Harrogate Spring Flower Show.

It was an early start to the day this morning as we were going out a little later. I was on the Barff with Meg and Gracie for just before 5.00am. It was a cold, dry morning with a light breeze and 4C. The Bluebells are still looking good, most striking though was the dawn chorus, at times it was deafening but beautiful to listen to, I hadn’t realized how much noise these birds could make, I usually get on the Barff from between 5.30am – 6.30am and the chorus is loud at that time, but this morning and thirty minutes earlier the cacophony of noise was deafening. We had a good long very early morning walk returning home around 6.30am. After breakfast we headed off to the Harrogate Spring Flower Show for the day. We arrived on the outskirts of Harrogate for just before 10.00am and followed the signposts to the flower show which was held on the Yorkshire Showground. The signposting and car parking management was first class, we joined a long line of moving traffic which took us straight into the showground and parked up within a couple of minutes. After a five minute walk across a grass field we arrived at the entrance gates. I was surprised at the number of visitors queuing up to buy day tickets, there must have been at least several hundred. Fortunately I had purchased the tickets several weeks ago so we were fast tracked into the ground, no hold up at all. We entered the showground at just after 10.00am and even at that time the area was buzzing with people. Our first stop was the main hall for a coffee and bacon sandwich, after an early brunch we stayed in the main hall and had a look at all the flower exhibits, I personally like fuchia’s and acer trees and wasn’t disappointed. There were some excellent displays of Bonsai trees, Chrysanthemums, Dalia’s and even Daffodils. There were lots of stalls selling all sorts of plants, there was a flower arranging display as well as a gardeners question time forum going on in another part of the hall and for those of us who didn’t want to carry bags of plants around with us there was even a plant crèche, where we could safely leave our plants as we looked around the showground and collect them later in the day just before our journey home. After a good walk around the main hall we ventured outside to look at all the trade stands. From the main entrance to the Flower show and for as far as the eye could see was a mass of small white canvas pergolas all crammed full of gardening produce, from plants, garden tools, pots and planters, in fact everything imaginable to do with gardening and the outdoors. The bigger suppliers had huge marquees selling everything from hot tubs, barbeques and garden furniture to tree roots and wrought iron garden furniture. Then there was another huge food hall, lots of pop up tea and coffee bars, small restaurants and motor vehicles of all shapes and sizes converted to sell tea, coffee and snack food it was quite an eye opener.

By early afternoon the site was getting extremely busy with visitors of all nationalities. Looking over the adjoining countryside the grass fields were packed with parked cars, their occupants all visiting the flower show, there must have been a fair few thousands of cars parked. We decided to have a very pleasant early lunch, collect our plants from the plant crèche and head back to the car and make our way home before everyone else had the same idea. It was a great day out and well worth the visit.