On a warm bright autumn in mid-November we took advantage of the covid lockdown rule allowing us out for exercise and booked a slot at Attingham Park our local National Trust property.
We really enjoyed the amazing sense of freedom we felt every minute of our wanderings. It felt great to take a few photos again! Here they are! The last few show some knitted animals placed among a shrubbery for the autumn season.
About 18 months ago we spent a family holiday on the isle of Anglesey, spending some of our time seeking out ancient sites.
We walked along a young native hedge, planted by Cadwy in the last few years, along a gravel path that led us towards the wonderful prehistoric burial mound, Bryn Celli Ddu.
Some shrub species were flowering well but we were also fascinated by the number of wildflowers already established and growing happily in the new hedge’s shade.
The main hedging species was Hawthorn which was interspersed with Gorse and Elder punctuated by taller trees such as Damsons, Sycamores and Field Maples. even the odd Oak sapling was trying its luck beneath the hedge.
Flowering perennials and even a bulb species have colonised the shaded area beneath the leaf canopy of the hedge and the accompanying trees. We spotted Herb Robert, Celandine, Bluebell, Daisy, Vetch, Primrose, Lady’s Smock, Germander Speedwell and Dandelion.
Even in shady places plants found it to their liking. Ferns enjoyed the shade at the very centre of the hedge and ivy clambered over he stone built wall where the hedge ends.
Insects and invertebrates move in as the number of plant species increase and that leads to predators including other insects, birds and mammals.
The delights of Dandelion and its “blowing clock” were experienced by our granddaughter Arabella after Jude shared its magic.
Success!
We had not visited the magical garden at Moors Meadow for several years so we were really looking forward to exploring it with my brother Graham and sister-in-law Vicky.
The garden here was pronounced Britain’s most romantic garden by a national gardening monthly. We were so looking forward to finding out if it lived up to this and if it still felt as magical as we remembered.
It didn’t take long for us to discover that it was indeed a garden full of surprises, artifacts, unusual plants, amazing seats and wandering pathways through changing moods of garden.
I shall now share a gallery of photos showing our walk around the gardens.
So there is my gallery of photos of our journey around the magical and romantic gardens at Moors Meadow. I hope you enjoyed sharing our journey and our enjoyment.
Every year in late March we attend a get together with the NGS county organiser and the garden openers. This year was our friend Allison’s first year as county organiser and as her garden is small she had to arrange an alternative venue. To everyone’s delight the owner of Hodnet Hall and Gardens offered the use of his restaurant and also allowed us free range of the gardens. We were in for a treat!
To start off with we were warmly greeted by the car park attendants, Martin and George, then after parking up as we reached the courtyard fronting the restaurant building, we received more warm welcomes from Allison, our County Organiser, and Sir Algernon Heber-Percy the owner of the hall and its garden. He formally welcomed us all with a humorous speech. After informative talks by representatives of MacMillan Nurses and Horatio’s Gardens we indulged in a sumptuous meal.
Then we were left to explore the gardens, all 60 acres of it! We began our exploration by following a small flight of stone steps into an area of tall mature trees and then moved on to take a slow wander around the string of lakes and back to the borders below the hall itself.
I will continue the tour by sharing a gallery of photographs with you. As usual click on the first pic and navigate using the arrows.
So that was our day out at Hodnet Hall – a great time was had by all! I wonder what next year’s NGS get together will entail!
For information Hodnet Hall is open for the NGS but does have other opening dates throughout the year so do check them out.
Instead of my usual series of posts where we visit the same garden every month of the year, we have decided to look at two gardens one large and one small. This is because it is impossible to find another good garden that is open all year and easy to get to.
For the big garden we have chosen the National Trust’s Bodnant Garden in North Wales which we shall look at over the seasons and for the small garden we have chosen Wildgoose Garden and Nursery closer to home here in Shropshire which we shall visit each month during its open season.
To start this series I am going to look back at a visit we made to Bodnant back in May 2018 to give an idea of its beauty.
A final day out on our Anglesey holiday was to visit the gardens at Bodnant just slightly inland from the North Wales coast. It is a garden we have visited and enjoyed many times before and at all times of the year. The one strength of the garden is that is has so many different faces to be discovered and enjoyed.
In recent years a rectangular border alongside a tall stone wall has changed completely becoming a hot border, full of flowers and foliage the colours of fire. On a sunny day they really light up.
Directly opposite and in complete contrast is a formal area of low trimmed hedges holding together borders of tulips.
The Winter Garden at Bodnant is one of the best in the UK, and although superb in its special season, the winter, it is still an interesting garden in the summer.
The narrow gravel paths take us into the shady areas beneath mature deciduous trees. Bluebells added a blue mist to the rich green grassed areas.
What many visits make the journey to Bodnant for are the bright clashing colours of rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias. We however are not great fans of these acid loving bloomers, but here are a few shots for those who do.
