Garden Hopping In The Rain

Garden visiting in the rain can be quite challenging as the art of keeping relatively dry is a prerogative let alone managing to take photos. The photos in this post were all taken from under the shelter of himself's enormous golf umbrella but still I ended up with only a few to choose from. We went garden visiting in the Lake District earlier this month when our camper van took us to the town of Grange-Over-Sands for a couple of days. This is a small Edwardian resort which is a pleasure to visit. The weather though was absolutely foul - extremely wet and windy and this was the weekend before the tail end of hurricane 'Bertha' hit the U.K. For some unexplained reason it seemed to arrive a week earlier in Cumbria. Still not to be defeated we set off on the Sunday to visit two gardens that were opening under the National Gardens Scheme. 

The first garden was opening for the very first time so the weather must have been must have been really disappointing for the owners, who had no doubt been preparing for this event for some considerable time. The Old Vicarage and Fell Cottage was most colourful even in the downpour that greeted us. Whenever I go garden visiting there's inevitably at least one feature and usually several plants that I would like to take home with me. My favourite part of this garden was the small vegetable area that was tucked in one corner of the garden. I could not believe the already red tomatoes, admired the hessian bag planted with potatoes and more than anything envied the dry stone wall. On leaving the garden we took shelter in the adjacent Parish Rooms where there was a bric a bric sale. This was on a much bigger scale than we anticipated and from which I emerged with what I think will be my bargain of the year. More of that in another post. 

From there we made our way to Cartmel of sticky toffee pudding fame where we eat our sandwiches and fruit lunch under cover, whilst watching a small group of intrepid people learning the skills of segway riding.

Back to Grange-Over-Sands in the afternoon to visit the much larger garden at Yewbarrow House, which has a stunning view overlooking Morecambe Bay. The garden here spreads over four and half acres and has been developed since 1999 by the current owners. It has featured in various gardening publications since then. Here are one or two of the features that I would have been happy to have popped into my wheelbarrow to bring home with me. I will have to leave it to your imagination for now but the other side of this infinity pool in the Japanese Garden has the bay as its backdrop. 

Some sturdy frames protecting the strawberry plants ~ 

Already glimpsed in my latest Wordless Wednesday post this is another photo of what I thought was a beautiful statue. It is one of two bronzes of the owner's daughters ~

Dahlias still singing in the rain ~

Finally this fine fellow was gazing out from one of the many attractive walls ~

As the afternoon progressed we were getting damper and damper. There were still areas of the garden to see but we reluctantly decided to call it a day. Stopping off though before we left to browse at the plant sale area from which an aeonium aboreum 'Schwarzkop' was selected. Hopefully a return visit to Yewbarrow on a dry day will be on the cards before too long.