The Blue Palace, the ancestral home of the Potter family, was situated in a valley of some local importance, at the heart of a vast parkland containing of great variety of ground. The outer areas had been turned over to the employment of farms and agriculture, while closer in Harry had planted sweeping fields of barley, a dense orchard, and a vineyard so large that the rows of hanging grapes and hop plants disappeared over the rise of a low hillock in the near distance.