One of my unexpected highlights from our recent break in Lincolnshire was our visit to Barnsdale Gardens. Before we arrived in our holiday cottage I’d not heard about these gardens, but they were in the recommended places to visit, so I took a look. And as soon as I did, they went straight onto our ‘to visit’ list.
Barnsdale is the Gardeners’ World home of former presenter Geoff Hamilton, and it’s where the programme was filmed. It’s a garden full of gardens, described as a gardener’s theme park - there’s thirty eight individual gardens in the garden. I thought I’d diligently photographed every single garden, but somehow I don’t have all the photos.
Never mind.
I’m starting by sharing garden number twenty eight - a summer cottage garden.
This garden was built as the main show garden for the very first Gardeners’ World Live Exhibition at the NEC in 1993 and was designed by Dan Pearson. Isn’t it delighful?
Originally the maze was a herb maze - filled with silver variegated thyme, lavender, rosemary and sage - imagine the smell! The Barnsdale gardens are heavy soil and the herbs didn’t thrive, so was replaced with a box hedge.
The archways are covered in roses, and like many cottage gardens there’s delphiniums, more roses, campanula, geraniums, foxgloves and clematis.
It’s exactly the type of garden that you could easily see in a domestic garden, and wouldn’t that be something to aim at?
I loved the strategically well-placed deckchair, which on a warmer day would I’m sure be in much demand.
