Carole and I decided we had to get out of the house today after a long weekend doing pretty much nothing. Some friends of mine had checked into Barnsdale Gardens on Facebook late last year and a quick Google gave us the location, it’s near Oakham, around 55 miles south of us. A quick trip down the A46 & A1 and we arrived. We were prepared to be turned away, we hadn’t pre-booked, but it wasn’t an issue; they let us in.
Wow !!
Barnsdale Gardens were designed by Geoff Hamilton, who presented BBC Gardener's World from 1979 until his death in 1996. Barnsdale was a Victorian farmhouse with 5 acres of pastureland when he found the property in 1984. Hamilton was interested in making gardening affordable by offering practical ideas for gardeners to recreate at home and encouraging the inventive reuse of materials. The gardens include a rose garden, Japanese garden, rock garden, knot garden, kitchen garden, bog garden and orchard and many more.
We spent around 4 hours, wandering around 88 unique gardens, in brilliant sunshine but bitterly cold wind, cameras being deployed at every opportunity. We had a quite superb take-out lunch (bacon & cranberry panini with salad & tea/coffee) and on leaving upped our entrance fee to a year’s membership. As Carole said, if we came back every month, it will be different.
This is just one of the 170 photographs taken by yours truly.
Thank you for your views, comments and favs on yesterday’s offering. Much appreciated.
