Looking ahead to the Gardeners' World Spring Fair and more

* I have been provided a pair of tickets to the Gardeners’ World Spring Fair, and also for entry to Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway from Gardeners’ World and Exbury Gardens respectively, therefore all posts from these visits will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

All of a sudden, it’s next week. I hope those that are exhibiting are a lot more on top of things than I am, otherwise it won’t be much of a show at all…

I’m fully expecting to return with many, many photos and information to share - and I can’t wait. It’ll be good to visit a part of the country we haven’t been to for a while. We used to have a favourite place with self-catering lodges just outside Ringwood that we went to a few times, but things change, and the small independently run spot closed. I think we last visited the New Forest back in 2011, before I even started blogging, but not quite in the physical photo era. I’m sure lots has changed, but I’m also sure lots will have stayed the same.

At the Spring Fair

It’ll be my first time visiting the Gardeners’ World Spring Fair, I’ve been to Gardeners’ World Live in Birmingham a couple of times and it’s always a brilliant day out, so I’m expecting this one to be just as good, and just as inspiring as well as tiring. I’m especially looking forward to:

• The Hillier Secret Garden: inspired by The Secret Garden, a walk-through garden enclosed by high hedges and containing colour-coordinated plants and shrubs portraying the movement of the sun during a spring day. It already sounds magical.

• Paul Stone’s showcase garden Theatre of Greens: the garden will be packed with veg and edible plants, alongside a programme of daily talks hosted by Chris Bavin and feature ‘grow your own’ gurus. I do like a spot of edible growing, though have done very little of this since our house has been on the market, which makes admiring someone else’s work even more enjoyable.

• All of the Beautiful Borders which offer inspiration for small gardens and challenging spaces, the theme is ‘My Garden Escape’, and as I said before this is the part of the shows where MOH despairs of me, I like to see them all and can be quite methodical about making sure I have seen everything. And I mean literally everything.

• Budget-friendly gardens: I’m looking forward to seeing the budget-friendly gardens the horticultural students will create under the expert eye of mentor Cherry Carmen, the award-winning garden designer, a Gold Award at BBC Gardeners’ World Live.

I’m sure we’ll also spend some time time checking out the talks and information available from the Gardeners’ World Live Stage. I know that Frances Tophill is due to be at the show on Friday, so I’ll be looking out for her, and of course the BBC Good Food Market is also taking place, and we’d be foolish to resist that.

Plus two new-to-me gardens to visit

As well as all of that, the Spring Fair is held at Beaulieu so all of their attractions are available too. Hopefully we’ll have the time (and energy) to see the grounds and gardens - at the top of my list is the Victorian Kitchen Garden and Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland Topiary, as I am rather partial to both of these. No doubt, we’ll try to visit as many of the gardens as we can, and make time to see the National Motor Museum. It seems I’m also a closet petrol-head, as we’ve also visited motor museums in Munich (BMW World) and in the Lake District (the Lakeland Motor Museum), both of which are fantastic. For some reason, neither of those visits have made it here, I’m not sure why - maybe I’ll do something about that at some point!

The other new-to-me garden is Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway which celebrates ‘more than 100 years of horticultural excellence’. The gardens were created by Lionel de Rothschild in 1919 and still managed by the family today. It’s famous for its displays of rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias, so hopefully we will be able to see them starting to bloom, as I suspect they may not be quite as advanced this year with the chilly and wet spring we seem to be having.

I also hope to check in on the wisteria in the Sundial Garden but I’m not sure if we’ll get the full wisteria experience, we may be a month too early. And while I’m a closet petrol-head, MOH likes a railway or two - we brought home track, engines and all sorts from his childhood railway adventures, which he assures me will be on eBay at some point. So he's especially interested in the Steam Railway, the Rhododendron Line (let’s hope he doesn’t spend the day calling it the RosieDendron Line, though I’m not holding my breath), with its three engines and ten carriages all named after the Rothschild family. The railway meanders through the garden, and steams through a tunnel modelled on the famous Gothic folly, the Clayton Tunnel is West Sussex, which MOH seemed knowledgeable about when I shared this info, I told you he liked a railway or two!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

So while there’s plenty on our list already to be keeping us busy, what else would you add? It doesn’t have to be garden related, I think we might be in garden overload if we add more! And I know the New Forest has plenty more to see and visit.

