On a cold, overcast and gloomy morning we headed over to Harrogate for a walk around the gardens at Harlow Carr. It is just a good forty five minute drive from home, on a good day.

We arrived at the visitors centre around 11.00am and popped into Betty’s for a coffee before we started our walk around the gardens.

It looks as though a lot of work has been going on since our last visit towards the end of September 2018, several of the huge trees along the path down to the stream have been severely cut back and looking at the tree trunks was probably done on health and safety grounds as many of the huge branches look to have been rotten. 

We started our walk by heading over to the Learning centre, the borders to the right are a mass of colour at the moment and the vibrant orange, yellow and red colours of the Cornus (dogwood) shrubs always light up a dull and overcast morning. The vegetables in the teaching garden on the left were looking good too. It was nice to see some life size willow constructed dinosaurs along the side of the trail. The sunken garden has been completely refurbished and looks very nice, the contractors were well on with laying paving and stone walls around the garden when we were here last in September. From this garden we headed down towards and walked around the QM pond and followed the streamside path all the way to the Bath house. The gardeners look to have been busy cleaning up the sides of the stream and reinforcing the banks with some huge blocks of sandstone. It was nice to see the Snowdrops coming into flower. 

We had a look inside the Old Bath house as there was a Japanese Art Exhibition which started on the 5th January and runs through to the 7th February. The pieces of art on display were quite stunning, bright and vibrant, prints mainly of flowers and birds produced by artists using woodblock printing methods. The original artist was Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) who was generally regarded as the last great master of the Ukiyo-e style of art work. In another part of the bath house were lots of Japanese memorabilia for sale and by the amount of visitors browsing they looked to be doing a roaring trade in selling their products.

We left the Bath house and continued our walk up past the Tea house café before cutting across the grass, admiring the swathes of Pampas Grass swaying in the light cool breeze that blew across the gardens. We made our way up to the Sandstone rock gardens and ponds, this is one of my favourite places at Harlow, a lot of work and landscaping is being carried out here at the moment and I am sure will look very nice in the Spring and Summer once the new planting becomes established. We continued along the path back towards the visitors centre and decided to call into Bettys for brunch before the journey home.