* I was invited to a press visit at Barnsdale Gardens earlier in the summer, so my posts from that visit will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.
In the first post in this series I admired the veg plots at Barnsdale, and when I say plots I mean multiples. It’s the same for the flower gardens, though there are many, many more so compressing what I saw into a single post has been a challenge, to say the least!
Though it has been glorious to look back at my photos of the summer flowers, yes peonies and roses galore - what’s not to like?
Both of these were in the Summer Cottage Garden (No 28) along with this low level box edged path - and while it’s not a flower, it’s too good to exclude.
These next photos are taken in the Gentleman’s Cottage Garden (No 4) and the first shows the benefits of having somewhere to sit in all weathers. We learnt this in our previous garden as you don’t always want to drag out the garden furniture, in that garden the raised sleeper beds provided the ideal place to perch with a cuppa.
The central point of the garden was this buried stack of terracotta pots - another effective idea which could easily be replicated in our own gardens.
As you’d expect the Cutting Garden (No 12) was full of flowers, but these tall flowering stems with the almost onion like seed heads were my favourite from this garden. The free flowing love in a mist reminded me that I have some seeds from my FIL’s garden which I should probably plant, though it turned out that the heatwaves this year scuppered my seed sowing efforts. I’d started with lettuce, which were a bit hit and miss so decided to pause any greater plans for this year, which turned out to be a wise decision.
I snapped this delicate looking rose in the Versailles Summer border (No 16) while the peony is from the Country Paradise Summer Garden (No 36), which also has the sign to beware of the hidden pond, which I wrote about after my first visit to the gardens.
It was no surprise to me that I fell in love with the layout and contents of the Plantsman’s Garden (No 27) and it was a good reminder to put this acanthus on my plant wish list.
And look, I’ve managed to sneak in another topiary into this post - oops! But what a shape!
The greenhouses throughout the gardens are fantastic, and what’s better is that you can mostly get right inside them, and this one looked dreamy from inside and even more so from the outside with these roses clambering up posts nearby.
In the Rose Garden (No 17) I had much sympathy with the drooping peonies, and loved them mixed with the deep coloured roses, that’s another design feature to remember for my own garden!
I also loved the textures in the photo below, which is in the Geoff Hamilton Winter Border (No 10) and a reminder that we need to plant our gardens for the whole year, not just spring, or summer when the flowers are the brightest.
I’m leaving you with this single astrantia, while the petals may well have fallen off there’s still so much detail. I have one of these plants, currently in a pot, and I’m hoping that when it gets into the ground it will do its best to self seed wherever it can - a girl can hope, right?
* With thanks to Barnsdale Gardens for inviting me to the gardens, and to Nick Hamilton for leading a tour through a selection of the gardens available. It’s a great space and I’m pretty sure I’ll be back to visit again.