Roundhay Park Gardens In July

I last visited the gardens at Roundhay Park in February 2014, you can read about that visit in my Garden Visiting In February post. If you look back at that post you will see that the gardens are quite bare at that time of year, it's a different story in July.

We started off in the Specialist Gardens and visited the Gardens Of The World. The first garden is The Monet Garden, recreating the central pathway running from Monet's garden gate to his house in Giverny. There wasn't much to see here in February but now the roses and clematis growing up the pergola are in flower and the borders have been planted with lots of varieties of bedding plants. This makes a wonderful entrance to the rest of the gardens.

The next garden you come to is The Alhambra Garden, a reproduction of the Patio Acequia, part of the palace of the Alhambra where the Moorish rulers of Spain spent their summers. It's lovely to see the borders filled with plants, it was very bare indeed when we visited last time. Agapanthus are planted in pots.

Leeds City Council's Chelsea Flower Show gardens are on show here in Roundhay Park. The 2008 garden entitled The Largest Room In The House won a silver gilt flora award. Talbot House in Poperinghe near Ypres in Belgium is where soldiers could go for rest and recuperation between 1915 and 1918 and this is based on the garden there.

I love the pairing of the salvia and eryngiums, they work so well together.

The Hesco Garden 2009 also won a silver gilt flora award. It highlights issues surrounding climate change and illustrates techniques we can use to manage flooding.

The geums look lovely with the hostas, but it's a shame the hostas have been nibbled.

Leeds City Council's first gold medal came from The Hesco Garden 2010. I remember this garden, with its seeping lock gates which are typically found on the Leeds-Liverpool canal, receiving lots of attention on the television coverage. This garden shows a snapshot of Leeds with its green spaces, woodland, wetland and floral meadow.

The planting here is much more natural.

The Hesco Garden 2011 also won a gold medal. The centrepiece here is the traditional mill which was seen in Yorkshire during the industrial revolution. It has a working water wheel which pumps water round the garden.

This garden contains lots of natural planting with water loving ferns and plants, and trees.

Just as we did when we visited Roundhay Park Gardens last time, we popped across the road to take a look at the Canal Gardens. The gardens were formed from a walled kitchen garden built around 1816. The canal, which is 350 by 34 feet, was added in 1833.

The problem with herbaceous borders is that they completely die back in winter. If you follow the link to my previous post about Roundhay Park Gardens you can see that there wasn't anything to see in the borders in February, but it's a different story now. The borders are completely full and look stunning.

The walls provide a fabulous backdrop to the plants.

Across the canal on the opposite side to the borders, bedding plants add a touch of colour.

The roses are now flowering inside the low box hedges, they look very pretty.

I can definitely recommend a visit to these gardens if you're in the area but I'm sure you can tell from these two posts that there's much more to see at this time of year than in winter so make it snappy.