An area of Bodnant gardens we have rarely reached over the years because of my mobility problems is the deep steep-sided valley with tall trees towering over a beautiful sparkling stream which meanders along its length. After recent surgery I can now manage to get down to this magical dingle. The magical atmosphere is created by the huge trees that tower above visitors who wander the gravel paths along the valley running close to a clear mountain stream, and on the banks beautiful bog and water loving plants grow happily. Primulas, hostas, ferns and Skunk Cabbage add colour and texture to the scene.
No doubt it won’t be long before this great garden is featured in another of my greenbenchramblings posts as we usually wander around its Winter Garden early in the year.
We always enjoy returning to visit and explore gardens we have loved discovering before. Hergest Croft gardens are one of our favourite places to visit and we have visited at several different times of year. In 2018 we made a journey down into Herefordshire in the middle of September for an early autumn/late summer visit. The building itself is a beautiful “arts and crafts” style villa of brick with features and details to give it a special look. The driveside provides a good place to house plants for sale particularly trees and shubs propagated from the garden’s specimens and some interesting herbaceuos plants. Alongside the entrance is a stunning glasshouse that matches the main house wonderfully and it is here that we begin each visit, after of course coffee and cakes in the tea room. This tea room has a special extra, a lovely outdoor seating space, a covered veranda.
Beneath the veranda we enjoyed looking at a border of dahlias and over the top of the border to the borders surrounding the lawn. Here we spotted the first of a series of artworks created on slates, very delicate botanic drawings.
More plants for sale grace the walkway along the side of the house, again interesting plants propagated on site from their own plant material.
We next moved into the glasshouse where we always enjoy perusing the delicate plants flowering away happily. Let me share this little gallery with you. Please click on the first pic then use arrows to navigate.
Here is a selection of the photos I snapped as we wandered around Hergest Croft gardens, which helps to illustrate how varied the garden is and what a wide selection of plants are grown there. There is a huge collection of rare and unusual trees here including several “Champion Trees” which guaranteed plenty of interest as we wandered the pathways.
There is just so much at Hergest Croft it is hard to do it justice, but I shall finish with a few selected photos of the many I took to help give a taste of this wonderful Herefordshire garden.
Here we are with the final visit to my Garden Journal 2018, as we discover what has been going on at out Avocet patch in December. It has been a year of difficult weather for us gardeners with freezing winds, a wet spring followed by a drought in the summer. It has been a bit of a trial really encouraging things to grow and struggling to get new plants established. But of course none of this spoilt our enjoyment of our garden and gardening itself.
I began my entries for December by writing, “December arrived on the scene feeling milder but certainly not brighter than November. Thankfully the winds were gentle and had turned from the cold air carrying Easterlies to the warmer, wetter Westerlies. The winter sun sends low rays of light that capture the colours and textures of our trees especially Betulas and Prunus serrula.” I then featured photographs of our Prunus serrula and some of our Betulas.
Over the page I moved on to look at our ferns and then small shrubs with many coloured foliage.
I wrote, “Ferns are so useful in the garden mostly in places of shade or partial shade. In December they still look fresh and vibrant. A few though show browning of leaf edges and some die right down turning a rich gingery-brown.” Then I shared a selection of photos of some of our ferns.
On the opposite page it was our small shrubs that sport interesting foliage that featured. We have only recently started using low growing shrubs for their foliage as we are discovering how much interest they can add to a border when flowers are lacking. I wrote, “Winter is the season when evergreen broadleaved shrubs come to the fore, leaf surfaces get glossier, colours darken and extra colour appears especially pinks, creams and rubies. Here is a selection of shrubs we have just bought especially for their foliage, although some will also flower and fruit.”
Turning over the page we can see glaucous foliage being featured. I wrote, “As the last leaves fall from our deciduous trees and shrubs, we can appreciate their skeletal shapes. At the same time evergreens come to the centre stage. But I am going to show our evergreys in my December journal entries.”
Here is a selection of photos of some of our many glaucous foliaged plants, a climber, some shrubs and some herbaceous perennials.
One of our recent plant discoveries that we have been absolutely deilghted with is Coronilla glauca Citrina, a wonderful shrub that we grow as a climber on the trellis around our oil tank. In my journal I wrote, “Coronilla glauca Citrina is an underated winter flowering shrub with glaucous foliage and citrous coloured pea-like scented flowers. Grey and lemon together is a beautiful partnership. Equally underated are all the members of the Cotoneaster family.”
And here are a few of our many Cotoneasters, a family of shrubs we have grown in every garden we have ever had.
Turning over once more we discover two pages concerning our ongoing garden projects whch we started in the autumn.
We were forced by circumstances to rebuild our Seaside Garden when gale force winter winds broke the fence behind it. With our next door neighbours we soon got new ones back up. Seeing every negative happening as an opportunity we saw this new longer fence as a great place for interesting climbers and we decided to start the Seaside Border all over again. So at the end of the month we got started, but there is lots more to keep us occupied through part of January. I wrote, “Strong December winds destroyed a section of fence, the one backing the Seaside Garden. To repair it we had to strip out the area, plants and artefacts, but this did afford us the opportunity of refurbishing it.”
