It was another cold, frosty and foggy start to the day. I had to scrape ice off the car windscreen earlier this morning though as we are still in the depths of winter it should not be such a surprise. We have been very fortunate with the weather this past few days, although we have had some cold nights, during the day the temperature has risen to 16C-17C here in the Selby area and quite a contrast to this time last year when we were in the middle of a bitterly cold snap.

After breakfast we headed up the A1 motorway to visit the gardens at RHS Harlow Carr just outside of Harrogate for the morning. The fog that I mentioned earlier cleared as we drove up the motorway and once the sun broke through the cloud it made for a very pleasant day.

It was just 11.00am as I drove into the car park and considering the centre had only been open since 10.00am both of the main car parks were virtually full, though I put this down to the school half term and families visiting with their children. 

The temperature gauge was already reading 12C and many visitors were walking around in shirt sleeves! I have learnt when visiting Harlow that the temperature here is always a couple of degrees cooler than at home and today was no different, I kept my jumper and waistcoat on!  We popped into Betty’s tea shop adjacent to the entrance to the gardens for a coffee and gingerbread biscuit before we headed off next door for a walk around the gardens. With the sun shining brightly, a lovely blue sky, we couldn’t have chosen a better day for our visit.

We took our usual route from the centre, following the ‘winter walk’, with one or two slight diversions to look at interesting plants that caught our eye. Heading past the learning centre on the left, we followed the route alongside the Queen Mothers lake, before heading up to look at the Lakeside gardens including the sunken Edwardian Garden which has had quite a facelift over the past few months, the rectangular pond and water course has been completely relined and the paving and new dry stone wall remade using locally sourced sandstone from West Yorkshire. Once the new planting around the pond becomes established it will look very nice. From this garden we continued our walk past Dermot Gavins ‘show garden’ and around the back of the Queen Mothers lake and joined the ‘Streamside walk’ all the way to the ‘Old Bath House’. We passed beds of Snowdrops in full flower, the delicate white florets swaying gently in the light breeze. Huge clumps of Daffodils are beginning to flower, especially the miniature varieties and the beds of Tulips won’t be far behind them. On reaching the ‘Old Bath House’ we had a look around the ‘modern mosaic exhibition’, over 20 Yorkshire based mosaic artists, all members of the British Association for Modern Mosaic, had some excellent pieces of work on display.

From the Old Bath House we followed the path up past Bettys Tea House which today was  busy with visitors, all sat outside enjoying the most of the morning sunshine, we had a natter with some of our neighbours who were also visiting today. From the Tea House we continued along the path up to the Sandstone rock garden, this is another area which has been completely revamped over the winter months and looks really nice. Small teams of volunteer gardeners were busily out and about around the gardens, keeping the borders well-tended and tidy, I note that since our last visit in January the huge clumps of Pampas grass have all been cut down to just a stump, ready for the onset of Spring. We continued the gentle climb admiring all the families sat having picnics on the lawns, after a few minutes we arrived back at the visitor’s reception area and made our way into Bettys Tea rooms for brunch. It was really nice to see all the visitors making the most of the really unseasonable weather.