National Garden Scheme.

Our Cottage Garden

The day before we open for the fourth time for the National Garden Scheme and the Under Gardener is busy working in his kitchen garden.

The Under Gardener leaving his patch.

Hope no little Bunny gets in through the open gate!

We spent a good deal of time in the spring digging in large quantities of horse manure and chicken pellets into the three beds in the kitchen garden. The results of this hard work are here for all to see and this year we had a lot of favourable comments about this part of the garden.

The woodland Garden

Now in its second year this pergola is starting to look good. Rambling Rector is also getting established and the Mock Orange to the right of the pergola is giving off the most wonderful fragrance. It makes a wonderful entrance to the woodland walk.

The kitchen garden draws a lot of visitors.

The rose walk to the kitchen garden is now in its second year and we are very pleased with the way it is coming along. I have to say that this part of the garden has pleased us the most this year.

170 for tea and cake!

A comment made by a yonger visitor as she arrived up the drive to see visitors having tea was to say "It's just like Midsomer!"

Some of our younger visitors 2008

What a difference to years makes.

An early visitor to the garden on our big day leaves her transport outside.

The plant sale in full swing.

Members of the Gardening Club selling plants. Some of them had been "donated" but most have been propagated from plants in this garden. I like to buy a plant that I have seen growing in a garden that we visit. I am always disappointed when it is obvious that the plants that are on sale have been bought in.

Holmcroft on a perfect summers day.

4th time lucky. This time the sun shines!

It is just past 2pm and already the garden is filling up. With England playing in the World Cup and the temperature rising we wondered if we would have any visitors at all.

The perfect "Enid Blyton" moment.

These pictures were taken by my Nephew and this is my favourite. To see children enjoying the garden is always a highlight for us and this is just the perfect scene.

The Garden will open next year on Sunday the 26thth of June 2011 @ 2 pm.

(Double click on pictures for a bigger image)

When in 2006 we were inspected as to our suitability or not for the NGS, the county organiser, although she did accept us, expressed concern that the garden might not be big enough to provide 45 minutes of interest. (This garden is about one acre, you should just try weeding it! ) At first I was more than a little astonished but she did us a big favour as we both re-assessed what we had done and set about adding many more features to the garden and extending those we had already done. I suppose you could say we started to think outside the box. What had initially been a shock was in fact a great help.

Our very first open day, 24th of June 2007

A picture taken on our first ever NGS day.

167 visitors on our first day was just great.