Last week D and I visited Hoar Park Craft and Garden Centre located by Over Whitacre. The main purpose of the visit was to seek some birthday presents for E.
There are several shops there selling antiques, art, vintage items, sweets, and local craft items. It is always a lovely place to visit.
D had fun taking photos of house sparrows visiting a feeding station!
We had lunch in the tea room - toasted cheese and chutney sandwiches with salad and crisps. Sorry I forgot to take a photo!
Then we had a look round the garden centre - David bought an aubergine plant and some seeds and I bought a Hidcote Lavender to replace one I have lost in Herefordshire.
A couple of photos D took of the garden robin. They have already built one nest in ivy on the patio and I hope the young fledged successfully. The robins now seem to be building another nest in the same ivy so fingers crossed for a successful nesting attempt.
Yesterday we had a lovely afternoon out at Stoneleigh Abbey. I was going to combine that post with this but I suspect there will be a lot of photos from the abbey so I will do a second post later in the week.
Photos taken by me with the Panasonic Lumix FZ330 bridge camera and those marked *D taken by my son with the Canon SX50HS bridge camera. (I don't particularly rate my photos but if anyone wishes to use one of mine or my son's I would be grateful for an email first - thanks).

15 comments:
Garden centers offer many beautiful flowers, and I was at our garden center in town this morning, I bought large flower pots that I will put in front of the entrance to the house. Everything is full of beautiful seedlings of flowers, vegetables, bushes, trees.. beautiful!! but I can't look at it anymore because I would like to buy a lot of it but that would be a bit too much for my small yard
Thanks so much and yes garden centres have some wonderful plants. It is hard not to be tempted!!!!
Suddenly I'm seeing house sparrows all over the place doing stuff. You don't see so many of them these days
Hoar Park Craft and Garden Centre looks a super place to wander around, I hope you found some lovely presents. Great to have a garden Robin, we have a pair nesting in the Holly hedge, always a lovely bird to see and hear. Glad you had a good day out and about in this lovely weather:)
Thanks Simon. We don't get many house sparrows in the garden here these days. Just the occasional one or two.
Thanks so much Rosie. It is a nice place to go and we both found some surprise presents for my daughter. Good to hear you have nesting robins too.
Nearly missed this! Thank you for your kindness! There will be very regular updates starting Friday! What have I done?! LOL
This looks a good place to visit. I love toasted cheese and chutney sandwiches. That robin looks very Gertrude Schilling!
Thanks so much Debbie. I am so happy to support you as I really admire you for doing the challenge and I wish you good luck! Look forward to updates. The sandwiches were really good :) lol re the robin!
Beautiful and captivating photos.
Thank you Linda.
You can have some of mine, Simon!
I love places like this - the garden centres in France do have a shop with various things in which are nice to peruse occasionally, but you get far more interesting things at British ones! Plus ours don't have cafes. I am also so annoyed at so many of them for not bothering to water their plants - I brought home a lot of sad geraniums which were gasping. I did buy more at the local nursery which look after their plants but I wanted some in small pots in trays as they are much cheaper and far easier to pot up in a big tub.
Love your bird photos.
Thanks so much Mandy. I do love British Garden Centres - my favourite is at Burford near the caravan. That does have a tea room :) That is sad about the plants not being watered. I have spotted similar at some of our supermarkets :(
Beautiful photographs. You have a wonderful blog, best regards from my Slovenia...
Thank you Modrina for visiting my blog and leaving a lovely comment.
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