Sunday 11th June 2017.

I don’t often venture very far on the weekend due mainly to traffic congestion on both the A1 or the A64. But today I put that theory aside and headed off to RHS Harlow Carr, still full of enthusiasm after our visit to Chatsworth earlier in the week.

It was a lovely morning, arriving in the Car Park for just after 10am. Needless to say the car park looked half full, I think the predicted fine weather for the day had brought everybody out. 

We started out walk around the site by visiting the ‘new’ Learning Centre. Although it has been built for several years now this was my first look around, so to speak. Today was an exhibition by the Bonsai Society, there were some remarkable trees/shrubs on display and made quite an impression. From the Learning Centre we continued our walk left past the new show gardens that looked really quite good, lots of colour and great planting ideas, further on to the gazebo and sunken pond, past Dermot’s Show Garden and headed down towards the stream, the fringes bordering the footpath have been left to grow and on closer examination are full of ‘Common Spotted Orchids’, well maybe not quite full but they are there if you know where to look. The lake always looks a picture, never mind what time of year and today was no exception.  We continued our walk following the stream to the exhibition house, the colours of the plantings were amazing. I could quite easily have walked around again and again as your eye seems to catch something that you missed first time round. Today I compensated for not walking round twice by walking round exceptionally slowly, which suited Jenny quite nicely. It is a wonderful time of year to visit, the colours of the borders especially along side of the stream were wonderful. Heading back to the centre the vistas are quite amazing. It was noon as we made our way into the café for brunch. I am already looking forward to my next visit.