Luddenden is in a very hilly part of the world. In fact there's not much flat ground to be found anywhere in these parts. The village clings to both sides of a steep valley so the people who like to garden here do not have it easy. We must've visited at least eight or nine of the sixteen gardens and only one of them was on level ground.
This is part of the garden behind that house. The owner was telling me that he and his wife had lived there since 1970 and had worked hard to turn what was just a wild hillside into the garden it is now. I think I'd call them plants-people rather than gardeners.
Some of the gardens, like this one had plants for sale. Many of the gardens had thriving vegetable plots this garden being one of them. The owner was busy cutting down rhubarb to sell while we were there.
The sun was cracking the flags by now and it was hard and thirsty work climbing up and down and around this glorious little village.
So we decided to rest a while and have a bite to eat and a cup of tea. Very civilised and very British.
I really liked these containers full mainly of succulents. In fact I've copied this idea. I've got all my fingers and toes crossed in the hope that my little terracotta potful of succulents survives and flourishes like these have. The plastic spray bottle up there in the first of these two pictures contained a garlic solution to keep slugs at bay. Never heard of that before.
This is the side of the house, we were on our way to find the next house. Billy is carrying the plant we purchased here in that little brown cardboard box.
Aren't the original old cobble sets lovely to see? They are to be found everywhere in this old village.
That's William sitting down there at the bus stop. He wasn't waiting for a bus he was waiting for me as I had soldiered manfully on up another hill to see another garden. Billy wasn't fit enough to take on all these hills as only being six weeks away from open heart surgery he didn't have the energy for it. The heart surgery is a whole other story. One that came from nowhere out of the blue but he's still here to tell that story and for that we are grateful!
Here he is sitting on another wall earlier in the day. Lucky for us, and everybody else for that matter, the organisers of this event had laid on transport to take people up the hills to the less accessible gardens without which we would only have seen half of what we did.
Having been up one side of the valley we now began the descent to the valley bottom. We were both mighty glad we had to walk down this cobbled hill and not up it.
At the bottom of the cobbled hill we were rewarded with this view as we crossed in front of one garden to reach the next. Lots of lupins in this garden. I really liked this higgledy piggledy little corner of the village.
Another tiered garden at the bottom of which was a lawned area.
On the lawn was a sweet little summer house with an enviable view.
Moving on again to what was probably both mine and William's favourite garden. I got talking to the lovely lady who lived here and she told me that she and her husband had worked hard over the twelve or so years they had lived here to make the garden what it was now.
Between them they created this large, full to the brim, tiered garden from what was in the beginning just a forlorn wildly overgrown hillside. And now every which way you turned there were loads of different plants and interesting features to take your attention. The pictures just do not do it justice at all.
In one of the gardens was this greenhouse. Only small but packed full of goodness. Look at the size of those cabbages! (This one's for you, Jerry, I thought you might like to see some vegetables. Note the tomatoes, they can't compete with yours can they?).
We had had a full day traipsing around Luddenden and thoroughly enjoying all it had to offer. I don't know which I liked most, the gardens or the panoramic views from them. As with all good things they come to an end and here's Billy waiting on another wall. And this time, yes, he was waiting for a bus... well a big 4-wheel Range Rover type vehicle to take us back down the hill to the car park
This was my purchase from the garden where we ate lunch. Two weeks later and it's still looking good.
