Today I'm sharing some more from our visit to the Blickling Estate last Saturday, we went looking for snowdrops and found them, but also discovered plenty of hellebores and my long-term favourite, hydrangeas, which were definitely full of faded beauty. I mean, just look, and you'll see what I mean. The hydrangeas were faded and almost resembled paper than the colourful petals I first think of, and they're hauntingly beautiful, don't you think?
The greenness and lushness of the ferns is set off but the brown, decaying stems around it - and well, you know I'm a fan of ferns, so I'm sure you'll excuse me just another shot.
The pictures above were taken as we wound and wended our way through the garden to the Orangery at the edge of the garden. One day I'll get there and actually go into the Orangery, but once again I've had to make do with peering through the windows. I shared a similar shot - or maybe even the same one, who knows? - in the snowdrop post and I'm still impressed with how well it came out through the glass, and one full of condensation at that.
I bet it was much warmer in there than I was outside peering in!
The real discovery though was behind the Orangery. As well as the snowdrops, there were plenty of hellebores and they were their usual embarrassed gorgeousness, and unusually there were plenty of yellow ones. I think most often they're pink, the ones in my garden definitely are. In the walled kitchen garden I'd also spotted some dark, almost black hellebores, but clearly I was so enamoured by them I didn't actually photograph them.
And despite thinking I had plenty of photos of the ones from behind the Orangery, I didn't, but thankfully the shot I do have is pretty special. Behind the Orangery there was also a bit of a white bench theme going on, and I imagine this one will be a glorious place to rest awhile in warmer weather.
The garden it looks out onto was full of early colour, the mahonias with their pink buds and yellow flowers also looked great and I took the opportunity to get up close. And in doing so, spotted another white bench. I told you it was a theme.
Another burst of colour in this part of the garden was coming from the dogwoods and their vibrant red stems. The grey-green of the euphorbia-like plants (I'm pretty sure they're a form of euphorbias) provided the perfect foil to the flaming red, and looked great growing through the dogwoods. Perhaps that's something I could replicate with my own dogwoods, it's definitely something to consider isn't it?
And as if to prove that the euphorbia-like plant was beautiful in its own right - and I think they are, it's MOH who likens our euphorbias to daleks - this one was straining over the path to be noticed.
With the rain, yes rain, sadly not dew, it really did have a point and one it made well, don't you think?
