Festival season update

The 2010 Iford Festival has been a great success. Handel's Xerxes went off with a bang (pyrotechnics, and the blowing up of a bridge!), and we are now in the last two weeks of the season, with Iford Festival Productions' Rigoletto ending the season with a flourish.

I thought you'd like to see some photos of the two Iford Festival Productions - Xerxes and Rigoletto. For more photos, have a look at Iford Arts on facebook. If you've been to any of the shows or jazz proms this year, it would be wonderful if you could post up some reviews or comments, either here, or on facebook. Thanks!

Successful Cinders, and £40 special ticket offer

The first opera of the 2010 Iford Festival - Rosinni's La Cenerentola (Cinderella) - was a great success. Here's some photos to excite the taste buds!

There are only 5 tickets remaining for the second opera of the season - Handel's Serse (Xerxes) - and these are now on offer at the special price of £40 a ticket. Number of tickets per night as follows: Friday 9 July - 1 ticket; Wed 14 July - 2 tickets; Friday 16 July - 1 ticket; Saturday 17 July - 1 ticket.

To book, ring our box office at the Theatre Royal, Bath 01225 448844.

For more information about Serse, visit the Iford arts website: www.ifordarts.co.uk

Bye for now,
Jonelle

Terms and conditions: The £40 special ticket offer is subject to ticket availablity and only applies to telephone bookings. Credit card bookings are subject to a transaction fee of £3.00. Tickets booked previously fall outside this offer and cannot be refunded. Iford Arts, The Gatehouse, Iford Manor, BA15 2BA

Butterflies flutter by...

Your regular author apologises for the lack of posts over the past month - he has been taking his Masters exams at the Royal Agricultural College and then catching up on the piles of post which built up during the period!  Over the next few weeks I hope to bring you up to date on the past month at Iford, starting with the wonderful events of "butterfly day", yesterday.

Run jointly between Butterfly Conservation and Iford Arts, this wonderful free event is aimed at both children and adults, and was held this year on Sunday 27th June in the baking heat of a glorious weekend.  With England playing Germany that afternoon, those that came to Iford had the better fortune, avoiding the disappointment of a somewhat predictable televised exit from that esteemed sporting competition.

The lepidopterists and other wildlife experts had set up traps overnight in the Iford valley, and the 80 species of moth caught were on display for inspection by the 250 plus children and accompanying adults that visited us on the day.  [When the list of sightings both for butterflies and moths is available, it will be posted on this blog].

Inside the marquee, kindly donated by NFU Mutual Insurance, there were activities galore, including storytelling, paint-a-butterfly (or moth!), decorate a butterfly cupcake, and perhaps most popular of all, facepainting.

For the more inquisitive of our younger visitors there was a treasure hunt, which encouraged children to learn about trees through exploration and research, and for the adventurous, guided walks through the long wild flower meadows were available for keen-eyed butterfly-spotters.  The photographically entered a competition on the day of butterflies and moths sighted during these walks, and hopefully we can post the winning image on this blog soon.

Butterfly friendly plants were available from a stall run by Downside Nurseries in Westwood, which proved popular with those wishing to bring more of a flutter to their gardens.

Many visitors, we are told, discovered Iford for the first time: to them a big "hail and well met".  The tearoom was very busy (mostly ice creams this weekend), and we were delighted to be able to provide a rare and relatively safe environment where children could learn through the medium of discovery and play, that not all moths need be crushed immediately under foot!

The laughter of children truly is infectious, and whilst the garden itself may not be particularly suitable for young visitors owing to its historic nature, to be able to offer a free day of natural discovery for the young is greatly rewarding.  Thank you to all that made it happen.

Cinderella: Under 35s ticket offer

2010 Iford Festival

Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella)

under 35s special £40 ticket offer

Iford Arts is delighted to welcome back to the 2010 Iford Festival the CHROMA ensemble and the conductor Andrew Griffiths with their production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella) performances of which take place on 19, 22, 24, 26, 30 June, and 02, 03 July. 

This is the same team that produced the Barber of Seville in 2009, which received many great reviews, such as Metro Life who exclaimed that "Productions such as this could single-handedly reverse opera’s dwindling fortunes… Rather than any rarefied…appeal, it is the upfront, street theatre feel of this 1960’s-set production that imbues it with knee-weakening charm."

CHROMA and Andrew are joined by the renowned director Bill Bankes-Jones, and a superb cast including Alex Ashworth, John Evans, Christina Haldane, Caryl Hughes, Carlos Nogueira, Sigríður Ósk, and Richard Suart.

During the 2010 Festival, the Cinderella team are actively engaged in working with young people in the community on a project taking Cinderella back to school. To tie in with this, we are delighted to offer the few remaining tickets for La Cenerentola at a special price of £40 to those under the age of 35.

For more information visit: www.ifordarts.co.uk.  To book tickets, please call the Box Office, Theatre Royal Bath: 01225 448844, quoting "Under 35s £40 ticket offer".

Location: The Cloister, The Peto Garden, Iford Manor, Bath, BA15 2BA.

Gates open for picnics at 6 pm, and opera performances start at 7.30 pm.

Terms and Conditions: The £40 under 35’s ticket offer for performances of La Cenerentola is subject to ticket availability. The whole party should be under the age of 35 and proof of age may be requested at the gate. Offer opens Wednesday 2 June 2010, and applies to telephone booking only; on-line booking is not available for this offer. All credit card bookings are subject to a transaction fee of £3.00. Tickets booked previously fall outside this offer and cannot be refunded. Iford Arts, The Gatehouse, Iford Manor, BA15 2BA.

Wisteria

So... the wisteria is now nearly fully out on the front wall of the house, and the inky purple buds are just prising themselves open on the frames in front of the manor; in the garden the casita wisteria is nearly there, and the standard plants are running a little later.  Tomorrow, weather permitting, I hope to post photos so that the wisteria junkies amongst our growing readership will be able to time their visit to us to coincide with a favourite plant etc.

Cutting the miscanthus

On the estate farm we have been experimenting for a few years by growing an energy crop called miscanthus, more commonly known as elephant grass.  It's getting late, so I'll spare you the smug "green" chat about why it is that we put the crop in, and how wonderfully energy efficient it is and all that, and instead just show you some photos of the really amazing machine that the contractor used to slice-and-dice the crop.

In a following post, one of these days when time allows, I would like to expand a little more on how Iford is doing its bit to promote renewables.

Garden Update 15 April 2010

If the gardens at Iford are anything to go by, there is definitely plenty of evidence of "green shoots"...  here are some of the highlights from my walk around this afternoon.  

Iford is open on Sundays from 2-5pm currently, and at other times for groups by appointment.  From May, full opening commences, with almost daily opening.  See Iford's website for details.

Perhaps most magnificent is the magnolia by the Loggia pond, just entering its prime this coming week.

The semi-shaded white magnolia in the yard has a week or two to go as well

Little ferns in the shade outside the side door of the manor unfurl with the warmer weather

Wild flowers under the mulberry tree, happy to see their chequerboard lawns smartened up this morning 

Japanese Cherry

This Vitis Cognitiae, which lives in a yew tree (and which gives us a glorious display of red leaves towards the end of the summer) is unusually flowering this year.  Could this be as a result of the harsh winter, anyone?

Wisteria-watch: in front of the house, three weeks or so away

But the warmer wisteria on the front face of the house, has two fronds opening.

Cherries on the lawn are in full flow

Wild flowers on the Cloister path provide a merry scene.

And of course, although we have been enjoying them inside the house for a while, the first round of 'public' orchids have appeared in their pots.  Here, pictured in the Loggia window.