or less open meadow condition, are separated by walls recessed into the land, called HaHa's. The walls can be seen when looking toward the house, but from the house and yard, they are not seen, and it looks like unbroken landscape.

Wisteria Growing Right Up the Trees
There is only one small area of formal garden, in an area that used to be the kitchen garden. the few flowering plants there were not yet in bloom. Dogwoods were the main flowering plant to be seen elsewhere; Landscape gardens are not known for floral beauty, being composed of trees and shrubs. One of the few kinds of flowering plant in bloom, this early May day, was Wisteria. There are a few wisteria vines used on trellises near the house and the carriage house. In one area to the southeast of the main house, wisteria vines have climbed up the trees, reaching fifty feet or more. They are the largest wisteria I've seen anywhere.

I was told by a docent that there will be almost nothing in bloom in July, but that many of the plants in the conservatory will be set out during the summer. There are a number of unusual species, so perhaps we'll have a few exotic views. The main photography venues I could discern for the moment are the house and the various landscape views. No doubt there will be more intimate views to be had; there's no telling what a van full of avid photography students can discover!