York Gate Garden, Leeds

Recently I discovered the existence of a little gem.  A little gem of a garden, York Gate Garden in Adel (rhymes with paddle) near Leeds.  If there's one thing William and I both enjoy it's taking a peak round a pretty garden so a couple of weeks ago on a very sunny day we were in for a treat when we paid a visit to York Gate Garden.

The website directions said to park in a lay-by opposite Adel Parish Church and follow the path through the church yard which would lead eventually to York Gate Garden.

This church dating back to the 12th century has a lot of interesting features not least of all the crosses marked in the flags.  William and I had never seen that before in any other church.  Maybe it's a feature unique to this church?  I looked for information on the church website but didn't find any mention of the path.  Perhaps I missed it and need to go back and check again.

This was  our first glimpse of the garden and I knew straight away it was something special.

Covering just one acre the garden is a series of "rooms", one leading artfully to the next.

Every which way we turned there was a feast for the eyes.

Neither of us knows the names of half the plants we see, we just like what we see and that's enough for us.

Pretty dahlias amongst an array of orange and yellow blooms.

Very pretty dahlias.  I loved the orange/yellow colours against the dark foliage.

This was my favourite view in the garden. That young man is the official gardener and the rest of the team is made up of volunteers.  They don't half do a good job between them.

Lots and lots of different trees and shrubs.

This is the Canal Garden. Just beautiful. There were fish in there as well as water lilies.

My cup was overflowing when we turned a corner and came across the most varied and colourful, healthy display of succulent plants I've ever had the pleasure to behold.

Love all these succulents, they are probably my favourite plants of all time.

The herb garden.

The house once occupied by the Spencer family now functions as offices and tea rooms.  

A lovely spot to eat lunch or afternoon tea but it was just too hot outdoors  This heatwave we're having is a joy but this English rose cannot sit under a burning hot sun so we took refuge in the tearooms where we ...

.. tucked into home made scones and jam.  Delicious!

Before we left we took a look in the gift shop.  York Gate once a family owned garden is now run by the horticulturists charity Perrenial.  The stock is naturally all garden related and we purchased a couple of cute items.  Oh, and before we looked in the shop we took another twirl around the garden.  That was how much we had enjoyed everything the garden had to offer.

My pictures of this amazing "little" garden don't do it justice at all.  The beauty of this garden really has to be seen in person to be truly appreciated.  I can't wait to go back again!

The Gardens of Luddenden

A couple of weeks ago now William and I took a short drive over the border into West Yorkshire and in particular to the village of Luddenden.   Why Luddenden?  Well, because Luddenden was opening to the public (for a small charge) the gates to 16 of its village gardens.  This is something that many towns and villages in Britain do throughout the summer and luckily for us I found out in time to visit Luddenden.

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.