Lawson 
 Park 
 Farm 

GARDEN DETAILS
Lawson Park, East of Lake Coniston

CONTACT: karen@grizedale.org
TELEPHONE: 015394 41050

LOCATION:
LA21 8AD
5m E of Coniston. From Coniston Village follow signs East of Lake/Brantwood, car park signed 1m after Brantwood car park. Please use free minibus (runs every 10 mins) from Machell's Coppice car park. On foot 10 mins steep walk up established footpath from car park.

Historic hill farm overlooking Coniston, which since 2001 has been restored to a working smallholding, productive and ornamental gardens, and artist's residency base. Approx 5 acres of reclaimed fellside in spectacular setting. Informal herbaceous, woodland, bog and wild gardens (incl wild flower meadow) and organic kitchen garden with apiary. Many experimental plantings and unusual seed-grown perennials and trees. Wildlife includess deer, red squirrels, badgers, bats and slow worms. Produce for sale.

OPENING DATES AND TIMES:
Adm £3.50, chd free (share to Grizedale Arts)
Cream teas
Day & Early Evening Opening, teas & wine, Sun 24 Aug (12-7). Visitors also welcome by appt July to Sept only, groups of between 10 - 20 (on site parking by prior arrangement).

NB - Lawson Park farmhouse is currently in the process of a major refurbishment, and is not part of this event

Posted by Karen Guthrie
Monday, July 28, 2008 at 17:23 GMT

Topics: 'garden' 'National Garden Scheme'

Lawson park's 4 beehives are suffering from the bizarre spring and early summer weather here - 5 weeks without rain then 3 with nothing but.
We have to feed each colony a gallon of sugar water (in July !) to try and kickstart the queens' laying and get those girls out there again.

Posted by Karen Guthrie
Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 22:11 GMT

Topics: 'apiary' 'bees'

Adam illicitly climbed on top of Leck's site hut to take this picture of the garden. There's not a lot of flowers out yet as this is really a late summer part of the garden, but you can enjoy the lushness.

Posted by Karen Guthrie
Saturday, July 5, 2008 at 16:07 GMT

Topics: 'farmhouse garden'

The bog garden we planted late last summer is developing rather gorgeously. As long as you ignore backdrop of the building site (behind me when I took this snap) you can revel in primulas - mooreana (that's the nonstop purple in the foreground) , florindae and bulleyana - hellebores, verbascum, ferns and hostas.
This area has called like a siren to our former gardener George Watson, whose now coming back in once a week!

Posted by Karen Guthrie
Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 18:23 GMT

Topics: 'bog garden' 'primula'

Rather pleased with the way the 2 regenerated paddy fields are coming along. Soil was created from rotting down the cuttings and wood chippings from the field. This year is the first year of cultivation purely based on what we have been able to regenerate from the hill. Crops of Broad and French beans in one bed plus potatoes, cauliflower and sprouts in the other - each field is half sewn with green manure - alfalfa on this occasion.

Posted by Adam Sutherland
Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 17:02 GMT

At last the major demolitions are nearing completion and the majority of the building is ready for the new concrete floors to be poured on Monday, this means work can begin on re-building the walls and everyone should start to see a difference on the webcam.

Posted by Lisa Stewart
Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 15:16 GMT

Topics: 'Lawson Park building'

This is what happens when you get a hole in your ground source heat pipes.. Sintec were back onsite this week to grout the pipes into the boreholes this involves pressure testing them first to make sure they'll work when the system is commissioned -good times. They couldn't get pressure in the last pipe which generally means theres a hole in it and they have to pull the 70m pipe out by hand and replace it -bad times

Posted by Lisa Stewart
Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 14:32 GMT

Topics: 'ground source heat'

The long awaited removal of the electricity pole, sited in the middle of the Lawson Park meadow, was completed this week. With a great deal of equipment, monster trucks and men on mobile phones in attendance, the removal of the pole and undergrounding work seemed to be completed relatively smoothly, it only seemed to be the small matter of flicking the switch to turn our electricity back on that was a problem, hence the delay in posting pictures of this great (and very expensive) event.

Posted by Lisa Stewart
Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 14:20 GMT

Topics: 'electricity'

For those avid viewers of the webcam who are wondering why it's not updating, the power to Lawson Park has been turned off whilst they run it underground, meaning no power to do anything on the farm. Normal service will resume next week.

Posted by Dorian Moore
Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 10:18 GMT

Lecks temporary site manager oversees progress while Barry takes a well earned break.

Posted by Lisa Stewart
Friday, May 30, 2008 at 15:48 GMT

Topics: 'Lawson Park building'