After the partial easing of the Covid lockdown last week we headed over to Harrogate and our first visit this year to RHS Harlow Carr, to meet up with my son and his family.

It has been a lovely, dry, sunny week, with cold overnight frosts accompanied by sunny, dry days, we have had very little, if any rain so far this month, though it is still early days.

As usual at this time, we had to book entrance tickets online in advance of our visit, in order for the RHS to control the number of visitors entering the site at any one time, which isn’t a problem now adays.

We arrived at the visitor’s centre for 11.00am and on meeting up with our family made our way through the booking office and into the gardens. The sun was shining nicely, with a lovely blue sky and white fluffy clouds, although there was still a bitterly cold easterly wind which kept the temperature down somewhat.  

The first thing that hit you after coming out of the booking office was the border full of mixed heathers which at this time of year were in full flower, every shade of purple, lilac and pink could be found in that border. A lot of work was being carried out re landscaping the area adjacent to the tea rooms, it will be nice to see what it looks like on our next visit.

From the centre we followed the footpath towards the learning centre and the sunken garden, the vista from this part of the gardens, looking down towards the stream looked beautiful, even more so under the bright sunshine,  the early flowering shrubs in the borders brought a lot of early spring colour into the garden, we continued our walk around the QM lake, stopping for a few moments to watch the Mallard ducks harass some visitors enjoying a picnic by the sides of the lake. The sunshine and clear blue sky transformed the landscape into a vibrant and colourful picture. We continued our walk following the streamside trail to the old Bath House, passing swathes of daffodils, gently swaying in the breeze. The embankment and rockery on the left as you reach the Bath house was covered in several varieties of Primula, the ‘Denticulata’ in particular looked beautiful, the light blue flower heads the size of golf balls looked amazing and extremely colourful.

We had brunch sat outside the Bath House, with a sandwich and cup of tea from the outdoor tearoom which was extremely pleasant before following the other side of the streamside footbath and bearing left up the slope to the recently restored sandstone rockery and garden pools. From here it is just walk to the garden centre for a browse before the journey home.