No Sussex please, we're Hampshire

Timothy Mowl has produced an outstandingly researched set of volumes on historic gardens within England. Often it is most revealing what has gone as much as what is familiar. For 2016's Hampshire he has taken on one of his former students - Jane Whitaker - to help with the 'volume' of the volumes. I learned a lot about places I thought a knew a lot about already.
Just a few minor niggles as this kind of factual book brings out the anorak in me. For example Petersfield is a significant Hampshire town so to place it in Sussex in this sort of geographical review is a bit sloppy and results in missing out the modern recreation of a 17th Century-style "physic garden". Secondly I don't think that Capability Brown's work at Warnford is more than a tenuous stylistic link through contemporary knowledge and not necessarily carried out under contract by him. Thirdly there were a few too many "but they wouldn't let us look around"... in the case of Westbury it was full of patients with serious crash injuries so I'm not surprised the authors got a refusal but you can still see all you need by visiting the ruined chapel by the roadside and walking up the public footpath that goes through the grounds past the old kitchen garden walls. But I guess I'm guilty of being pernickity-picky as I have more time to find my way around these places. Illustration by the way is Mottisfont Abbey where Graham Stuart Thomas' famous rose garden goes unmentioned along with other admittedly contemporary features like a grove of gold painted upside down tree trunks.