Barnsdale Gardens, a special place

* I was invited to a press visit at Barnsdale Gardens earlier in the summer, so my posts from that visit will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

As we’ve already explored some of the flower and vegetable gardens at Barnsdale I expect you’re wondering what else there is, well there’s plenty - and plenty more flowers and vegetables that I haven’t shared, and like many gardens they’re best explored in person. This press visit was my second time at Barnsdale, we’d visited before when we were staying close by - and as we’re less than an hour away I’m sure it won’t be my last visit either. If you find yourself close by then it’s a garden (or many gardens) that are definitely worth a visit, and like other independent gardens it has a completely different feel to the National Trust gardens, which are also fabulous and favourites of mine to visit.

When Geoff Hamilton was the Gardeners’ World presenter on TV he used Barnsdale as his TV garden, and there’s a very distinct separation between the TV gardens and the non-TV parts of the garden - and this sign gives you a big clue, and reminded me of those notices that we are used to seeing now which notify you you might be filmed. Clearly there’s no filming for the programme now, but it’s a nice part of history to keep that distinction.

Immediately you pass the sign you’re in, quite literally the Apple Arch (garden number 25), which featured on many of the programmes and continues to be popular with visitors, me included. Here it contains 26 different varieties of apples and pears and was originally created to show how its possible to grow a wide variety of ‘top fruit’ within a restricted space.

And given it’s beauty it’s easy to see why it’s still maintained - and fruitful - today.

I couldn’t finish this series of posts without sharing a picture of the bronze bust of Geoff Hamilton, which was sculpted by his youngest son Chris. It takes pride of place, on its reclaimed plinth, in the Memorial garden (garden number 3), and amongst the flowers surrounding it is the David Austin ‘Geoff Hamilton’ rose - what else?

But there is more, this is the view the bust looks out over, a wildflower border with Geoff’s favourite tree, a Katsura - and isn’t it just the most calming spot?

I also want to share more about the Artificial Rock Garden (garden number 7) pictured below. It looks like an ordinary rock right?

Wrong. The rock garden was created by Geoff using artificial coir-based rocks, inspired by the rapidly disappearing of natural limestone. They’re very realistic and are made from 2 parts coir, 1 part sharp sand, 1 part cement and some yellow cement dye.

They look - and feel - just like rocks, but also help save vital natural habitats. Clever hey?

The Japanese Garden (garden number 15) is a rare share of such a garden here for me, and Barnsdale are open that it doesn’t adhere to any formal ideas for gardens, and so is very much their interpretation of a traditional Japanese garden - and maybe that’s what appealed more to me, I’m not sure. Those upturned ‘bamboo’ pipes as an edging especially caught my eye.

It seems a calming end to this series of posts, and a great place to end a busy and photo-heavy day at the site. I know I’ll be back, and I hope you can get along if you ever find yourself nearby, I know you’ll be given the warmest of welcomes whatever the weather.

* With thanks to Barnsdale Gardens for inviting me to the gardens, and to Nick Hamilton for leading a tour through a selection of the gardens available. It’s a great space and I’m pretty sure I’ll be back to visit again.

Making wire flowers and seed heads

A while back I saw a workshop advertised to make a bouquet of wire flowers, intrigued I looked into it further and finally decided to book myself on it as what’s the worst that could happen? I’d thought that they might make a good garden display, but I was wrong about that - they’re too delicate for that, but with thicker wire something similar would absolutely work for outside.

So last month I spent a morning with people I’d never met before making a vase of wire flowers. And yes, I’ll admit they can look like a jumble of wires, or a two dimensional pencil squiggle; but it was great fun and it’s really not too much of a challenge to look past the wire jumbles.

I was clearly quite prolific at my wire twiddling and twisting! Like many great ideas this was relatively simple and didn’t need much equipment. All that was needed was some wire (we used 22 gauge at the workshop) and something to wind it around.

The somethings to wind it around were of differing sizes and ranged from wooden dowels to ring sizers - and they were all effective, but I think there’s things we have around the house (and garden) that could be used - wooden spoons, cotton reels and even a garden dibber would all work equally well. The key thing I think is to have different sizes to provide variety for your squiggles!

I didn’t think I’d want to make my own wire flower with beads, but actually my green version below is one of my favourite shapes I made - and in case you’re wondering the double beads were stuck together, so I just went with it. This was the last flower type we made at the workshop, which following plenty of chat from everyone there ran over so it was quickly twisted into shape - but I’d definitely do more, though if I’m using thicker wire I’ll need bigger beads, but I’ll cross that bridge when the time comes (if it does).

The seed heads were also high on my list of favourites, a simple shape to replicate and one that would look great in a thicker wire for the garden.

And this one is simple too - just lengths of wire secured in the middle with the ends twiddled around to replicate the shapes we see in nature.

The whirly twisty fillers were incredibly satisfying to make - and I seem to have got a few of these, in many sizes!

There were more typical flower types too, but the ones above are the favourites amongst those I made, and would be the ones I’d look to make in a thicker wire for the garden - but that probably won’t be this year. It’s definitely one to remember though.

Many cups of tea, and other rugs

One of the first exhibitions I bumped into at the Knit & Stitch show in Harrogate was that of the Ebor Ruggers, a group of passionate people who enjoy keeping the traditional craft of rug making alive, but doing so while being sustainable. They make so much more than rugs though, think baskets, wallhangings, bags and cushions - and many were on display at the show.

I’m sharing those which caught my eye, including the one below that really wasn’t happy about being on the wall and kept escaping to the floor, and each time show attendees rushing to help the ruggers to get it back in place.

The rug tells the story of a daughter leaving home, potentially for university, leaving with hopes, dreams and the best wishes for her family, though the poignant part is the ‘come home’ plea, which is no doubt that of the rug maker to her daughter, and I’m sure is come home occasionally and don’t bring your washing!

I loved the simplicity of the rag rugged heart, which fully deserved its place at the show, but the storytelling piece below is the one that really made me smile, as it reminded me of MOH and his many, many great cups of tea!

The text in the rug is ‘a better man there could not be to make me many cups of tea’ and it took me right back to the early days of lockdown as we started working at our dining table in the kitchen and so he was making many more cups of tea, which I was happy to receive - and I’m still very happy that he makes me many cups of tea.

One day in lockdown though he asked me if I had a butler at work to make my tea, as while I’m always happy to receive and drink tea, I rarely made a cup for us myself. Oops - though in my defence, the tea was coming thick and fast so I had no need to make my own, and I don’t think I drank so much tea as back then - even when we moved our desks into a spare room each and there was further to bring it the tea kept coming, and so it does today too, which I’m very glad about.

I think I need to get him this rug on a t-shirt at the very least, or perhaps a mug - yes that would be more appropriate wouldn’t it?!

But anyway, back to the show - what amazed me about the rugs on display was the wide variety of approaches. I’m not sure why it did, but it did - and these three pieces (above and below) sum that up - and until then I didn’t realise that perhaps rag rugged bunting was what I needed, but maybe I do.

There’s some clever people out there excelling in their crafts, and I’m thankful for the glimpse they gave us into the ruggers world.