Garden Visiting In February

I'm making a point of visiting a garden each month this year. Yesterday, we decided to head off to Roundhay Park in Leeds to take a look at The Specialist Gardens. We started off in the Gardens Of The World.

The first garden you come to is The Monet Garden.

The central pathway, or grand allee, running from Monet's garden gate to his house in Giverny has been recreated. The information board shows how it will look in summer, it was rather stark in February, though a few pansies have been planted in the borders to give, at least, some colour.

The Alhambra Garden is a reproduction of the Patio Acequia, part of the Palace of the Alhambra, the summer residence of the Moorish rulers of Spain.

You can see warning cones have been placed half way down the channel. This is because a couple of the trees are leaning precariously, victims of the recent storms, no doubt.

Leeds City Council have been exhibiting at The Chelsea Flower Show for a number of years. The 2008 Chelsea Garden won a silver gilt flora award.

Entitled The Largest Room In The House, it was based on the garden at Talbot House in Poperinghe near Ypres in Belgium. Talbot House offered rest and recuperation away from the horrors at the front to soldiers between 1915 and 1918.

The Hesco Garden 2009 highlighted some of the issues surrounding climate change, and also won a silver gilt flora award.

Different techniques were used to illustrate how we can manage the issue of flooding, something we should be addressing at the moment, given the weather we've encountered this winter.

The Hesco Garden 2010 was Leeds City Council's first gold medal winning garden.

This garden shows a snapshot of the green spaces in Leeds with woodland, wetland and floral meadow. The focal point is a pair of seeping lock gates, typically found on the iconic Leeds-Liverpool canal.

Seen from a different angle, this shows where the planting will come in to play once summer arrives.

The latest garden to be installed at Roundhay Park is The Hesco Garden 2011. This also won a gold medal at Chelsea.

The centrepiece of this garden is the traditional mill as seen in Yorkshire during the industrial revolution, complete with a working water wheel which pumps water around the garden.

The garden contains rockwork, trees and water-loving ferns and plants.

I did a post about the Gardens Of The World on my Through The Keyhole blog back in 2011. The Roundhay Park post shows the gardens as they look in May, very different from how they look in February.

We popped across the road to take a look at the Canal Gardens.

You can see it was a beautiful day. The temperature had soared in to double figures and lots of people had the same idea as us. The gardens had plenty of visitors.

The problem with herbaceous borders is that there isn't much to see in winter. There were pleny of signs in the borders though, which makes me think they'll be stunning come summer.

These low box hedges surrounded roses. I bet they look fabulous when they're flowering. Lots of children, and adults, seemed to think it was a maze, even though gates had been put up to block any entrances. Parents were lifting children over the hedges for them to run around, and even stepped over them themselves. I hope they haven't damaged the roses. Why can't people enjoy things for what they are?

It was a very enjoyable day out, I can thoroughly recommend a visit if you're in the area.

After visiting the gardens, we took Archie for a run in Roundhay Park. Pop over to my Through The Keyhole blog to see the remaining photos I took of the day on A Sunny Day post.

Don't forget, if you haven't yet entered my giveaway, you've got until twelve noon on Tuesday the 25th of February 2014 to do so. Just leave a comment on my Rosehips On A Kitchen Table post.