One of my unexpected highlights from our recent break in Lincolnshire was our visit to Barnsdale Gardens. Before we arrived in our holiday cottage I’d not heard about these gardens, but they were in the recommended places to visit, so I took a look. And as soon as I did, they went straight onto our ‘to visit’ list.

Barnsdale is the Gardeners’ World home of former presenter Geoff Hamilton, and it’s where the programme was filmed. It’s a garden full of gardens, described as a gardener’s theme park - there’s thirty eight individual gardens in the garden. I thought I’d diligently photographed every single garden, but somehow I don’t have all the photos.

Never mind.

I’m starting by sharing garden number twenty eight - a summer cottage garden.

This garden was built as the main show garden for the very first Gardeners’ World Live Exhibition at the NEC in 1993 and was designed by Dan Pearson. Isn’t it delighful?

Originally the maze was a herb maze - filled with silver variegated thyme, lavender, rosemary and sage - imagine the smell! The Barnsdale gardens are heavy soil and the herbs didn’t thrive, so was replaced with a box hedge.

The archways are covered in roses, and like many cottage gardens there’s delphiniums, more roses, campanula, geraniums, foxgloves and clematis.

It’s exactly the type of garden that you could easily see in a domestic garden, and wouldn’t that be something to aim at?

I loved the strategically well-placed deckchair, which on a warmer day would I’m sure be in much demand.

I said last week was a quiet week on my blog as we were away, well this week has been quiet too and we’ve been back at work. I’ll admit to enjoying time away from my laptop in my week off and so while this week I’ve been back on the laptop during the day, I’ve stayed away during the evenings too, picking up my crochet instead.

And also knowing where to start, and what to post from the many, many photos I’ve taken. So many photos, so many gardens and historic houses - and such a good time - and so, this post has a bit of everything. A kind of whistle stop tour of what I’ve been up to.

We started in Norfolk visiting some of my favourite places, including the shops at Creake Abbey and the historic Georgian town of Holt - it made a lovely change to wander around shops, though still wearing masks.

A great day in Holt ended with a bit of a downer when a stone thrown up by a passing van hit the windscreen with an almighty crack. And it was quite a crack, no chip in sight and quite a shock. On reflection a crack is way better than a chip, as that meant a new windscreen rather than a repaired one. Thankfully the crack kept outside of my vision for driving, and the insurance and replacement were easy to navigate with all the necessary recalibrating done in a single visit once we were back home. Even there they realised that after having the car for less than a month, I probably didn’t need to replace the wipers!

It was definitely a night to opt for fish and chips and we headed off to Eric’s for the first time. We ended up with double fish and chips each, and more than we could eat - and we couldn’t resist trying the black pudding fritter, which is exactly what you’re thinking - black pudding in batter. I’d eat it again - obviously - but probably not as a side order to cod and chips.

Up next was our holiday cottage in Lincolnshire, part of the Walled Gardens on the Easton Estate - and it’s the first holiday cottage we had with its own library - a small space with a chandelier, but a library no less.

It also had one of the best equipped kitchens we’ve experienced, and best of all it provided direct access to the walled gardens which were available for us to visit outside of their usual opening hours, and it was really special to have such a lovely space to ourselves.

This was a sign that I wasn’t expecting to see - thankfully the giraffes were statues.

We got out and about a lot in the few days we were in Lincolnshire and first on my list was Barnsdale Gardens, which was the Gardener’s World home of legendary presenter Geoff Hamilton. There were 38 gardens there, so plenty of inspiration - and while I wasn’t a Gardener’s World viewer when he was a presenter it was a great place to visit. I’ll be sharing some of the gardens here, but somehow I’ve lost some of the photos I took, but even so there’s still plenty to share.

What is always special is the chance to look around the nursery and growing spaces, and this is the heucheras at Barnsdale - not lettuces as MOH first thought (though they do look a little lettuce-like from a distance).

That evening we headed back out into the Walled Gardens this time exploring the Cottage Garden and the Pickery - great name isn’t it? - and discovered this most amazing bark, I promise you it’s a real, living tree and not a sculpture.

Another of the places I was keen to visit was Belvoir Castle - a few years ago when we cycled between Grantham, Melton Mowbray and Newark we spied it on the hill top in the distance, and had it marked as a future place to visit. It didn’t disappoint, the interiors were stunning - from the displays of rifles and swords as you entered, the vibrancy of the wall coverings and the grandiose rooms - I was ready to move in.

We also spent some time walking around the gardens, including the formal rose garden, which considering the gardens are on many levels was a lot of up and down, but definitely worth it.

But we weren’t done with visiting historic houses just yet - our next stop was the National Trust’s Belton House, where it was easy to pick up on a greyhound theme, including on the door plate and on the weather vane on the roof.

The orangery in the grounds was just as spectacular, and I think I’ll need to add an orangery as a requirement to my next house! (Some chance, I know).

With our week almost at an end we managed to squeeze in a visit to nearby Stamford, another Georgian town - no prizes for guessing the type of architecture that MOH and I are drawn to.

I told you we packed a lot in, and now you know why it was so hard to choose just one part of an action-packed week away from home.