* With thanks in advance to both Gardeners’ World and Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway for providing entry tickets to your event and gardens.

Please ring the bell

There’s been a couple of things that have led me to post about Hunte’s Garden this week. Some friends are currently in Barbados and visiting this garden was one of my ‘must do’ recommendations, then later in the week after my Access Bars session I was reminded that Hunte’s was probably the most spiritual garden I’ve ever visited. At the time I think I wrote it took my breath away as I descended into the midst of the garden, but in truth it had me at the entrance.

And it’s those photos I’m sharing today while I process the full experience of the treatment session I had in town yesterday. I’ll share more about that in a separate post soon, so look out for that to find out more about it.

Hunte’s Garden is the first garden we’ve visited where we’ve needed to announce our arrival, though at Bosvigo in Cornwall there was an entirely self-service entry process. And so, we picked up the bell to say we were here.

Our taxi driver had been plenty of times before of course, and was more than happy to sit and wait and enjoy the garden too, while we explored this way and that, up and down and round and round, and even while we enjoyed a small rum. And it was easy to see why even though we hadn’t even scratched the surface of what we were to find.

The garden was full of curios, vistas and the most amazing plants. I remember feeling quite overwhelmed as we stepped down into the main part of the garden, a feeling I’ve not previously experienced so strongly. If you said to me I could visit again tomorrow, I’d jump at the chance - though I might negotiate a little on exactly when that visit could take place, as we already have plans for tomorrow!

The weighbridge above has certainly travelled a distance, and I’m sure has a rich history and somehow doesn’t feel out of place here - though I’ll have to admit I had no idea what it was when we first saw it.

The experiences this week have reminded me of how I felt when we visited back in December 2019 - it’s definitely true, you remember how things make you feel, and even looking at the photos those feelings resurfaced. I’ve more photos to share, but in the meantime if you want to see more of the gardens here’s some posts I’ve already shared:

• A rum with a view of the garden

• Tropical loos in Hunte’s Gardens

• Dining with faded elegance.

Oh, and before I finish you’ll be pleased to know our friends have been to Hunte’s too - I’ve seen their photos on Facebook. I’m waiting to see if they’ll be going to Fish Friday at Oistins, which was my other ‘must do’. Hopefully they’ll enjoy both recommendations just as much as MOH and I did.

Be careful of the hidden pond

That’s not a sign you expect to see in a garden is it, but it’s one that greets you as you enter the Summer Wildlife Garden at Barnsdale Gardens. That’s garden 14 out of the 38 there, and is what I can only describe as the equivalent of a gardener’s theme park. It’s also the Gardeners’ World home of former presenter Geoff Hamilton, and where the programme was filmed at the time.

The way the gardens are laid out make them easy to take inspiration for domestic gardens, it’s so easy to imagine how they might work and that you’ve just stepped out of a house and into the garden. I think this photo shows exactly what I mean.

The hidden pond is in a corner of the grass and the paved stepping stones aim to lead you on a safe route, though I imagine with the planting the pond is easy to miss, so wouldn’t work for everyone. But it’s a great spot.

The garden was created using principles outlined in the BBC’s Living Garden series and includes features to attract wildlife and safe places for them to live and hibernate. The plants too have been chosen to encourage wildlife and give them reasons to stay. The honeysuckle, hebe, rose and foxgloves, as well as the hostas all have their part to play, as does a spot to sit and enjoy the space and its inhabitants.

The other endearing feature in the garden is the bird bath - as well as providing a space for birds it gives a focus point for the lawn. I love its column and could imagine sitting in the garden, enjoying the space and letting my eyes wander and wander through every spot. A totally relaxing space, don’t you think?