Borde Hill

The renowned garden of delights that is Borde Hill is promising a packed calendar of events and unforgettable memories for its 2011 season. The acclaimed venue offers outdoor splendours for all ages and interests, from gardener enthusiasts to music and car lovers and every member of the family.
Throwing open its doors to visitors on Monday 21 March, Borde Hill is this year sporting an impressive new entrance, complete with expanded gift shop and plant sales area.

Offering a gift for every occasion, the shop is packed with everything from local produce such as Paynes Sussex honey to quality items such as Ideal Home china mugs, Ulster Weavers kitchen co-ordinates, superb Madaraff handbags, Bradleys Tannery leather gardening accessories, Padblocks magnetic writing pads and blocks and Elite fairy gifts and novelty childrens’ toys.

The newly enhanced Italian Garden will create a fresh focus to complement the delightful Rose Garden, created by RHS gold medallist Robin Williams in 1996. Also this year  a new Rose Border has been designed by Dr Tony Lord to extent the summer colour and interest. No fewer than 4,000 narcissus, tulip (hybrid and species) anemones, scillas, hyacinth bulbs have been planted to create still more vivid colour over the season. The magnificent examples of camellias, rhododendrons and azaleas are a certain draw for garden lovers, as is the unique collection of magnolias that Borde Hill has nurtured over the decades.

Linger in the Grade 11* listed landscape that embraces 17 acres of formal garden, created in the 1900s by Colonel Stephenson R Clarke – great grandfather of Andrewjohn, Borde Hill Garden’s present family in residence – then explore 200 acres of rolling mid Sussex park and woodland set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty offering commanding views of the Sussex Weald overlooking the river Ouse valley.

Everyone from plant enthusiast to families is welcome to enjoy the diverse range of flora including rare and exotic trees from Asia and South America, and the seasonal carpet of bluebells and wood anemones.

Borde Hill Garden hosts 82 ‘Champion’ trees in its collection and offers regular tours of these most prized specimens, some the largest of their kind to be seen anywhere in the UK and grown from the original seeds collected by some of the world’s greatest plant collectors while on their exhibitions to China and the Himalayas.

Family friendly Borde Hill holds a wealth of educational and historical interests as well as the innovative Harry’s adventure playground overlooking the lakes, where children can let their imaginations run free or just relax and picnic.

You’re spoilt for choice of food at Borde Hill Garden – the characterful Elvira Café presents a varied menu of locally sourced and home cooked food, while for that special occasion, Jeremy’s Restaurant – listed in the Good Food Guide 2011 – serves inspirational modern European food in this, it’s 25th year.

www.bordehill.co.uk • 01444 450326

Borde Hill Garden is open from 21 March to 11 September

22 to 30 October, daily from 10am to 6pm and is located 1½ miles north of Haywards Heath, West Sussex.

Mr Watt, Grumpy Man of Metal at Hove Museum & Art Gallery

Mr Watt, Grumpy Man of Metal, lives in a metal world and makes metal things – a crab’s bicycle, a flying machine, a new kind of trumpet.  He is the creation of craft maker Jon Mills who presents the disastrous adventures of Mr Watt in a series of short books.

Hove Museum & Art Gallery hosts Mr Watt and many of his creations in this exhibition of metal pieces used to illustrate the books that will appeal to adults and children alike.

Hove Museum & Art Gallery •  www.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk/
Free Admission

Figures in Landscapes Gaylord Meech at the Hop Gallery, Lewes

Figures in Landscapes – In this exciting new collection of paintings by the renowned American artist, Gaylord Meech, two different worlds are brought together: animals, both wild and tame, and human face and figures, both adult and child. The result is an exhibition that celebrates the variety and richness of the lives always around us.

(After the Picnic – Gaylord Meech)

Hop Gallery, Castle Ditch Lane, (Off Fisher Street), Lewes, BN7 1YJ  • 07740 424949 •  www.hopgallery.com

There is free admittance to all Hop Gallery exhibitions, and disabled access to the gallery area.

