Temple Newsam Walled Garden In January

I visited Temple Newsam Walled Garden back in July last year. You can read about it in my Garden Visiting In July - Part One and Garden Visiting In July - Part Two posts. I thought it would be a good idea to visit the garden in a different season to see the difference so we had a trip there last Saturday.

The Walled Garden which was once used for the cultivation of vegetables, fruit and cut flowers for the house is now a rose garden. When we visited back in July, the rose beds and flower borders were in full bloom. It's all very different in January.

We've had a mild winter up to now and many rose bushes have continued to flower giving some very late blooms, but many of the plants at Temple Newsam have been pruned and no flowers remain.

Some plants have been left to produce hips.

The garden looks very neat and tidy, but very empty at this time of year. I expected to see where the plants had died down in the borders but they've all actually been dug over. I'm not sure if anything's been left in the ground or whether whole new borders will be planted up in spring.

Only a few climbing plants remain in situ.

There wasn't much to see outside so I decided to have a look inside the conservatory. After the potting area, the first plants you come to are the pelargoniums. Such glorious colour still adorns this area even in the depths of winter.

Dogs aren't allowed inside the conservatory. Can you see Archie being a good boy and waiting outside?

Some plants are trained up columns and others up the back wall.

The next area is being used as a plant nursery. When we visited in July, this area was filled with a fabulous display of coleus, all different varieties and colours, but at the moment it's filled with seedlings and cuttings. I expect these will be the plants for the summer display.

The abutilons which were flowering in July are still flowering now. There's a good variety here.

Spanish Flag - Lantana Camara. A member of the verbena family.

There's a South African plant collection which has come from one of the gardens which Leeds entered at the Chelsea Flower Show. Some of these plants are flowering now.

Bird of paradise.

King protea.

Though there isn't much to see in the actual rose garden at this time of year, I'm sure you'll agree that the visit was worthwhile for the conservatory alone. I'd say that the garden is worth a visit at any time of year.

Photo Medley - January

I often have lots of photos on my camera which don't make it on to the blog for one reason or another, I may take a photo which doesn't fit in to a blog post or I may have taken far too many photos of a subject to include them all in one blog post. I had an idea that I would combine all these odd photos at the end of each month and show them on my blog. When it's come near to the end of January, I've had a look at what I've got and unfortunately, it doesn't amount to much, probably because the weather's been too cold to be out and about with my camera.

As there isn't much else to add to this post, I thought I'd show a few more photos I took at Harlow Carr last Saturday.

One of the borders which was covered in snow but which I'm sure will be beautiful when everything starts blooming again.

The snow still hanging around, but starting to melt. I'm sure it's all gone by now.

Snowdrops.

Narcissus Romieuxii in the Alpine House.

Roses are still giving a little colour, even in the depths of winter.

I hope to have more photos to include in these posts in future months, I must get out and about more with my camera.

Harlow Carr In January

After renewing my RHS membership at the end of last year, we thought we'd take our first trip of the year to Harlow Carr yesterday. I think we chose the nicest day of the month so far, though it was very cold, the sun was shining.

You wouldn't have thought there was still snow on the ground in Harrogate as it was such a bright day, but much of the garden was still covered in a thin layer of the white stuff.

It was pleasant in the sunshine but was quite bitter when the wind blew so we only spent about an hour there and didn't get to see lots of areas, but I'll show you the bits I managed to photograph.

It's evident by the shoots breaking through the earth that the garden is starting to wake up. I'm sure the snow will have slowed everything down but we can see that there's plenty of things eagerly waiting for spring to arrive.

There's some beautiful witch hazel in the gardens, a wonderful shrub for winter interest and scent, though I didn't catch any of the fragrance yesterday. Apparently, you should breathe on the flowers to warm them up on cold days before they'll release their scent.

I love this leaf bin. As the leaves are held in a teapot, does it make them tea leaves?

I have to confess that my favourite part of Harlow Carr is the Kitchen Garden. It includes raised beds for vegetables, a fruit and herb garden, willow beds and flowers for cutting. Much of this garden was covered in remnants of snow, but you can still see that it's productive in the winter as well as summer months.

There's a large rhubarb patch and many of the plants are being forced with these attractive rhubarb forcers.

This photo doesn't show the trained apple trees very well. I'm sure they'll become more evident once they have leaves again.

Each tree has one of these lovely wooden labels giving its name.

I'm so envious of this greenhouse, isn't it a beauty? The coldframes down the side would come in extremely handy too.

At the moment, the greenhouse is filled with pots of herbs and bulbs. Everything is well labelled.

At the back of a shed are these trained currant bushes. There's both red and white currants and they're being grown in containers. I'm always pleased to see things growing successfully in pots as not everyone has a garden but it doesn't mean they can't grow fruit and veg.

By now, I was getting rather cold so we made our way to the Alpine House. As you can see, it's a beautiful building and a brilliant place to take shelter from the icy wind.

Outside the Alpine House are these wonderful little troughs filled with saxifrage, sempervivum and dianthus.

As we had a break from the chill outside, we admired all these wonderful little plants, some of them flowering in the depths of winter.

Most of the plants are grown in pots so they can be moved about in to the best position and replaced once they've done their thing.

There's even plants in the cracks of the display walls.

As we ventured back outside, I decided that I couldn't take the cold any longer so we decided to call it a day.

I'm sure that the next time we visit, those little shoots will be bigger shoots just waiting to burst in to flower.

We've Got Snow

I don't like snow. Actually, that's not strictly true. What I should say is that I don't like going out in snow. I don't like the cold, I much prefer to be inside where it's nice and warm. I especially don't like going out in snow at the present time as I was taking Archie for a walk on Monday when it was icy and I took a tumble. I thought I was ok at the time but my leg's quite painful now and I'm a bit nervous of going out again when it's slippery.

Archie had to make do with a quick trip in the garden this morning and he'll get the same this afternoon. Mick will take him for a good walk when he gets in from work to make up for it, though I doubt he'll mind as he doesn't like going out in the snow either.

My little pond is covered in ice and snow.

The spring bulbs which I planted in containers are managing to poke through the snow. It seems that nothing holds them back once they've made up their mind to grow.

It's still snowing now, we're forecast light snow all day. I hope it doesn't hang around.