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Garden Entrances and Archways – No 6 in a very occasional series

This is the sixth post in this very occasional series concerning gardens entrances and archways. So here are photos taken over the last few months of these important design elements of gardens large and small.

Firstly here are some entrances we discovered at Batsford Arboretum in the autumn, on a dull showery day. The red bridge certainly added a burst of colour and invited visitors to cross over its boards and discover planting on the fare side. The friendly black wrought iron gateway lead visitors into an orcharda area as an alternative to following the main driveway.

The three pics below show how steps can provide entrances to invite the visitor to wander and see what is at their tops. The first photo is in our own Avocet garden while the second is at Gregynog an NGS Yellow Book garden in Powys. The third flight of steps are wooden and lead the wanderer up through dense woodland shrub and tree plantings.

Sunningdale, an NGS Shropshire garden near Wem, a market town north of Shrewsbury was a garden designed to make you explore and the several entrances and archways there excouraged the visitor to make choices and discover different parts of the town garden.

  

 

More pictures now from Gregynog, another NGS garden, this time a woodland garden with several different facets as seen in the photos below.

 

 

 

Down in Cornwall for a September holiday last year we found plenty of interesting entrances and archways in the varied gardens we visited. Firstly we visited Poppy’s Cottage Garden. The first picture below shows its rather odd entrance from the road.

 

Then we explored a strange garden to find in Cornwall, The Cornish Japanese Garden.

 

The gardens at The Eden Project gave plenty of varied places to enjoy.

 

Back closer in home here are a few photos from Hergest Croft Gardens

 

Here are three mystery photos for which my memory has let me down. I simply can’t remember where I took them!

        

The last pair of pics feature a beautiful gate at the Picton Garden near the Malverns, the garden that holds a National Collection of Asters. The gate leads you on a journey into beautiful mixed borders studded with masses of Asters. The secong pic features an archway from our very own Avocet patchwhich is designed to entice visitors to follow the central path and take the many inviting sideways paths.

 

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Garden Entrances and Archways – Part 5 of this very occasional series

It has been a while since we visited this series so here is a new selection of my photographs of entrances and archways we have discovered in several gardens during our visits.

     

 

 

 

 

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climbing plants colours fruit and veg garden design garden furniture garden photography gardening hardy perennials Hardy Plant Society HPS July Shropshire village gardens

Gordon and Mona’s Place

We like to share with you the gardens owned by our fellow Shropshire gardeners and we especially sharing our visits to some excellent gardens created and looked after by fellow members of the Shropshire Group of the Hardy Plant Society. So here is a short series of three such gardens we enjoyed during 2016.

The first is owned by Gordon and Mona who also have a small nursery selling unusual plants. Gordon also gives garden talks to groups just as Jude and I do, so we have things in common. Gordon is a great lover of Salvias too, just like me, but unlike me he is very knowledgeable about them.

We followed roads leading us north-east from home towards a village known as Sheriffhales where we found the garden surrounding a house in the country. We loved the unusual entrance to the garden, passing through a narrow gateway in a holly hedge, which took us along a path to the back of the house and immediately we found ourselves immersed in the plants. It was like entering a secret garden, always a good start! Gates, hedges and pathways invited us seamlessly around the gardens surrounding Gordon and Mona’s home and comfy seats enticed us to sit a while and take in the scents and sounds of the garden. The movement of the many grasses and the bird song enriched the rest of the experience.

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Beautiful happy healthy plants growing upwards against a blue sky raise the spirits up with them.

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Gordon had previously introduced us to Commelinas, perhaps the most delicate and beautiful blue flower to be found in any garden. We now have some of Gordon’s seedling growing on nicely at home and it was good to meet them again.

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Let us now just share some of the individual plants and plant companions we enjoyed so much on this visit. Some of these plant combinations are so exciting bringing together unlikely colour partners, the sign of confident and knowledgeable gardeners.

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Salvias are Gordon’s true specialism and interest and here they are beautifully grown, sitting happily in mixed borders and flowering profusely.

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What a great afternoon visiting this lovely, gentle garden full of plant delights! Moments of magic appeared around every corner to add that little extra that raises a garden above the norm, as shown in my four pics below.

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