Saturday, March 19th – Thursday, March 31st. Tuesday – Saturday 10.30am-5pm;

Sunday 12noon-5pm; Closed Monday

Raise money for The Martlets by knitting!

Cocoon Knits in Hove has launched an appeal to raise money for the Martlets by yarn bombing an open top Brighton double decker bus – so get knitting.

Cocoon are calling on experienced, beginners or just curious knitters to pick up their needles and help. Each participant will collect sponsors and knit a minimum of three 15cm x 15cm squares. Knit any colour or combination of pattern you wish.

To celebrate the end of the project The Woolly Bus  will be driven along Brighton seafront on the 20th August with contributors and guests aboard. After the event all blankets will be broken down and sent to Africa with the help of Knit a Square charity to help keep AIDS orphans warm.

The aim is to raise over £40,000 for the Martlets Hospice.

For a sponsorship pack please either collect a form from any Martlets shop or Cocoon, 10 George Street, Hove or email your name, address and email to: hayley@cocoonknits.co.uk

All aplicants do need to register first.

www.cocoonknits.co.uk/pages/the-woolly-bus/6862

‘Fake’ & ‘Lie with Me’ at The New Venture Theatre

New Venture Theatre’s double bill of ‘Fake‘, written by Michael Graney and ‘Lie With Me’ devised by Steve Coulson runs from 26th March to 2nd April 2011.

‘Fake’

Première of a one-act, real time piece, by a local playwright.

Walk through the doors of the venue and straight into an evening in which a medium’s tour is in full swing…

The Steven Eldritch Show comes live to the NVT for five nights as part of his sell-out national tour! – “Audiences are left stunned, uplifted and above all, comforted.” says the Liverpool Chronicle.

The celebrated psychic medium is humbled to travel the country and meet fans of his TV show ‘Parting The Veil’, shown on the Alive Channel. In his own words, showing the warmth he is famous for – “I’ve touched so many hearts… I feel richer than a king.”

Fake?  Join the audience and find out for yourself.

“There is always something magical in bringing a new piece of writing to the stage, and its characters to life for the first time” says director Arwen Matthews.  ”What is not always present, but I was handed in Fake, is a beautifully coherent script with fully rounded characters, immediately workable dialogue and an exciting, emotive subject matter. Add to this the fact that the play becomes site-specific and potentially immersive once a venue has been found and the project was irresistible! I hope that sceptic, believer and theatre goer alike will find themselves caught up in the action as they live this hour with the characters.”

‘Lie with me’

We all lie to each other. The biggest lies though are the ones we tell ourselves; the ones that stop us from breaking down and screaming out loud, the ones we desperately need those closest to us to be complicit in.  What happens then, when our closest ally suddenly decides they cannot lie to themselves anymore?

Darren, Debbie, Sian and Sarah live tangled, complex lives. All are based on the lies they tell themselves, and how they collude with each other to perpetuate those lies. It only takes one of them to decide to tell the truth to bring the whole house of cards crashing down…

Director Steve Coulson explains:  “I have been a fan of the work of Mike Leigh for nearly 30 years, since I first saw ‘Meantime’ in 1983. The realism of both the performances and the subject matter connected with me in a way nothing has before or since.   In 1995 I began a theatre group in London with close friend and local radio DJ Phil Jones, which took Leigh’s methods of character development and improvisation to the stage. ‘Lie With Me’ has been developed using those methods. 4 hugely talented and enthusiastic actors have built a world which explores both human frailties and the equally human spirit that seeks to overcome them.”

Possible strong language

26th March – 2nd April 2011, 7.45pm.

Matinee: Sun 27th March at 2.30pm.
No evening performances on Sun 27th and Mon 28th March.

Tickets for the show are available – £8 (£9 final Friday and Saturday night) (Tuesday-tickets £6) and can be purchased online at www.newventure.org.uk • Box Office Information on 01273 746118