Here are some of the new plants waiting to go into the “new” Seaside Garden to join those we saved.
On the opposite page I talk about carrying on with our other editing jobs that we started in the autumn. I wrote, “As December draws to a close and the holiday times approach we take advantage of any dry days to catch up with our projects, new steps for the Chicken Garden, planting hundreds of bulbs and replanting the Hot Garden in its new position.”
And so to the last page of my 2018 Garden Journal, when I wrote, “December ended frost free. Sunshine caught special features of plants while raindrops hung on leaves, twigs and sculptures.”
Here is the final selection of photos for 2018, showing winter sunshine working its magic on foliage and droplets of rain caught after a shower.
“The end of my 2018 Garden Journal.”
Here we are with the final report of our monthly visit to the Dingle Gardens near Welshpool. As we drove down to Welshpool the weather just could not make its mind up what it was going to do, sunny with blue skies one minute, showers of cold rain the next. But once we were actually wandering around the gravel paths of the garden, it settled and we had a dry period for most of our walk. A few minutes of rain arrived just as we finished.
The light was dull and we noticed how variegated plants really came into their own. Gold and green, silver and green, grey and green in every possible combination and patterns. Just see in the first photo how the variegated shrub across the lawn shines out against darker foliaged trees and shrubs.
Variegation in conifers fails to impress me, as sadly it just looks like a bird has been perched above the foliage for a while! See what you think!
Variegated groundcover plants are very effective in the woodland garden as they brighten up dull areas. Silver variegation create mirror effects reflecting any light that gets through the tree canopy.
The raindrops hung around on glaucous foliage and we were surprised just how many plants in this woodland garden displayed glaucous leaves. Variegated foliage adds extra bright spots to woodland patches but glaucous foliage creates gentle subdued spots.
The oldest surviving plants in the UK are the ferns, lichens and mosses and they love the damp atmosphere of the sloping woodland garden here at The Dingle. They add such beautiful shades of bright green and bluish tints, but a few go golden and ginger as winter takes a deeper grasp on the garden.
Berries that were at their most prolific during the autumn months remain in evidence but only just hanging on in ones or twos.
Coloured bark adds interest to decorative trees in the winter and those that peel and drop sheets of their bark are even more interesting.
So, after twelve visits to the woodland garden at The Dingle near Welshpool, we come to the end of this year of visits. Next year we will begin a new series of garden visits. But for now I shall finish this series with a few general views of different parts of the woodland gardens.
October to my mind is the first month of the Autumn, whatever the metereological office says about September taking that role. We shall see what aspects of this new season we found and experienced when we took our October wander around the sloping woodland gardens of The Dingle near Welshpool.
The light was beautiful as we started to wander around the garden and it was the sort of light that lit up the colours of the foliage, emphasising that autumn had certainly arrived.
It certainly wasn’t just autumn foliage that was there to fascinate us, flowering perennials and shrubs were performing well too.
Several members of the Eunymus family both deciduous and evergreen grow happily in the woodland garden. They display such unusual berries usually orange with pink highlights.
The leaves of this fern reflected the shape of the Rhus foliage, a special variety with lovely cut leaves, Rhus typhina lancianata.
Fallen foliage beneath our feet looked like a Persian rug of many colours.
Autumn is also the season for fungi!
So there we have our look at The Dingle gardens for October, a colourful time of the year. Next month perhaps many leaves will be down leaving trees as skeletons.
Moving into the second half of the year, we wandered around the gravel paths of the Dingle Garden in late July. The day was dry with mixed clear skies with occasional cloud, but no rain came from them.
We immediately discovered the severe effects of this summer’s dry and hot temperatures. A mature conifer was turning shades of purple and brown as it was suffering from lack of water. Although colourful this was devastating for the tree. Elsewhere on the sloping parts of the garden the shrubs looked perfectly healthy and we enjoyed some great foliage contrasts and combinations.
Orange is a wonderfully effective colour for woodland planting, as flowers in this colour glow in the deepest shade and are caught by the sun. Yellow comes a close second!
Flowering shrubs are now coming into their own in the Dingle Garden, with Hydrangeas taking centre stage.
This is just a selection of the Hydrangeas putting on their show of blues, whites and pinks beneath the trees. We loved the variations in colour on individual flower heads.
Ferns look good almost the year through, but in the damp woodland atmosphere here at the Dingle they shone with health.
Herbaceous perennials appear in a few places beneath the trees and shrubs with Geraniums, Hemerocallis, Persicarias and Lysimachias showing well in the July garden.
Sometimes it is the little details that catch the eye when we explore gardens. On this visit to the Dingle Garden Jude was attracted to the moss hitching a lift in the fork of a Prunus. The purple spires of the Acanthus looked just right next to the sculpture of the Red Kite.
The real star of the July show was Cotinus coggygria with its deep red foliage with hints of glaucous blue and the smokey flower clouds.
So we will return next in August and see what late summer brings to the Dingle.
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