Garden Visiting In April - Part One

I'm visiting a garden each month through 2014 and whilst searching for somewhere to visit in April, I came across Lister Park in Bradford. It's situated about a mile outside the city centre and has recently been renovated. The thing which attracted me here was that I read it had botanical gardens. After reading this, I was expecting more than I actually found, but it was a lovely morning out last Saturday, nevertheless.

There was plenty of water around the gardens, little streams running through, waterfalls and bridges over the running water.

Archie certainly enjoyed his morning out and found plenty to keep his attention, including two ducks.

This waterfall is a replica of Thornton Force near Ingleton in the Yorkshire Dales. It illustrates a geological theory.

We were a little late for the full hellebore display, but the tulips were just starting to put on a lovely show to compensate.

I'm fascinated by ferns and how they unfurl their fronds.

There was a fabulous patch of wild garlic, it didn't quite have that full pungent smell about it, I suppose that will come in time.

I find corkscrew hazel really weird, how the branches are so contorted. This is a shrub I'd love to have in my own garden, if only I had room.

You can tell that the pieris and the blueberry are from the same family of plants by the flowers, they're so similar.

I don't really know what I was expecting from this garden, there were plenty of plants to see, some plants which I knew and some which I didn't. There were information boards but no plant labels, though perhaps it would be hard to maintain them in a public park. I think it would be good to go back and see how the garden fills out in the summer.

I've done a post over on my Through The Keyhole blog about other aspects of Lister Park, so do please pop over there to have a read.

This wasn't the end of our garden visit in Lister Park. There was another, more unusual, garden to see which I'll show you in my next post.