On Sunday 21st May I noticed a tweet from the National Garden Scheme about Open Gardens. I've never tried visiting any of these before so I checked out some local Herefordshire ones. There were two that were very local and in the end we decided to go to Lower House Farm Garden just over the border in Worcestershire and not far from Kyre Park.
Its an Award Winning Country Garden surrounding a 16th Century farmhouse on a working farm. The garden contains herbaceous borders, roses, box parterre, kitchen and cutting garden, an orchard and a wildlife pond. There is also a haha with views across the countryside which we managed to miss!
The gardens were just charming - small but perfect and the wildlife pond was stunning.
Box Parterre
The herbaceous borders were a delightful jumble of cultivated species and some wild flowers too.
May is "No Mow" month - set up by Plantlife the idea is to leave some or all of your lawn uncut and this garden had a patch.
A tiny pond had newts - if you click to enlarge the photo you may just spot it in the centre of the picture.
The kitchen or cutting garden had a huge patch of Poached Egg plants. We were so impressed with this lovely flower that we've bought a packet of seeds to grow our own! Bees were loving the flowers.
The Orchard
We then crossed a field to the Wildlife Pond area.
Finally, back to the main garden.
This is the same as the birdbath we bought for the caravan!
We really enjoyed the visit and I will certainly be checking out more NGS gardens to visit.
A word of warning its probably best not to book online at the last minute. I booked at 11.00 am and we didn't get the confirmation email until 6.00 pm that night!!!! We were only able to gain entry as luckily B has a phone app for the bank and was able to show the transaction had gone through. Another couple who showed up after us had the same problem although in their case they had thought to take a photo of the screen of the webpage confirming the booking. If I book online again I will remember to do the same!
We came home at lunchtime the following day. Hopefully we can return to Herefordshire soon.
Photos taken by me with the Panasonic Lumix FZ330 bridge camera. I don't particularly rate my photos but if anyone wishes to use one I would be grateful for an email first - thanks.