Another busy day today, Meg & Gracie had me up at 1.45am for a walk around the garden, which at that time in the morning is a bit of a pain, anyway, the walk settled them down and it was back to bed till 6.45am when I took them out for a good long morning walk for about one and a half hours!

After breakfast I had to drive up to Harrogate for an 11oclock meeting, after which we headed over to RHS Harlow Carr for brunch and a walk around the gardens.

Unfortunately, after a promising start weatherwise, it started to cloud over late morning, and by the time we got to the visitor’s centre, it was quite dull, grey and overcast. 

The gardens were as beautiful as ever, still in winter mode but with signs of spring amongst the borders. Today, we followed our usual path around the gardens and headed towards the lakeside gardens and the sunken Victorian garden. Work is continuing on the edge of the ‘QM lake’ although signage on the fencing surrounding the areas say that it should be complete by Summer. After leaving the sunken garden we followed the path around the lake and picked up the ‘winter walk’ route that takes us through some lovely borders adjacent to the stream. Vibrant stems of Cornus (dogwood) and Salix (willow), in colours ranging from bright yellow through to black, stand out against feathery conifers and clipped yew hedging. The ghostly trunks of Betula utilis punctuate the borders and make great specimen trees all year round. One of the nice parts of the ‘winter walk’ are the scents that drift up from the borders, Sarcococca is one of the first plants to flower, it is sweetly scented with delicate white blooms amid its dense evergreen foliage. Viburnum also is another shrub that gives off a delightful fragrance. The recent addition to the walk are some 5,000 dwarf bulbous iris in rich shades of yellow, purple and blue, including Iris reticulata cultivars ‘Katharine Hodgkin’, the deep blue ‘Harmony’ and purple-black ‘Pauline’, as well as scented, yellow Iris danfordiae, that also adds plenty of colours to these borders. Cyclamen coum and Eranthis (winter aconite) also provides lots of colour. We continue our walk and followed the streamside trail to the old Bath house. From here we headed up the slope, past the new children’s play area on the left and into the Arboretum, this is an area we have only recently started to visit and a very pleasant extension to our usual walk. Occupying the most northerly corner of Harlow Carr, the Arboretum is the quietest and most serene part of the garden. There are lots of tall and exotic specimen including a glade of dawn redwoods and a newly established bamboo glade, apparently there are around 200 different species of bamboo planted here, all of which can be grown in our own garden. We followed a circular trail amongst the trees before returning back to the bath house and the steady climb up to the kitchen garden and into the plant centre. After a good peruse amongst the plants we headed over to Bettys for a late brunch before the journey home.

It never ceases to amaze me that even when the weather is slightly overcast and dull, there is always something to see in the gardens.