We visit the Lake District a LOT… we’re less than an hour away so it’s very easy to drive to. We enjoy weekend jaunts to visit beautiful places we have’t seen before and of course we love relaxed lunches in welcoming county pubs! Even so there are some areas we haven’t explored yet and there are gems to uncover.
Gresgarth Garden in Lancashire is open to the public from February to November just one day each month. Sunday 12th March was Hellebore Day and visitors were offered Hot Chocolate on the terrace.
There are some English villages that are impossible to drive through without stopping to look a little more closely at the homes, shops and of course the village inns. Broadway is one of our most beautiful Cotswolds villages I think. It has the most gorgeous honey coloured buildings… some ancient and others much newer but all very attractive. Broadway is very popular so it can become busy at times but it’s most definitely worth a close look.
We visited Hidcote Manor Garden in the Cotswolds in September 2016. The large garden is divided into distinct rooms and you may recall that I wrote about the Red Borders in an earlier blog post. Without doubt those borders were the stars of Hidcote for me last autumn. There are many other lovely areas throughout the entire garden… here are just a few.
Visitors enter the garden at Hidcote Manor via the house. There’s a charming study to look at first then it’s through the white door and into the garden.
It’s early summer and here’s the reward for all your planning. June is the time that most gardens start to pump up the flower production. It’s that heady combination of warmth coupled with plenty of moisture in the earth which means the garden is bursting into life with colourful flowers.
This week I’ve cut buckets full of beautiful blooms and all of them give me that country garden style. Here are Clematis, Roses, Nepeta and Geraniums with Ox-Eye Daisies and Feverfew. They are all easy to grow and super productive which is just the way I like it!
I’m growing flowers for cutting but it’s not just the flowers that are looking good. There are grasses and Allium seed heads and some plants which I grow specifically for foliage and they are also producing lovely long stems now too. The bucket of yellow foliage is Euphorbia oblongata which has overwintered in one of my cutting beds. There’s a variegated Applemint in the Clematis bucket and some plain green Mint in the Nepeta bucket.
The photo below show just one stem of Euphoria oblongata. It’s an amazing hardy plant I grew from seed. Just six to ten plants will give you masses of stems.
Does your garden need a boost? If your garden is lacking a few flowering plants or even foliage this month you can soon put that right with a trip to a plant nursery. They will have all the early summer flowering perennials and roses available for sale right now. That can be expensive if you need a trolley full of plants to boost your borders. If you would rather produce your own plants (and save some money!) then you can easily do that too this month. Take softwood cuttings of perennials (eg:nepeta) herbs (eg: mint) and shrubs (eg: lilac) or sow some seeds of the lovely plants you want to see in your own garden this time next year.
It’s easy to grow your own plants. Taking cuttings or sowing seeds is simple if you know how… just let me know if you want some guidelines/photos showing how to propagate specific plants and I’ll try and help you out.
Are you joining in with Looking Good today? You can include anything garden related… fruit and veg, recipes, flowers, foliage, your local parks and allotments, garden wildlife and so on. Just comment on this post and add your link to your post which should include a link to this post. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going on in your area.
Have a lovely day and Happy Gardening! Gillian 😉
Woo Hoo! Rain arrived this morning after a long dry period. The water had an amazing effect on the garden. Everything seemed to perk up immediately with leaves looking lush and plump instead of dry and crispy! We receive quite a lot of rain here in the north of England and it’s easy to take it for granted… until it doesn’t arrive. So I was very happy to see glittering raindrops on foliage today.
But it’s June and flowers are the stars this month. Roses in particular. There’s nothing quite like an arching rose to lend your home that country style. It’s a cliche I know but having a beautiful Rose flowering around your front door is the perfect way to welcome visitors and of course it’s quite lovely for you and all your family too! Roses are available in nurseries and garden centres now and you’ll be able to see the flowers before you buy. They only take a couple of years to reach 6 feet or more in height so you’ll soon have that country cottage look.
This is a climbing Iceberg rose. It’s healthy and vigorous and produces masses of creamy white flowers with a delicate scent. On our south facing wall it flowers on and off from May until December.
The other rose that caught my eye today is a shrub rose. This one only flowers once each year and it’s not quite in full flower yet but the buds are all there. Each year I tell myself that I’m taking it out (I don’t know what it is… it’s not the rose I wanted – wrong label possibly) but when I see it in flower, see how healthy it is and more to the point HEAR all the bees buzzing around to snap up the pollen I forget all about removing it for a ‘better’ specimen. It can stay for now.
I’d love to see your garden this week. It’s June and our gardens are all bursting with gorgeous blooms. You are most welcome to join in with Looking Good.
Have a brilliant weekend and I’ll see you next week. Gillian 🙂
This is Rosa Banksii ‘Lutea’. As you can seen it’s a yellow rose, a rambler actually, which scrambles through a white flowered Wisteria growing up the red brick wall at the front of our house. It’s thornless, vigorous and healthy so it’s a lovely plant if you have a tall bare wall or if you are wanting to introduce a touch of country style to your garden… there’s nothing quite like rambling roses for adding a romantic atmosphere. You will need plenty of space though. In ten years our rose has reached the roof of our house and they can grow up to 40 feet / 12 metres tall or even more.
Foxgloves are just coming into bloom in our garden. They are woodland plants really. Their large leaves make the most of all the available sunlight so they can grow in shady areas so they are brilliant if you have dappled shade in your garden.
A few sunny days and plenty of rain and our Spring Garden has burst into life. I’ve deliberately kept to a simple colour palette because as you know I tend to go a bit mad with a riot of colours in our summer and autumn planting schemes. It’s quite unlike me to be tasteful so I like to make the most of it at this time of year!
For In a vase on Monday I’m using an empty jam Jar this week. In my view there’s no need for proper vases all the time, especially for a simple bunch of sweet peas. Sweet peas shout out country style to me. The flowers are the stars I think.