Category: Reviews

Storybrooke Gardens – click any image for full size

Lauren Bentham’s Storybrooke Gardens has long been a favourite of mine, particularly when it is dressed for winter (see here and here for more). With spring now upon us, Lauren has remade and expanded Storybrooke, so Caitlyn and I recently hopped over to have a look.

The new design means that there is now even more to see and enjoy, including part of the space retaining the snowy looks of the Gardens in winter – of which more anon. Winding past the landing point with its bright little tent, the familiar springtime trail still wind through the trees, lanterns hang from posts and branches, inviting visitors to follow. It meanders past little vignettes of charm and past cottages and houses available to rent, gathered here and there in little hamlet-like groups, sheep and deer grazing around them, foxes roaming nearby.

Storybrooke Gardens

This is a place of story-time fancy, so don’t be surprised when you bump into some familiar characters as you explore – both indoors and out (although again, do please be aware some of the houses may be privately rented when considering venturing inside anywhere). Humpty Dumpty, for example sits (a little headless) alongside the trail at one point, while gingerbread men peep and wave around the base of a tree at another and little fae folk hover and play. Those who are regulars to Fantasy Faire may also recognise little touches from popular FF creators adding to the magic of this realm.

Opportunities for photographs lie around every corner and along every path; for those looking for romance and a place to share a cuddle or two will find much to please them here, both under the trees and up in tall towers of varying descriptions. Camp sites, benches, blankets, even a bicycle suspended beneath dozens of colourful balloons, offer places to rest and enjoy. And, as noted above, those seeking a last touch of winter also won’t be disappointed.

Storybrooke Gardens – A Winter’s Tale

A short distance from the landing point is the entrance to A Winter’s Tale. This is a place where the snow lies heavy on the ground, frost wraps itself around bark and bough, and quaint little cottages, roofs laden under heavy white blankets, huddle close to the imposing bulk of a great castle. Above the two imposing guardians of the path leading up to the castle’s great doors, circles a magical boat held aloft by two translucent balloons, its deck offering a vantage point from which to observe the lands below.

Not far from the castle the single spire of a wizard’s tower points to the sky rises from the snowy landscape, a winding path curled around its rocky base leading to its front door. Children skate on the frozen pond at the foot of the tower, while reindeer keep an eye on all who climb the path to find out why lies inside.

Storybrooke Gardens

Towers are very much a part of this landscape – both winter and spring – as are windmills. They variously rise above tree-tops or swing their sails lazily in the breeze, adding yet more story-time feel to the land. Beneath all of them, the local folk sit and read or play, wave greetings to passing visitors, and go about their own little tasks, adding a further depth to all the scenes to be found through the Gardens.

Lauren has always had a gift for expression with her region builds, but sitting in the sky (not always the easiest place to create something with a truly natural look and feel), Storybrooke Gardens is perhaps one of her most magical environments. One we were delighted to once again visit and explore.

Storybrooke Gardens

SLurl Details

• Storybrooke Gardens and A Winter’s Tale (Baja North, rated: Moderate)

Field of Dreams / L’intangible – click any image for full size

Update: Field of Dreams  / L’intangible have closed. SLurls have therefore been removed from this article.

“I love creating landscapes and dreaming inside,” Iska (sablina) says of herself. Anyone who has visited one of her creations will know that her love of landscaping and her dreaming give rise to some incredible environments in Second Life.

Take Field of Dreams, her homestead region for example, which Caitlyn and I recently visited. It is nothing short of stepping into a dream of yesteryear and visiting a place rooted in years gone by. Not centuries ago, but a time just a few decades ago, the world seemed much smaller, simpler, friendlier; when power and telephony wires were carried overhead by stout wooden poles marching along the sides of roads and tracks, when farming and cultivating the land was a way of life, not an industry.

Field of Dreams / L’intangible

Presenting an eclectic mix of housing styles, Field of Dreams – together with its southern neighbour, L’intangible (held by Sighvatr Crowbone (Worthaboutapig), but also designed by Iska) – presents a marvellously rural environment filled with rustic charm, which could exist almost anywhere in the world. For me, and no doubt aided by the sim surround bordering the two regions,  I was put in minds of Scotland, the Mediterranean aspects of the villas sitting in L’intangible notwithstanding.

Both regions should be explored, rather than described, so rather than offer a travelogue style piece, I’ll endeavour to give you a flavour of things. From the landing point on the northern extreme of Field of Dreams, visitors have a choice of dirt tracks to follow, offering routes around and though the land, passing the slopes of hills held back by high stone walls, passing between land and sea, and pointing the way to houses and shops.

Field of Dreams / L’intangible

What appears to be a private abode also sits on a headland to the north of the region, otherwise everything appears open to visitors. At one point, steps lead up the side of a hill and past terraced grape vines to an old farm-house, in another, herons patrol the water between the shore and a little summer-house topped island. Further south, a stone-built house sits between a boulangerie and an empty store, windows covered by paper. All three face the river dividing Field of Dreams from L’intangible over a rough cobbled terrace.

Two bridges and a set of stepping-stones span the river. However, we would advise the use of the stepping-stones or taking a short flight over the water to reach L’intangible; both of the bridges appear to be phantom and result in getting dunked if used. Once in L’intangible, the windlight changes to something perhaps a little more Mediterranean in feel, framing the Tuscan styled villas sitting alongside the river, but there is no mistaking the region is paired with Field of Dreams.

Field of Dreams / L’intangible

From the front of the villas, a dirt track winds through the farmlands to a decidedly odd little pub sharing one of the three fingers of land forming the western and southern edges of the region with a lighthouse. Sheep and goats gaze outside of the pub, while out on the water a fishing boat chugs its way towards a stone quay sitting below the lighthouse.

The middle of these three fingers, reach by another dirt track leading away from the villas and between tended fields, is home to an astonishing trailer house which could well be every child’s dreams of the ideal home. Before the track reaches a path leading up to the trailer house, it is intercepted by a set of stone steps cutting through a  stone retaining wall. These present a route up to the last of the three fingers of land: a massive rocky plateau, stepping its way into the sky.

Field of Dreams / L’intangible

A Path winds its way around the tallest part of this great upthrust, which rises sharply our of the water on one side, but forms broad grassy steps descending to a beach on the other. Never reaching the summit, the path offers those following it an exercising walk, but the views it offers across both regions more than the effort worthwhile.

Finished with a subtle, natural soundscape, this is a remarkable pairing of two regions to create one of the more unique vistas to be found in Second Life. Field of Dreams and L’inangible have been beautifully intertwined in the landscape they present, giving a very real sense that you are really on an island amidst islands. A must-see destination.

Field of Dreams / L’intangible