After colossal amounts of rain recently, it was nice to wake up to a hard-overnight frost for a change. The weather forecast looked quite promising for later today so without much persuading we decided to drive over and have a walk around the gardens at RHS Harlow Carr situated on the outskirts of Harrogate.

It was around 10.30am as I parked the car in the car park adjacent to the gardens. The sun was shining nicely, 6C with a light westerly breeze. I was pleasantly surprised as to how many cars were in the car park for this time in the morning. We popped into Betty’s as soon as we arrived for a takeaway coffee before heading into the visitor’s centre. On passing through the centre the first thing that draws your attention is the large border of heathers on the right as you descend the steps onto the garden, at this time of year it is awash with colour. We turned left and headed for the pair of boxing hares, the borders were awash with Spring colour, the reds of the dogwood and willows looked bright and vibrant, and the small trees provided more depth and colour to the borders. Several of the shrubs were beginning to flower with tiny florets glistening with the remnants of the early morning dew. Different varieties of Hellebores were flowering amongst the borders, their bell-shaped florets drooping and swaying in the gentle breeze.  Small groups of Cyclamen were coming into flower adding additional colour to the borders as well as hundreds of tiny dwarf iris, with their lovely blue and purple flower heads.

We continued along the path towards the teaching gardens but today this area was all fenced off for some maintenance work. Our walk continued around the QM lake to follow the Streamside footpath. A lot of work had been carried out since last Autumn to reinforce the sides of the stream with lots of huge sandstone blocks strategically placed along the slopes of the stream, it will be interesting to watch how the area develops throughout the year. Work too was continuing with the rebuilding one of the bridges over the stream. Much of the planting on the streamside was just coming out of winters hibernation but along the sides of the main footpath were huge swathes of snowdrops and daffodils which provided plenty of colour along with miniature iris.

On reaching the bath house we turned right and walked up past Bettys Tea house and continued our walk crossing the main borders to the Sandstone rock garden,  extensive landscaping was done in this area last year and it is quite exciting to see how it settles down this year. Work is continuing around the gardens and several new footpaths are currently being laid in preparation for the influx of visitors during the year.

On reaching the visitors centre we headed for Bettys for a pleasant brunch before the journey home.