Tag: Gresgarth Hall

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Seasons

Double hellebore

I called in at Gresgarth Hall last Sunday for snowdrop day. As expected, the snowdrops were looking fine, but what ought to have been a surprise is that so many hellebores were in full flower too. Hellebore day isn’t scheduled for another month, so it’s perhaps as well that their flowers are so long lasting.

Far from being surprised, I’d been eagerly anticipating the hellebores. After all, I’d have had to have been keeping my head in a bucket not to realise this season is a strange one. Since the start of 2016, gardeners the length and breadth of the country have been marveling out loud on social media at the range of flowers brought out early by the unseasonably warm weather we’ve had this winter.  Continue reading “Weekly Photo Challenge: Seasons”

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Recipe for a Traditional English Cottage Garden

Described by the British Cottage Garden Society as an informal, abundant, diverse planting, this well-loved gardening style is always in fashion with ’real’ gardeners. If you’d like to create a cottage garden at home, follow this recipe. Add an extra dimension by including as many highly fragrant cultivars as you can from the plant lists below. Your challenge (should you choose to accept it) is to have no soil visible from year three onwards. Simple!

Essentials
  • Patch of earth (ideally cultivated and enriched for hundred years, though it’s never too late to start)
  • Some form of enclosure: hedge, stone walls, wooden fence
  • Path, winding
  • Garden gate

Continue reading “Recipe for a Traditional English Cottage Garden”

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Review of Gresgarth Gardens

A blue poppy (meconopsis)
Blue poppy (meconopsis)

I’ve added a review of my visit to Gresgarth Hall and Gardens, plus four new pictures, to my existing photo gallery. This is the lovely private garden of designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd. If you love gardening, flowers and design, please click here to take a look.

I felt the review was better placed alongside the pictures rather than in a new and separate post. Let me know what you think!

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Gresgarth Hall Gardens: review and photo gallery

Topiary bird in a garden at Gresgrath Hall
Pink roses
View through daisies to Gresgarth Hall
Verbascum
Pink climbing rose
Patio garden with climbing roses
Blue poppy (meconopsis)
Gresgarth Hall from the river
Pink spotted foxgloves

Wild boar at Gresgarth Hall GardensGresgarth Hall is home to landscape designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd and her husband Mark. Her private garden, open to visitors ten days each year, has been shaped by her artist’s eye for colour, a scholar’s understanding of structure and a seemingly effortless attention to detail.

A wild boar statue greets visitors: ‘Gresgarth’ is Norse for ‘enclosure of wild boar’. The original building dates from the 14th century – more modern additions have made it elegant as well as imposing. The hillside garden, cut through by Artle Beck, presented challenges that have drawn out all the designer’s ingenuity.  Continue reading “Gresgarth Hall Gardens: review and photo gallery”